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The JED is a farce

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The JED is a farce

Post by sozzled » Mon Jul 03, 2017 10:22 pm

I'm sorry to say that the Joomla Extensions Directory is a farce; I'm sorry to point the accusing finger at the JED team for failing us as developers and as consumers; I'm sorry to accuse anyone who gives their time voluntarily to the service of the community and not to be able to say thank you, at least, for their service.

This forum category is littered with complaints; this forum category is littered with unanswered topics or questions that are not satisfactorily answered.

Over the past few years, instead of making the JED more reliable for its users, more trustworthy as a source of software distribution, the system is broken.

We have evidence that "tickets" are closed without explanation; evidence of submissions for listing that wait weeks or months without any explanation; evidence of products that should not be listed on the JED remaining listed even after they've being reported several times and from different sources.

There are 20+ people who are associated with the JED team and it's evident that the team's spokesperson—who's (perhaps unfairly) taken the brunt of the criticisms we have levelled against the team—seems powerless to act.

Product reviews are being trashed: it doesn't matter if the reviews are good or bad; any review (good or bad) indicates that some people try to provide feedback to developers. The excuse that's been given—about why the reviews are not published—is that the "automated spam protection system" is filtering out reviews; the "system" cannot differentiate between genuine reviews and "fake" ones.

There are glaring differences between the latest versions shown on JED listings and what's notified via the Joomla update system or on the developers' websites. I conducted a brief survey of a number of the more popular extensions listed on the JED. (Note: I do not use most of these extensions myself. They're listed because I am aware that people (a) often recommend them in the forum and (b) a lot of other people use them themselves):
  • Akeeba Backup: JED (latest version shown) 5.3.3; owner's website (latest version shown) 5.4.0
  • Akeeba Admin Tools: JED 4.1.3; owner's website 4.2.0
  • JEvents: JED 3.4.28; Owner's website 3.4.39
  • JCE Editor: JED 2.6.16; owner's website: 2.6.16
  • Kunena: JED 5.0.7; owner's website 5.0.10
  • Weblinks: JED 3.4; owner's website 3.6.0
I'm sure there are extensions (e.g. JCE Editor) where the JED version matches the version available from the owner's website. I'm surprised that the one official extension (Weblinks) has not been updated to reflect that the latest version is different from that listed on the JED! :o

I'm surprised there's a large difference between the versions shown on the JED and the latest versions available either via the automatic Joomla update procedure or what's available from the owner's website. I'm surprised because these extensions are all from well-respected software developers and, I would have expected, they spend a lot of time preparing the new versions. Part of that preparation, I would have expected, would also involve updating their listings on the JED. Why are the JED listings not being updated? Are we to believe that reputable extension developers have turned their backs on the JED or is it a matter of the system being so hopelessly broken that reputable extension developers cannot use the JED?

I appreciate the work that the one person on the JED team, who almost always shoulders the responsibility for answering on behalf of his team, tries to do. I'm not singling him out for criticism.

The whole JED team is responsible for the mess we're in. The whole team must answer for the disaster ... not just one person (who I am sure means well but seems powerless to influence). If I've written anything incorrect then I'm happy to be corrected. I'm not trying to inflame an already bad situation; I'm simply summarising the situation as I see it.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by jonBuckner1 » Tue Jul 04, 2017 1:36 am

I'm not an extension developer but a weird theme seems to be when an extension developer doesn't understand the process for asking questions they can inadvertently be put to the back of the queue

Seems a bit brutal and unforgiving, especially all they might be doing is trying to get an answer. It's almost like: ask a question and be penalised for it

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by Claudia_A » Tue Jul 04, 2017 9:28 am

I wish I could say that you are wrong, that JED is doing fine, but honestly since the major updates in the past (starting with the Redo in 2014), everything changed so much and not in a good way.

We always kept the versions updated on JED, although we have around 30 major extensions, but we consider it a normal thing to do, and also not to confuse users with different versions on JED and on site. But I guess the reasons why the some extensions are not updated are quite simple:

1. most of the times there are issues on saving due to new fields or new required info that nobody bothered to communicate;
2. lack of incentive to update the version in JED;
3. risking to be unlisted when uploading the new kit, and facing so the choice to either update or be unlisted for a month or two until the tickets are solved;
4. abandoned projects that are no longer maintained.

The forum posts on this topic are starting to seem redundant as well because the main idea is that "OK if you're going to complain about it why don't you become a volunteer and fix stuff?" BUT, it's like in politics - without a majority you can't change anything.

We tried to "help out" and report issues in the new JED back in 2014 and the issues submitted were ignored for one year...There are still a lot of usability issues and plain annoyances in the way the directory is structured that I am sure many first time Joomla! users get scared of.

My major dilemma is that for the last couple of years all the feedback that came from the extension developers was completely neglected, although it was the most genuine, due to the user experience. We always felt that a higher force is deciding and if there was any other idea "against" the system, it was quickly brushed under the rug.

