I don't know that it's a lack of interest or XF 2 itself. It may be that there are over 2000 add-ons alone for XenForo and many of those fill a very specific niche. Coders may feel that there's already an add-on that exists and either they don't feel they could improve on it or they don't want to compete with the existing add-ons.
In many cases, there's no point in reinventing the wheel. So it's a natural slow down that happens as add-ons are created.
There are 2000 addons, and believe me when I say that I went through all 180 pages of RM (I bookmarked 480 resources). And nearly half of them are from time of 1.0 to 1.2 and are outdated.
That means you have to reinvent addons in order to be able to use them in the newer release 1.3, 1.4, 1.5. But this is not the case. So the oppositive should have been the case. There shouldn't be a slow down.
Also the numbers don't back up the theory of "natural slow down" as it doesn't seem to be that the market looks like saturated.
If you look at the
https://xenforo.com/community/forums/resource-and-add-on-requests.68/page-70 forum on page 70, you will see that the dates show you 2014 May.
So half of the requests were made before this time, the other half after May.
And XF 1.3 came out in 2014 March.
This means half of the requests were made for 1.0-1.2.
And the other half of the requests for 1.3-1.5.
So the demand stayed pretty equal. There is no saturation, as people kept asking for addons at the rate they asked before the newer versions of XF. But while the demand stayed the same, the developments didn't stay the same. It declined drastically. As you can clearly see from RM, most popular addons are developed around 2013.
Exactly... BTW
@sbj. Not all add-ons require updates constantly.
XenMoods is a classic example. Other than a few minor CSS issues (which mainly have to do with after market styles) it still works.
Sure, but I was more talking about new developments rather than updates. And I can clearly see that in past the development of addons was much bigger than it is the last 2-3 years.
So, explain to me why an add-on that does what it says it should on the tin be updated when there is no need? There are many add-ons like that. If they aren't going to be expanded by the developer, and they still work with no apparent bugs or security holes - why should they update it just to satisfy someones fixation on dates?
Ahh, now I see the problem. You think I based my sentence on the update-date. No, you misinterpret what I said. I haven't looked at the update-dates at all. I looked at the creation-dates.
When I said:
If someone wants to know the most popular free downloads, you just look at the raw download numbers. There you can see the most popular ones. And how many addons appear from the last 2-3 years, and how many from earlier?
I was looking at the creation dates, not when they got updated the last time. Else it makes no sense and doesn't deliver you the correct information. I think Snog also looked at the wrong dates, which makes his comment more meaningful now. Ahhh.
And a lot of people don't rate/review stuff they download. I have to admit that I'm frequently in with that crowd.
But this "a lot of people" is always around, no matter the time. They were around in 2010 and they are around in 2016. This behaviour was around all the time, it is not a new kind of behavioural flow. In the past there were also many people who didn't rate, but yet again there are a lot of ratings from that time. Today are many who don't rate, too. But we don't have much ratings at all. To sum it up, you see the decline.
As someone who has released a decent number of add-ons/resources/guides, to not even get a like/thanks from those who use them, never mind a rating and review, and the only time you ever hear from someone using the resource is when they have a complaint or problem, is disheartening and makes one question why bother doing it in the first place.
I feel with you and with all devs, and you guys deserve much respect.
But honestly, this part is basically saying that the RM lacks some functionality. I know when you wrote this you didn't think about the RM, and you won't criticize the RM, but if we are trying to be objective for a sec, what you and other devs experience is due to RM's lack of functionality.
It should be the RM's priority to get ratings/reviews/likes out of people who use it. If it can't, it fails its purpose. And more importantly if it is only used to give negative ratings, than there is completely something wrong with the functionality of the review system. So while in general people are too lazy and ungrateful to leave reviews (myself included), this could be compensated with a good review system, where it kind of solves this problem.
So from a resource author's perspective, it's a two way street.
If there is a perception that your time and effort is wasted and the community doesn't appreciate your efforts, quite frankly why bother?
I think in general RM's reviews are not a good indicator of how someone is appreciated. I think the only reliable source is the number of sales you had. And this number is only known by you. That should give you the right impression if you are appreciated or not, and in your case I think it is safe to say that you are.
:facepalm:
