AutoHotkey Community

I think the community members here are adept enough to comment on forum changes without having to see them first. Even if you did ask the other moderators for permission to remove that specific sticky a few days ago, did you even bother asking the community their thoughts on that particular move? That's where your actions have become quite aggravating.

The solution here is clear, Chris needs to return to the forums and engage the whole community in a dialog about how this transition should proceed. If he has no further interest in his product but doesn't wish to hand over the keys to the house then he needs to have enough respect for the loyal users of his product to show up and hear us out so we can take care of the product for him.

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Try Quick Search for Autohotkey or see the tutorial for newbies.

Has anyone in charge asked me for the source for this purpose?
Or asked me how you might reverse the process to check?
Or the foresight to compare one binary with another to see if anything "naughty" has been injected into the interpreter?
Or debugged and monitored an Ahk exe built with HkC?

The interesting point is a lack of a valid one, if it actually came down to that you would probably have done at least one of the above.

If I were trying to pwn anyone do you honestly think I would have gone to this much effort? dialogs with Chris, the help file (such as it is), adding self contained functionality where truly 3rd party dependent tools have prevailed, adapting to countermeasures, writing and keeping a toolset to assist with decompilation almost primarily to prevent/combat malware written in Ahk and built with HkC.

I am an asshole? sure, Downright strange? Mostly but....

@Mobius For all its worth I trust your software. On the other hand I don't think it should have its own sticky because it goes against the mission of AHK (basically writing simple automation scripts, not full programs that need encryption). I do support putting a link to it in a Gui based sticky.

@sinkfaze Chris has moved on from AutoHotkey. I don't think it is fair to expect him to come back every time there is a altercation on the forum.

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aboutscript ⍟ apps ⍟ scripts
Any code ⇈ above ⇈ requires AutoHotkey_L to run

There are lots of stickies we haven't talked about yet. Any opinions on these?

• Bug Reports has one
• Wish List has two
• U&R has one
• General Chat has zero, should it?

Edit: I think Scite should be stickied somewhere... thoughts?

Edit2: I'm trying to think of better titles for the GUI and Wiki threads, as Tuncay suggested.
Gui threads to note
Gui threads of import
Gui programs most often used
Gui programs most recommended
Wiki for AHK!
AHK has a Wiki!
Wiki and Rosetta code challenges
Rosetta code challenges and AHK Wiki
...
GUI - visual editors, custom controls, and more
GUI - wysiwyg editors, custom controls, and more

I like 'Wiki and Rosetta code challenges'.

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aboutscript ⍟ apps ⍟ scripts
Any code ⇈ above ⇈ requires AutoHotkey_L to run

I think it would be good to add something about code tags to the " PLEASE READ IF YOU'RE NEW..." thread.

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aboutscript ⍟ apps ⍟ scripts
Any code ⇈ above ⇈ requires AutoHotkey_L to run

If there is no reason to make a thread sticky, then it does not need. I think this section is different from all other sections. This is the only section where we do not expect "useful" or "serious" or "related to ahk" things. To answer the question for yourself, is there any topic you would like to see it sticky? And yes, which topic is it?

But this brings me an idea. We (or you) could generalize the process for sticky topic in General Chat section. What do you think to have every week one new poll as a sticky, until new poll. Sometimes there could be important questions to the user. If this mechanism is standardized and good working and known by others, then they would look at least one time every week for new poll.
Then I suggest to have only 1 sticky maximum. See SKAN`s "Which AutoHotkey you prefer to use ?" thread as an example. And which poll the next time we have decides a moderator. He is responsible to ask the users, but he is not forced to ask (not general rule, only for this thread).

Edit:

This one is needed at Ask For Help section. New people to ahk would not look in General Chat at first, but for new scripts or for help. I think it is nonsense to put such a thread in this category (GC).

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{1:"ahkstdlib", 2:"my libs", 3:"my apps", 4:"my license"}
--> Don't feed the troll! <--

I didn't say anything about putting it in GC. The 'read if you are new' thread is in Ask for Help.

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aboutscript ⍟ apps ⍟ scripts
Any code ⇈ above ⇈ requires AutoHotkey_L to run

Frankie oh ok sorry.

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{1:"ahkstdlib", 2:"my libs", 3:"my apps", 4:"my license"}
--> Don't feed the troll! <--

I don't know; I think general chat wouldn't be a bad place to stick an explanation of BBcode. Then again, it's pretty rare that anyone asks about it. Actually, I've thought about sticking one of the "etiquette" threads in this forum; but I think very few people are interested in reading about that either, so I haven't.

Maybe also in 'please read if you're new' you could put a link to bbcode documentation. That way new users that read it can get information about the bbcode that this forum supports.
http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/faq.php?mode=bbcode

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aboutscript ⍟ apps ⍟ scripts
Any code ⇈ above ⇈ requires AutoHotkey_L to run

I run several wikis and a forum and what I've found is that while forums are absolutely terrific for creating a community and stimulating activity, they aren't the best way to organize information. Several people mentioned early in this thread that they find it frustrating to have too many stickies, and I agree. I find stickies helpful for legal notices, for important relatively short term announcements, and to draw attention to the most important resources. Since we don't have any legal notices or announcements, I think a single stickied thread, perhaps called "Important Resources" would be sufficient and would draw the attention of newbies. It's first post would contain a warm welcome to newbies along with very short intros to topics such as the two new versions, the DLL, autohotkey.net, the GUI apps, the compilations apps, the Rosetta Code challenges. Each summary would end with a link to actual thread where people could get more information. So that it would never get stale, we could have an agreement that all moderators could edit the initial post just as they would create a stickied thread.

As the community goes through all of these changes, I hope that we can all try very hard to not get emotional and to realize that while different people may disagree, we are all trying to strengthen a community that we love. We need to make sure to not make things personal, because that is very damaging to the community. Many thanks to everyone who started to get angry, but held their head high and found a way to work toward a constructive solution.

A final note: I suspect that there are probably only 5 or 10 people in the entire AHK community who have the time, technical background or patience to read through a 30 or 60 page thread. AHK is about making people's lives simpler, and I think that we need to avoid the super long threads. Someone else mentioned that once a thread gets beyond 5 pages, they simply stop reading. I'm quite busy, so I know that I do. I think that once a thread gets to be more than 10 pages long, we need to start a new thread (links can connect the different threads) when a new version of the underlying software comes out. This will do wonders for usability and as Apple has shown us, usability can really drive marketshare.

A similar idea is writing a good help file (like Lex's amazing contributions) or putting documentation up on the wiki. I'm all for showing some RTFM style tough love to newbies who expect us to do all of their work for them. However, if we're going to expect them to do some reading, we need to give them something high quality to read, and the high technical level and meandering structure of our forum threads just isn't good enough. I teach and I find that students will work quite hard if you give them good enough support and resources. Likewise, if we provide high quality resources, I think that people will understand when we tell newbies to RTFM.

Bottom line: I think we need to transition from a thread-based model of support to more of a wiki and help file-based one. If we do that, I think that a single carefully written sticky to point people in the right direction is enough.

@JoeSchmoe
You have very well explained how I would like to see. One sticky with a summary of most important things for the newcomer. And about the legal notes, as i fight for making clear what license a script has, this is a very good idea.

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{1:"ahkstdlib", 2:"my libs", 3:"my apps", 4:"my license"}
--> Don't feed the troll! <--

Done and done.

Furthermore, Lexikos has agreed for the AHK_L thread in S&F to be unstickied.

What about IronAHK? Will it stay stickied?
If AHK_L is unstickied shouldn't IronAHK be too

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Any code ⇈ above ⇈ requires AutoHotkey_L to run