Paid Mods - Xenforo Verified Designation

[Snog]

I've been following this thread since the first post and I'm still not 100% sure of what caused the idea to come to mind in the first place. But here are my three observations/opinions that may or may not sit well with some people.

1) If an add-on does not do what is says it does, then that is a legitimate problem which should be criticized in a review if it's not addressed by the author.

2) If an add-on does what it says it does but someone feels it should do more, that falls into the suggestion category, not a failure category. It can be mentioned in reviews but shouldn't be the main focus of the review. Perhaps either a post in the add-on thread with the suggestion or sending a PC to the author with the suggestion would be more appropriate.

3) It is totally impossible to check if an add-on is compatible with over 2000 other add-ons that are out there. An author can only do so much to ensure compatibility, but inevitably there will come a time where some problem is discovered. The litmus test is what is done about it when it's found. But, keep in mind not everyone is capable of purchasing another author's add-on to check and duplicate what the problem is and it may actually take some cooperation between the author and the person having a problem with compatibility to locate the problem. That could involve admin access and possibly FTP access. It's up to the person having the problem to determine if they trust the author enough to allow that type of access.

 

[FredC]

The whole thing of clicking buy on xenforo and being forwarded to some shady 3rd world website to complete your purchase just seems wrong and non-professional, i don't think thats how things worked on vb.org.

Not to mention plugins get bought sold and traded by various developers all the time. Very often here when you go to update a plug-in you have no idea who you are even supporting anymore. Many resources have The wrong owners listed because new plugin owners don't update their customers, typically only the prices change. (most commonly free to paid without any Code audits of any type) the whole thing really is a mess and gets more and more convoluted and difficult to keep personally organized all the time. Truthfully it's often difficult to feel like you're not being taken for a ride. More than one occasion I have bought that same plug-in simply because the original author sold it to a different developer and I missed any subsequent announcement's.

 

[DieselMinded]

I understand the conflict with other add ons issues that can be addressed simply by placing a disclaimer that the add-on has been verified with default xf and conflicts with other add ons/styles is a possibility and maybe list the known conflicts as people report them and the discussion thread could include work arounds.

Having a Mod of the Week program here on this site would not only allow the best mods to rise to the top but would increase participation on this site , people may be coming just to vote but thats better than nothing.

Not to mention the developer sites that are linking to the vote thread to get votes would increase traffic

 

[Snog]

I understand the conflict with other add ons issues that can be addressed simply by placing a disclaimer that the add-on has been verified with default xf and conflicts with other add ons/styles is a possibility and maybe list the known conflicts as people report them and the discussion thread could include work arounds.

I would think this is understood across all add-ons and doesn't need to be stated in a disclaimer. Developers work with a default XF install, not an install with a ton of other add-ons. Though personally I do work with a bunch of styles, but even then a style comes up from time to time that I need to adjust for. As I said there is no way to know if there's a compatibility problem unless someone mentions it.

 

[Alpha1]

Ipb 's add ons and styles market is no bigger than Xenforo 's, and they do this. All add ons and styles, free or paid, when being submited they are checked by their Marketplace Moderators before being shown for the public.

Burning Board does the same as IPB. They check the code of all new addons before they allow it on their marketplace. This prevents addons with the secret callbacks or serious exploits. It increase the overall value and trustworthiness of the IPB & BB marketplaces.

Its not a full audit, but having the code read by a developer does prevent a lot of problems.

 

[Snog]

Its not a full audit, but having the code read by a developer does prevent a lot of problems.

You really think they are reading the code for all the add-ons? I don't. At most they are installing it and checking for errors, and/or doing a search for known exploits. That doesn't stop errors from happening on other sites or guarantee safety from an unknown exploit.

And reading the comments on some of the IPB and BB add-ons, they are not immune from problems like errors, not working as described or hanging during install. So, that throws the code review process helping in those matters right out the window.

I've also checked both IPB and BB for the procedure or instructions on submitting a new add-on/plugin but I've come up empty handed.

 

[sbj]

I find it highly counterproductive to have XF audit the code.
Imagine all the updates an addon gets, for every update there must be a check. For all addons. It would slow down everything. Customers would have to wait. And XF team wouldn't have the time anyway.


But I would want some kind of a forced "report" system.

Every 3 months all paid addons must update their status. Like they have to state "known bugs: none". And if they don't update their status, they get additional 3 months expiry date. So if there is no status update after 6 month, the resource gets deleted automatically from the resource manager. And if this kind of behaviour happens 3-5 times, the developer is banned from the resource manager.

This would help customers in knowing that every paid addon's status is updated recently. So it makes it trustworthy.
These reports should be kept in a new tab in the resource manager:
And those reports should have a "This report is not true" button. So users can use this button to make XF team notice about the situation. And when the numbers are high for a report, the XF team intervenes.

This is a good system, cause XF team doesn't have to do anything. It forces the developer and the users to take care of each other. And if a developer disappears, and leaves his addon just like that, he gets punished by that behaviour, cause the resource will be deleted and he can get a ban from the RM.
If he states untrue status updates, the users will notice XF about this. And then the XF team needs to look in that situation.
And if the developer makes regularly his reports, then all is good.

 

[Snog]

And those reports should have a "This report is not true" button. So users can use this button to make XF team notice about the situation. And when the numbers are high for a report, the XF team intervenes.

My personal opinion is the button would be abused. Perhaps a bug is found the day after the update is done and someone would use it then, or they would just click it to click it, or perhaps a developer isn't personally liked by some people and they all click it to discredit the developer.

 

[Alpha1]

You really think they are reading the code for all the add-ons?

Yes, they explained their method on TAZ. They read the code and are used to doing so fairly swift. They do not see it as very time consuming and find it well worth the effort. When they find problems they address this with the developer.
I think you may be confusing a quick review with an audit. They are only reading through the code quickly to find obvious problems. As mentioned its not an audit. Its by no means bullet proof.

 

[sbj]

My personal opinion is the button would be abused. Perhaps a bug is found the day after the update is done and someone would use it then, or they would just click it to click it, or perhaps a developer isn't personally liked by some people and they all click it to discredit the developer.

There is actually a report button for posts. Does it get abused? You could make the same arguement for it, why do have it then?

And the "status update report" is not an addon update. Both will be mostly in different times. It is very unlikely that some bug is found 1 day after the status update of an addon.

Also the "discredit the developer" arguement is not valid. XF already allows reviews for addons. So people could easily use that feature to discredit. But I don't see much abusing of that.
And also, XF devs are smart enough to implement a "spam system" to detect easily those people who are abusing the system.

 

[Snog]

There is actually a report button for posts. Does it get abused? You could make the same arguement for it, why do have it then?

And the "status update report" is not an addon update. Both will be mostly in different times. It is very unlikely that some bug is found 1 day after the status update of an addon.

Also the "discredit the developer" arguement is not valid. XF already allows reviews for addons. So people could easily use that feature to discredit. But I don't see much abusing of that.
And also, XF devs are smart enough to implement a "spam system" to detect easily those people who are abusing the system.

You could be right.

I'm not sure how well it would go over with the people that have 50 to 100 add-ons and having to remember to post a notice saying it still works and no bugs present. I would think the absence of a bug report since the last update would serve the same purpose.

As it is now, XF is already patrolling add-ons and if a developer hasn't been online in X amount of time, their add-ons are deleted.

 

[TPerry]

Ipb 's add ons and styles market is no bigger than Xenforo 's, and they do this. All add ons and styles, free or paid, when being submited they are checked by their Marketplace Moderators before being shown for the public.

And ones that are no longer working with the current version are left up for sale and when comments are made about them not working the comment gets deleted (and yes, I've experienced this).

 

[sbj]

I'm not sure how well it would go over with the people that have 50 to 100 add-ons and having to remember to post a notice saying it still works and no bugs present.

Obviously an alert should be present, reminding devs to status update addon x. The alerts could be a recurring one.

I would think the absence of a bug report since the last update would serve the same purpose.

But an update could be a new feature, or a cleanup of some code, or some tweak, or a resolved bug. There are some sorts of updates. They are not necessarily connected to bugs. So if there is an update for instance, would it automatically mean the bug is solved?

