The Joomla! Forum ™

Discuss the blog post http://community.joomla.org/blogs/leade ... eanup.html here.

_________________
JED Team Manager
This is an object-oriented system. If we change anything, the users object.
Unsolicited forum PM's get binned. Please use the forum, Help Desk or email me.

I totally agree old (2+ years) reviews are empty of meaning
in the meantime the extensions evolved

_________________
Nicola Galgano - Global Moderator
my knowledge is know to not know - www.alikonweb.it
www.joomladdons.eu - joomla free open source addons

Good luck with that, hope it is not too much of a workload and worth the effort.

At first thought it makes sense to clean up very old votes/reviews, but then again you could argue that even a week old review/vote is outdated as there could have been a new release of an extension few days back, that had a welth of new features and multiple important bugfixes.

Onwards a solution to that could be to refresh the review/voting system with a connection between the version numbers that the developer enter and the review/votes a user can give. Connect those and you can have a historical view of an extensions improvement over time, and yet only present recent and actual votes as a default.

Keep up the good work of maintaining this valuable resource

_________________
Ole Bang Ottosen
Kommerciel Support, Migrering og Kurser i joomla 2.5 www.ot2sen.dk
Dansk Joomla! support websted - www.joomla.dk

Very positive to see the new JED Manager getting things moving again

I know i am just one of many 3rd parties that really has been looking forward to seing things move.

_________________
http://www.redcomponent.com/ - redSHOP, redEVENT, redMEMBER, redBOOKING, redFORM, redLIST, redCOMPETITION + other Joomla Extensions.
http://redweb.dk - Joomla Webdesign & Udvikling
redHOST.dk - 100% Joomla Webhotel - Dansk support med Joomla viden!

On the other hand Ole, you could argue (and I would) that having older reviews going back several years stand as testament to a developer's commitment to their product. I see my many historic reviews as a badge of honour and will be very sad to see them go.

_________________
http://www.jomres.net THE online hotel booking and reservation system for Joomla

Perhaps we could keep the older reviews, but not count them when scoring an extension?

_________________
http://www.jomres.net THE online hotel booking and reservation system for Joomla

We agree Vince, I just didnt make it as clear as you did

Whether they are 1 week or 3 years doesnt matter. All are valid. Show historic, devotion and hopefully improvement over time.
So I would also like to see review/votes from any time stick, and just let the most recent version count in the current score.

The connection to version I believe would be helpful to users as well as developers.

_________________
Ole Bang Ottosen
Kommerciel Support, Migrering og Kurser i joomla 2.5 www.ot2sen.dk
Dansk Joomla! support websted - www.joomla.dk

I also agree that completely remove old votes / reviews is not completely fair.

Good reviews throughout the history of an extension is a clear indicator of a good developer, and that is more important for me that the votes about the current release only.

Maybe we can maintain all votes, but assign them to the release which was current at the moment the vote was given? We will end up with an average votes table:

Release - Avg. vote
1.0 : 4
1.1 : 3.8
1.2 : 4.5
2.0 : 4
...

_________________
Francesco Abeni
GiBiLogic Extensions for Joomla
http://extensions.gibilogic.com

Not sure how helpful that would be, I'd need to see it in action first, depending on what was proposed. I'll give you an example.

Last week I released a new version that improved how the language handling was done, it meant I was able to add new functionality including an inline translator. Because the system's so big functionality that worked for me needed to be broken down into smaller, more manageable parts because other people's machines were slower. This meant actually releasing 3 minor versions after until everything was working perfectly (and I have another version in the works that I want to release soon that improves things even more).

All of these releases came within a period of about 5 days.

The Major release was a good release, the minor releases were simply our way fine tuning the system in response to feedback. Would tying reviews to versions impact our scores positively or negatively? Of course, it'd be impossible to say at this moment in time, but if it did, then naturally we might be reluctant to produce as many versions in the future if we thought it would affect our JED score negatively?

