JED team room for improvement?

[shakur1911]

Hi all,

Being part of the Joomla! developers community since 2006 I have seen the framework advance pretty well through the years and despite the backward compatibility inconsistencies I really think that the framework development is on the right track. Especially with the adoption of jQuery and Bootstrap.

On the other hand, I believe there is much room for improvement on the way JED and its team works. Could someone outline the improvements made since 2006 or what are the TODOs towards this direction? I remember discussing improvements on the JED extension since 2011, and apart from some design changes and minor algorithm modification the situation didn't change much. I know that you plan to release a new extension before 2015 but why is it taking so long? Is that enough?

Do you really think that the JED team has an "all together" mentality towards developers or is it more "us against them"? How constructive do you think that statements like " Submitting a ticket often delays approval time." are? Can someone give a clear answer on where the heck pending approval extensions go after they are marked with errors? Is it a secret? Why can't I delete my own extension? and many other practical issues.

Have you ever performed any survey on how the developers feel about how they are treated from the team? Do you even care? Do you think happier developers can make Joomla a better framework? Being skeptical towards new submissions means you are unsure about how efficient your evaluation processes is.

How efficient is the JED team? Why is it taking so long to evaluate extensions? What have you done to become more efficient? Apart from the JEDChecker tool do you use any other automation tools that will save you time and improve extensions' quality? How do you train the developers to avoid common errors?

"We are volunteers" is not the answer to all the questions above, I am afraid. I remember back in 2011 when I volunteered to join the team nobody ever assigned me a single task. It felt like a very close community where you have to be an insider to be assigned some real tasks, and to become an insider you need to know people. If you don't trust new members how can you become more efficient? If you don't want to add new members why don't you hire your own people and make the developers of paid extensions pay a small fee to cover their salary?

I know that there are lot of questions, I know I won't get an answer to all of them but I still try to be constructive, I still want to believe that JED team will eventually realize that there is room for improvement and that we are on the same side.

[itoctopus]

This is very constructive criticism. The JED mentality must be changed to a more relaxed mindset.

I think the problem at the moment that there is not enough staff handling the JED. I have suggested, some months ago, a non-refundable fee of $20 for submitting a JED extension (similar to the fees on Google Play). This fee will help offset the administrative charges that are associated with the JED.

We submitted a free extension back in May of last year, but we haven't heard anything back and we're not even able to login to check its status. It was very demotivating.

[digitalmediaguy]

My goodness it's TERRIBLE...

I've been waiting in the dark for over a month for my extension to get approved... I asked a question and week(s) go by with nothing. It's incredibly hard to work on something for months only to have to wait months for it even to be included in the JED.

There is some comment that if you bump you'll be put at the bottom of the queue... What about if someone didn't get a reply for days and received more information they wanted to post like I did? We get pushed to the back of the queue despite the fact that we waited over a month to get to the front of the queue for approval anyhow?!?

IT'S TERRIBLE... THE WORST APPROVAL PROCESS WE'VE GONE THROUGH YET :-/

[alikon]

Please don't forget that the JED is going under a new Joomla 3.x component to manage JED listings

http://community.joomla.org/blogs/leade ... gress.html

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=262&t=837492

[shakur1911]

@alikon thank you for taking the time to answer. At least someone from the team posted a line.

Its quite sad to see no response from a team member on the very simple questions addressed above. Not a single "we are already aware of the team weaknesses and we are working on them."

I really hope changing the JED component will magically fix all the issues but the fact that you don't even bother to openly discuss with us developers the apparent issues with the JED team makes me feel the opposite.

Anyhow, I really hope that something is going to change pretty soon before is too late (http://w3techs.com/technologies/history ... gement/all). The usage percentage and market share continues to drop since 2013, while competitors have increased their percentage (or remained stable).

Keep a more friendly attitude towards developers, they give live to Joomla, increase the standards of extensions by helping us develop better extensions and not punishing us with long waiting times.

Again thanks for taking the time to post.

[alikon]

I really hope changing the JED component will magically fix all the issues but the fact that you don't even bother to openly discuss with us developers the apparent issues with the JED team makes me feel the opposite.

i'm afraid that you miss this http://community.joomla.org/blogs/leade ... posal.html was published on Wednesday, 28 August 2013

but to be realistic i'm hoping the new software fix a quite good number of issues,
freeing a lot of time for the team members so they can use this time for a more fast feedback

[digitalmediaguy]

Well this news is somewhat refreshing to me... Thanks for pointing that out! I must have hit them on launch month or something because it's been one of the most frustrating processed we've gone through. Again, it's nice to see that this has already been thought about and a fix is being implemented... But it still doesn't help us poor joomla extension developers lost in the limbo :-/

I am really hoping someone at least has the time to get back to me about the status of our submissions (30 days later)

PS. I PM'ed you last night because I figured you might know one of the guys and could possibly point me in the right direction.

[Tessa Mero]

Hi Shakur,

This is a great thread post and you raised really good questions. I'm one of the JED team members, and I never open the Joomla Forum posts here, although I should find some time to. Whenever I find free time, I try to use it for JED tickets or listings.

The queue honestly moves about 10 times faster than the time I put into it, which is difficult, but I am doing my best to put more time into it.

With the new JED system being automated and the release will be sooner than later, there will be no more "waiting".

The amount of JED tickets is getting a bit wild and we are spending more time getting through tickets rather than listings, so hoping people are aware of that.

I understand and respect developers and I am totally on your side when it comes to this whole process and lack of volunteers.

Alright, back to JED tickets I go! Listings will be early next week! Maybe I'll put extra work for the JED listings next week. :-)


Warm Regards,


Tessa
JED Listing Editor

[shakur1911]

Hello Tessa,

Thank you for finding the time to post here!
I totally understand what you are saying, I have carefully read the requirements document for the new JED extension and reads like it addresses (or should address) most of the current weaknesses of the system.

Hopefully this will allow JED editors to regain an "all together" (including developers mentality. If thats not enough, we should consider the paid editors approach: for each paid extension the developer should pay a non-refundable small fee or yearly subscription. This will not only give motivation to JED editors to improve but also turn non-profitable, paid extensions to free extensions.

Keep up with the good job and pass by if you wish to discuss something

[Tessa Mero]

No problem Shakur. Glad you took a look at the document. We put a significant amount of time redoing the entire process of the JED to make it better for all of us. :-)

Have a wonderful day!