The point is, overall devs have almost 100% freedom, with no consequences. There needs to be a punishment. I think the biggest problem around here is that a lot of devs just go off for a big amount of time or ignore things. To detect those behaviour an official report system would help a lot, else you need to dig it in the threads and read every comment. To make the life of XF team easier it would be better I guess this way.
And like I said, there needs to be a punishment for black sheeps. Nothing is worse then that someone gets your money, promises 1 year of support and disappears after 2 months.

As it is now, XF is already patrolling add-ons and if a developer hasn't been online in X amount of time, their add-ons are deleted.

Is it? I didn't notice. I thought they get labeled as "unmaintained".

 

[Snog]

Is it? I didn't notice. I thought they get labeled as "unmaintained"

You are correct. It's a flag that should alert everyone there's no support for it.

 

[sbj]

You are correct. It's a flag that should alert everyone there's no support for it.

I think that is a good flag for free addons, and if I am not mistaken, that label only is applied after 1 whole year. But paid addons should have more strict rules to follow.
Firstly, it is 1 year and secondly it gets just an unmaintained label. Still, the dev doesn't get punished at all. I can release an addon now, grab the cash and only after 1 year that addon would be labeled as unmaintained. But the money is gone and the dev can come back later and do as if nothing happened.
It went that bad, that XF had to disallow crowdfunding cause the devs disappeared or didn't do as they promised. The latest related thing to this was that stuff about XenReviews.

 

[Snog]

I can release an addon now, grab the cash and only after 1 year that addon would be labeled as unmaintained. But the money is gone and the dev can come back later and do as if nothing happened.

Sorry for only quoting this part but there is one point I would like to bring up to dispel a myth.

Most add-on developers aren't rolling in money from the sales they make. The amount of money made doing this is much smaller than most people think. Few add-on developers make a living creating add-ons. So taking the money and running isn't like someone has robbed a bank and gotten away with a windfall of cash.

I realize it is painful to lose $20 to $50 for some people, but it's not likely that the person would get away with thousands before it became obvious that something was wrong.

 

[sbj]

Most add-on developers aren't rolling in money from the sales they make.

I didn't want to imply that this is the case.
I was just stating, that there is in my opinion not enough protection for users. It doesn't matter if the dev makes thousands or just some pennies.
He has to deliver a product in return to the money he asks. That's it. And if he doesn't, I don't see much punishment for that.
Not that I want that devs get punished, but it should make them to change their behaviour.

 

[Sadik B]

One thing people should understand is that in any marketplace, like life in general, there will be people who are unscrupulous. That is true for developers as well as customers. These people will try to take undue advantage irrespective of what rules there are or aren't. It is always wrong to generalize, like I see some people do here.

At the end of the day, it is upto the xenforo staff if they think something is necessary to be done. At the moment, I think it is difficult for them to be actively involved in the addon process. They can be more proactive though, taking action on complaints, and requiring addon authors to update the status of their addons every X months etc.

The point is, even if not true, perceptions matter. If the perception that XenForo addons are unreliable or untrustworthy gets wide traction, it will hurt xenforo sales and the brand name, something which none of us want.

 

[Alpha1]

They can be more proactive though, taking action on complaints, and requiring addon authors to update the status of their addons every X months etc.

Excellent points. Though the only point of updating simple addons is checking compatibility with the latest xf version.

 

[Snog]

Excellent points. Though the only point of updating simple addons is checking compatibility with the latest xf version.

I can tell you without a doubt that in some cases compatibility with the current version most likely will not happen. Especially when XF goes to version 2.0. Any add-ons for that will most likely not be compatible with prior XF versions. So, that should not remove an add-on from availability. Some people will continue to use the 1.x series.

So long as it still works with the Compatible XF Versions listed in the add-on, it should not be removed.

And if there's no Compatible XF Version listed in the add-on, I think at this point it would be safe to say it's not compatible with the current version because that list was implemented quite a while ago. Or, the author doesn't care enough to let people know what versions their add-on works with.