_________________
http://www.jomres.net THE online hotel booking and reservation system for Joomla

Thats a great start. Its should be cleaned up.
Even, 2 year timeframe is quite longer. Should be around a year.

Calculating popular extension need some enhancement. Its depends upon hits, it sholuld be equal to (clicks on download button).

Thanks
Shyam

_________________
http://www.jpayplans.com

One thing I believe all developers agree on is that votes without reviews need to be removed.

I know for a fact that Jomres has at least one 1 star/negative vote which it was given whilst I was an editor and I refused to remove because it was wrong to do so. It was a troll/negative vote from a non-customer but it's screwed my score for years as a result.

_________________
http://www.jomres.net THE online hotel booking and reservation system for Joomla

One thing a colleague of mine suggested, and it's a good idea.

Why don't we adopt Ebay's scoring method? We've got people in Ebay in the form of Louis and others, so it's not a stretch to ask them to ask Ebay how their mechanism works and even if we can't copy their mechanism exactly for trade secret reasons surely they're best placed to recommend an appropriate algorithm?



[Edit] Thanks Aladar Barthi for that idea.

_________________
http://www.jomres.net THE online hotel booking and reservation system for Joomla

Hi,

Just a guess:

Instead of nifty algorithms, please consider to go for a +1 or like approach.
That would require to transform all 5-stars into likes, dropping all below.
Likes w/o reviews are not allowed, while reviews w/o likes are.

By that, younger extensions cannot pass mature ones that quickly and its a more modern approach.

Also a 2-column layout would be great, so new extension don't get out of radar that quickly.

Regards,
Markus

Hi,

(before reading following sentences, you should know, my view on this issue is not objective, it is strong subjective - I think I don't need to explain why? :-) )

One of the most valuable SEO indicator for e.g. Google is a history of the site and the stability of the links on the site.

I worked hard for five years to produce Joomla! extensions and they are somehow rated on JED. Now the history (we can call the rating as some kind of history reputation for an extension) will be removed - in my case all 3 years of the history will be lost (some developer's history is even longer).

In case one of the rating criteria is count of ratings, this will be discriminative for established developers :-( (of course, you can say new developers are discriminated for now. So the question is: who should be in advantage - new or established? Not sure, but as a new member of JED I didn't never think about making new start (restart) for everyone - because you will never find the time (2 or 3 years back), you will never find the period (delete history all 2 or 5 years).

Deleting means, you will discriminate and dishonor established developers. I think this can be a problem for some of them.

Backward compatibility in Joomla!, removing history of established developers on JED (history is very valuable mark of quality for users who search an extension), etc. - maybe this is too much and established and recognized developers will skip their work or move to other project, or etc. :-( :-(

As I wrote, a subjective view, but I think, there are more developers like me with a history. And such action (restart) can be very problematic :-(

Jan

_________________
- Phoca Gallery - simple image gallery with slideshow - http://www.phoca.cz/phocagallery/
- Phoca Restaurant Menu - http://www.phoca.cz/restaurantmenudemo/

...if it's about cleaning the database, extensions with for example no updates for 2 years can also be removed (including their reviews).

this would tell you on the jed

_________________
HU2HY- Poor questions = Poor answer
Un requested Help PM's will be added to the foe list and possibly just deleted
{Community.Connect Administrator }{ Showcase & Security Moderator}

We're aware of that, thanks, but it's missing the point.

Jomres is a niche product. Over the six years it's been listed on the JED I've had to work very hard for every one of the 103 votes it's garnered. Products like Akeeba, whilst relatively young in comparison have a 1000+ reviews because they appeal to a broader number of users. Losing reviews will hurt them a lot less than they'd hurt somebody like me.

_________________
http://www.jomres.net THE online hotel booking and reservation system for Joomla

just pointing out an option based on the statement.
seems there will be some winners and losers all round.

_________________
HU2HY- Poor questions = Poor answer
Un requested Help PM's will be added to the foe list and possibly just deleted
{Community.Connect Administrator }{ Showcase & Security Moderator}

It seems that whilst everybody agrees that removing votes with no reviews is a good idea (pretty much everybody's been asking for that since forever) all the developers are saying "Hang on, the reviews we've worked for are still valid, please don't remove them."

