Why does my customization (mod/theme) take so long to be reviewed?

Started by Joshua Dickerson, March 02, 2007, 02:16:59 AM

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Sarke

I think he was talking about the mods submitted by the SMF staff get approved straight away.

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Hambil

Quote from: Sarke on March 14, 2007, 08:22:47 PM
I think he was talking about the mods submitted by the SMF staff get approved straight away.
They shouldn't be. They should go into the queue like any other modification and get peer reviewed before going up. How can we expect the staff to understand our pain if they don't have to feel it themselves?  

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Joshua Dickerson

They are reviewed by their peers. Not everyone in the team has the privileges to accept/reject customizations. I don't want to put anyone above anyone else, but there are certain privileges to being a team member. That is and should be expected. If you program a superior customization to something that a team member has created, more power to you. The fact that the mod might be downloaded more is probably due to the fact that people feel as though customizations created by the team are more trustworthy. Not that, that is always the case, but people's thinking is a reality.
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Hambil

Quote from: groundup on March 14, 2007, 09:46:35 PM
They are reviewed by their peers. Not everyone in the team has the privileges to accept/reject customizations. I don't want to put anyone above anyone else, but there are certain privileges to being a team member. That is and should be expected.
Well, for what my 2 cents is worth this whole setup smacks of people with a superiority complex. It's condescending to both regular members and mod authors.

QuoteIf you program a superior customization to something that a team member has created, more power to you.
This has nothing to do with one mod being superior to another. What I said was that everyone should have to go through the queue and face the same process and rules. What we have now appears to be team members approving their own mods while telling mod authors to leave them alone and they'll get to it when they get to it, and saying they need to 'protect' the newbie users from bad code. As I said, it's a very condescending way to run things IMHO.

QuoteThe fact that the mod might be downloaded more is probably due to the fact that people feel as though customizations created by the team are more trustworthy. Not that, that is always the case, but people's thinking is a reality.
I don't know if team member mods are downloaded more or not. I suspect useful mods are downloaded more. And that people who write useful mods might find themselves being recruited to the team - rather than the other way around. Which means, by slowing down the process and alienating the new mod authors, you hurt the strength of your own team and the future of your own software.

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Dannii

I don't see it being condescending. If the mod team approve their own mods, that's fair enough, they are the ones who wrote the guidelines and know what is required.
"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."

karlbenson

Quote
And, not to slam any particular user, but I saw a mod posted after mine and approved the next day, and it now has 200+ downloads already, while my mod hasn't even been downloaded for review yet. So, someone is playing favorites somehow.

I think I should point out that sometimes mods have to be submitted again as a new mod.  This happened with my favicon mod as one example.  Once I had submitted it, I was told it had spaces in the ID which needed fixing. Since it won't let me reupload the file with a different ID, i had to resubmit.
Obviously as soon as I had fixed it.  Resubmitted (showing a new date) and once it had been rechecked, it was passed.

Basically all I'm saying is, I wouldnt necessarily trust the date shown for the mods.  There may be unknown reasons.

KGIII

I will also add that I have created just two mods in my time here at SMF. One as a team member, one as not a team member. In both cases I know - without a DOUBT - that they were reviewed and processed in order, as they came with a triage sense, with as much scrutiny as any other mod gets. How do I know? I get to see the internal discussions AND in the second case I had to go back and change my mod because I had not adhered to the guidelines. (Simple oversight, I had a space in the ID tag.)

Before assuming that team members are automatically afforded free reign and able to release stuff without accountability you might wanna poke and ask around first. If they are approved faster it is because they are able to code according to the guidelines more easily because they are more fluent in them and know what is expected. In addition, chances are that they feel their own reputations (and their time - which is my essential issue personally) will be impacted by complexity and/or difficulty. Thus they attempt to do it right the first time. But, yes, they do get reviewed.

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NEMINI

There does seem to be a problem with notification of issues going out. Example
signatures are boring.