_________________
http://www.jomres.net THE online hotel booking and reservation system for Joomla

Like everyone, I definitely agree that removing votes without reviews is great. Those haven't been allowed now for almost 2 years and they didn't even give any context to developers or users at that time anyways, so loosing them is no loss.

As for the older reviews themselves, I'm more concerned about those for the reasons above and also from a user's standpoint. What happens for the user's who's votes are deleted? Will they even know that their opinion has been removed? Can they leave a new review again? Can a developer, if they know who once left a review was (it's public) contact them (under the guidelines of the JED) to ask them to leave an updated review?

My suggestion would be to have a rolling vote tally system. Basically, the 'vote' score is simply calculated on all votes from today - 2 years. That will make it so we don't need this 'culling' periodically as the system will always be up to date, but will leave old reviews in for context. All reviews that are 2 years+ from 'today' can have a different background color or moniker or something. These 2 things should be easily implementable (a minor tweak to a SQL query and a CSS class for coloring), so not talking anything crazy here. Of course, everything is more difficult to do than said

The reasoning for keeping old reviews is that they still have valuable information as to whether a developer supports their users and extension. While the version reviewed is certainly (hopefully!) out of date, the review still shows a trend over time that shouldn't simply be deleted and may talk about things other than the extension; mainly, support. The end-user reading those reviews can decide their value if they want to page back that far. For commercial extensions, especially, this is important as people don't want to hand out their money without doing their research first.

I'm excited to hear about a possible overhaul, but I think the above is a good transitional measure that, again, shouldn't be too difficult.

Thanks!
Alex

_________________
Alex Andreae | SourceCoast Web Development
Developers of JFBConnect - The easy Facebook integration suite that's used on the JED!
http://www.sourcecoast.com/ | http://www.sourcecoast.com/joomla-facebook/

Hi,

while I deeply welcome a JED overhaul, finally there are movements, I checked what it would mean to remove 2-year-old reviews in the category my extension is in. It seems most winners are those that are brand new or didn't get many reviews in the past 2 years. They will be lightweight and can easily pass mature but more active extensions in the ranking. For most active extension developers in my category, it will be a catastrophy. Me included.

Those who are working constantly for the people are literally the loosers. Why? For example in my case, 400 reviews from approx 600 will get lost. Since 1.5 years (out of 3.5) the extension receives frequent down votes, with a clear pattern: 1 down vote per review page (or every 20th review) and smelly contents. I am not too much into conspiracy, but when it starts from out of nowhere and never stops though you are doing everything to make people happy, you start to wonder. It makes you at least raise your eyebrows.

For most of them, I cannot determine their counterparts in our database, so I ask the team to contact each other. But in like 90% of all cases the reviewers don't get in touch with me.

However, recently, there was a support request where I asked in my report that the guy contacts me, please. It never happened. By accident, I found the reviewer and it turned out that it had nothing to do with the extension and fixed it for him. I asked him if the team ever asked him to contact me and he said that it never happened.

Since you don't get any reply and you are not allowed to ask about the state of your report, I am now really concerned how many reported false neg. reviews didn't receive no attention, simply because the JED team was overloaded.

I accepted these constant slow-pace down votes in the past, because I rather tend to find the mistake on my side rather than on others and simply by doing my job, the extension got its attention it deserved. So I had no problem with the down votes and was not too much after that they get removed.

But the announced removal of 2-year-old reviews will now lead to that all these neg. ratings from the last 1.5 years will affect the overall rating of my extension and my extension might now be found in the last half of its category list.

And this although the support and the extension got improved a lot and is one of the most demanded in its category. There is even free professional support for the free version for a while.

Many of the improvements happened _due_ to the reviews that now shall be removed, and with a removal like this, the improved extension gets punished for getting improved. How can a potential user know about how serious I take me job then? I don't really get the point of this.

I am sure that consequences like these will happen across the entire jed and many other extension developers might feel dishonored and facing a criticial situation due to massive re-ordering in each category. A 2-year removal might lead to irritations that affects 1000s of extension developer and the JED editors as well, because there will be a massive amount of complaints (not everybody is aware of what is coming).

Therefore, I am suggesting that it is fair for everybody to implement a "like"/"+1" system into the new jed system if possible.

I am repeating myself in this thread, but situations like the above won't happen in long-term if it would be like this:

- Implementing the "like" approach into the JED

- 5-stars will be turned into "likes", all below will be dropped

- "likes" without reviews are not allowed but reviews without likes

- The listing pages are 2-column layouts, so extensions don't get out of radar that quickly

By the above, young extensions cannot easily bypass active mature extensions and there is also nothing you can downrate no more, while people still can leave not-so-good reviews if an extension doesn't work for them.

I hope my words here don't read like I am mad, I am just concerned a little for what to come and I am thankful that the JED editors gonna improve the directory and taking the necessary steps.

Regards,
Markus

I agree that old votes should not count in the score. Software evolves over time. That said, losing old reviews is unfair. It suddenly makes it indifferent if you were working 16 hour days (most of them unpaid) for six years trying to provide top quality for your users or if you just started out 2 years ago. A company which was offering subpar quality up to two and half years ago and a company which has been consistently offering top quality to their users are now treated the same.

Why not leave the old reviews alone without counting them towards the rating? These reviews were my "payment" for offering countless hours to provide free of charge support to the detriment of my sleep and private time. Taking them away makes me feel like I've been wasting my time all those years. This is not the mood you want to put a developer. It's the kind of mood that makes me want to stop providing anything for free. If my good rating is going to be reset every 2 years then why not make some money in the process?

_________________
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Akeeba Backup Lead Developer
http://www.akeebabackup.com - http://www.dionysopoulos.me

your extensions are so valuable that even if all reviews and votes are erased, it takes some days to grow at the same level that before, but i can understand your point of view

_________________
Nicola Galgano - Global Moderator
my knowledge is know to not know - www.alikonweb.it
www.joomladdons.eu - joomla free open source addons

Yes, my extensions are popular and even after the cleanup I will have something like 18 pages full of mostly 5-star reviews (and possibly many more reviews to come). But it's still disappointing to see the old reviews go away. I would really like to have them available somewhere, e.g. an "Old reviews" tab or something like that in the listing. I do agree that old ratings and reviews should not count towards the star rating.

Hopefully the JED leadership will consider those points and do the best thing which is technically feasible.

_________________
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Akeeba Backup Lead Developer
http://www.akeebabackup.com - http://www.dionysopoulos.me

Is there a time frame within a Jed redesign should be implemented? Maybe the deletion should be delayed until it will be clear how the new system will work and look like (keeping old reviews but deleting votes, etc.)

However, with a larger team, I have the feeling the new system will be cool

+1 on using only the new votes for the score
+1 on NOT removing the old reviews

_________________
My extensions - http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/owner/algisinfo

Based on feedback:

On or after October 18, 2012 all votes that do not have a review attached to them will be removed.

On or after October 30, 2012 all votes that are 2+ years old will be removed, reviews will remain but votes will not be factored into the averages.

A new review system will not be implemented until after the 2.5 migration that is currently in process. Right now I don't have any time frame estimates. Soon after the migration we should have a good outline of the new system to share for feedback.

Thanks again for the input.

-Matt

_________________
JED Team Manager
This is an object-oriented system. If we change anything, the users object.
Unsolicited forum PM's get binned. Please use the forum, Help Desk or email me.

Thank you, Matt!

_________________
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Akeeba Backup Lead Developer
http://www.akeebabackup.com - http://www.dionysopoulos.me

thank you for keeping the reviews, much appreciated!

Many thanks for listening Matt.

_________________
http://www.jomres.net THE online hotel booking and reservation system for Joomla