SleePy

Sometimes the Customizers forget to send a PM. A more automated system is being worked on but requires tons of coding and rewrites so might take a while for it to actually happen ;)
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NEMINI

well that makes me wonder how many more mods are just sitting around because the team thinks they are waiting on the author and the author thinks its the team.   
signatures are boring.

SleePy

We do check up on them to ensure they got a pm sent. We have a whole team board dedicated to ensuring this and discussing the mod and making sure pm is sent and status of it.
I have looked over the past 2 pages of mods awaiting approval and all of them have had pms sent to the mod author and just waiting a response from them and most likely more on the next pages.
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Sarke

The lines of communication is very bad between the two parties.  In a semi-open beta forum things could be discussed easily...  :P

If we have to make it "closed" I would suggest making a new member group of all the mod authors, and having them look over each others mods since they all mostly know what's what, etc.

There is also a third party, the people waiting to use the mods, that should also be kept informed. 



I made a few suggestions a couple of months ago that seemed to be well received, but I haven't heard anything since.  One of my main concerncns was that the current way of doing things is stifle the mod making. 

Some of my suggestions were to add a "status" field to the mods so that everyone knows what's going on with the mods (e.g. "newly submitted", "under review",  "waiting for corrections", etc).  Another was to put a "place in mod queue" so everyone knows where in the approval queue the mod is.

You can read it here.

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=141473.0



Either, way how about some action?  I'd hate to see SMF just "think" about this for another few months, nothing happens, and we're back with a new topic talking about the same thing...

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SleePy

Action is being taken. From a User point at the moment you are not seeing the action. From more of the backend there is much action being taken. The SMF Customize Team is trying to do its best to improve this but failure to follow the guidelines or actually test it to ensure that errors do not occur is causing longer mod awaiting.
If you follow the guidelines and ensure that no errors occur on installing or using the mod then it will get approved faster. With so many mods that have problems it will still take time but I assure you the Customize Team is working to get all mods approved.
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Joshua Dickerson

We are addressing the issue of the coding guidelines not being documented well. Hopefully within the next week I should have something posted.
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Sarke

What other than improved guidelines is being done?  Let's face it, that's not exactly a universal solution.   

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SleePy

Quote from: Sarke on March 15, 2007, 07:13:21 PM
What other than improved guidelines is being done?  Let's face it, that's not exactly a universal solution.   

If mod makers understand more what we are looking for to keep the code clean, secure, mutli language capable, etc than it will be processed quicker.
So it is a solution to help speed up the process. If mod makers where to do this in the first place mods would be approved much faster.
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Hambil

Here's an idea: If you find a problem with a mod that would get it rejected, then rejected it immediately with a pm explaining why, and move on. The author can resubmit it when they think it's ready again.

This should keep the queue moving, and the mods that follow guidelines will get approved much faster.

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SleePy

That would just be outrageous and have many mods of the same that could be duplicate mods. The current way is better and more easy to detect duplicate mods. Which do occur now and then.
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Joshua Dickerson

It's a lot less frustrating for an author of a customization to have everything wrong with it listed instead of a cycle of submitting, rejecting, fixing. Even if we didn't list everything in one go, it would still take a lot of time to review a mod in this manner.

The only way I can see the process speeding up is by automating a lot more.
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Sarke

Quote from: SleePy on March 15, 2007, 11:39:27 PM
Quote from: Sarke on March 15, 2007, 07:13:21 PM
What other than improved guidelines is being done?  Let's face it, that's not exactly a universal solution.   

If mod makers understand more what we are looking for to keep the code clean, secure, mutli language capable, etc than it will be processed quicker.
So it is a solution to help speed up the process. If mod makers where to do this in the first place mods would be approved much faster.

That's assuming all mod makers read, understand, and follow these guidelines.  In a perfect world perhaps...

Also, not all bugs are caused by deviation from the guidelines.


Quote from: groundup on March 16, 2007, 01:36:41 AM
The only way I can see the process speeding up is by automating a lot more.

So is that a 'no' to the beta testing idea?

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