In my opinion the major flaws JED made over the years were:

• in some cases the search function not displaying relevant results;
• TOTAL LACK OF TRANSPARENCY;
• the new category and listing interface (although it had a slight modification, but after a very long period, losing so many potential Joomla! newbies);
• the rating and review system (I posted here viewtopic.php?f=262&t=952213 some details on it);
• developers never felt helped by JED, moreover, each time they raised a concern or topic that came into conflict to JED teams or ideas, they were quickly "scorned" or silenced;
• the feeling of being punished or ignored when bringing new ideas or complaints (based on actual user data), which are undeniably meant to improve the community;
• policies towards developers. We are not bad people. We always try to help the users of our extensions as much as possible, even with the free extensions, but they were some cases were we were blackmailed to provide free tweaks or customizations, or else we'd receive a bad review. In 50% of the cases, JED refused to delete those revenge and blackmail reviews;
• unfriendly user interface! We even tried to get involved in the joomla.com design and joomla.org redesign http://thephpfactory.com/articles/1402- ... joomla-org
This case study was made in order to provide feedback and help the community to bring beneficial changes and not to be haters or slam the people that are investing their free time to maintain the platform whatsoever.

Those reasons were mentioned many times here on the forum, but always overlooked. I noticed for the past couple of years, since the JED team reports began to get published, that such vital points were not discussed and the time is "lost" with trivial concerns.

I hope that Joomla! still can be saved, but the reality strikes hard. Now as we are facing a great loss in users and popularity, we (the Joomla! community) need a significant change in TRANSPARENCY, better decision making, and design. I just hope that at least some of the above mentioned points will be applied, and that our community will be great again!

Since today is the 4th of July, please members, let's MAKE JOOMLA GREAT AGAIN!
Best Regards,
Claudia A.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by brian » Tue Jul 04, 2017 1:54 pm

Regarding the version numbers of extensions - that is the role of the extension developer to edit their listing with the new versions - it is nothing to do with the volunteer members of the JED team
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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by sozzled » Tue Jul 04, 2017 5:05 pm

You've missed the point, Brian. I selected a short list of some of the most popular extensions, from among the most experienced, trusted Joomla extension developers, as an illustration that there are systemic failures within the system as a whole. We could find examples where version numbers match between what's shown on the JED and what's available through the automatic Joomla update service or on the developer's website, sure. The point we're making—the point you may have overlooked—is that the JED "system" is so catastrophically, cumbersomely bureaucratically, systemically ruined that even many of the most experienced Joomla developers have given up on trying to work with it.

Even the guys who are responsible for the one official Joomla extension—Weblinks—haven't used the JED for over a year!

So, while you may claim that keeping one's extension listings requires the voluntary effort of individual extension developers and is not the fault of the JED team—and that's certainly true—when the system is broken, when it's more trouble than it's worth to make that effort, when the system is openly distrusted and the abundance of anecdotal evidence demonstrates a litany of problems (requiring developers to resort to the "ticket process" to rectify the system failure) then, yes, it is the fault of the JED team that created the environment in the first place! The JED is a lottery system; you're taking a gamble that one day it will work and the next day it won't. It's a farce and it's the JED team's fault that these problems continue—that the farce continues—that they continue to wash their hands of their responsibility, that their management processes have failed to address the deep-rooted problems in the system. The problems are not technological; the problems were created by human beings. These are the points we're trying to make; these are the poins that are indefensible and, in the interests of the survival of the JED and the Joomla project as a whole, it's high time that the board of OSM steps in to rid us of the source of everyone's complaint.

Thank you, nonetheless, Brian, for your contribution. Cheers, mate. 8)

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by brian » Tue Jul 04, 2017 5:30 pm

> Even the guys who are responsible for the one official Joomla extension—Weblinks—haven't used the JED for over a year!


there has only been one update in that time if i remember correctly
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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by deleted user » Tue Jul 04, 2017 5:31 pm

The board of OSM is not a dictatorship and does not "step in to rid us of the source of everyone's complaint". So while we may be aware of the issues and we can communicate amongst the project leadership to try and help each other address issues, we are not in a spot to decree "you will change the software powering the JED" or "we are implanting person X as the JED Team Lead".

To be quite frank, the JED team themselves are as frustrated as most users for a plethora of reasons, some of which you do not see because the issues are not related to a public facing aspect of the JED software platform. I would suggest approaching this in a different way than "the current JED team is a colossal failure".

As long as I've been involved with the project, there has always been a distrust amongst the developer community toward the JED. This is nothing new, and to be honest even if the current software and/or philosophical issues get addressed, the same disgruntled audience will find a new set of complaints and continue to proclaim that the JED is flawed.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by sozzled » Tue Jul 04, 2017 6:04 pm

Thank you, Michael. I appreciate your wisdom and insight into such matters.

I also realise that I probably exaggerated earlier when I wrote about a"catastrophic", "cumbersomely bureaucratic" and "systemic failures" in the same sentence and that I was venting my frustrations that the problems we're discussing are not openly admitted by the people who have given us the JED system.

I've read the minutes of the OSM board meetings (and the JED is rarely mentioned within them), I've read the minutes of the JED team meetings and those minutes fail to acknowledge the existence of the problems we've mentioned.

Yes, I accept that everyone's different; I will accept on faith that there is a hard-core cadre of critics of the JED—I am not a member of that group, by the way—and that some people will never be satisfied. What I'm hoping to achieve by engaging in this dialogue is that we all acknowledge and admit our mistakes and try to resolve this problem—this impasse, it seems—between the developer community, the JED team, and ultimately the end-users who are all affected by the matters we're discussing.
  • "tickets" closed without explanation;
  • submissions for extensions to be listed/updated that lie dead for weeks or months without explanation;
  • fraudulent products, that should not be listed on the JED, remain listed even after being reported from different sources;
  • product reviews are trashed; the "automated spam protection system" cannot differentiate between genuine reviews and "fake" ones;
  • distrust in the JED from developers and users alike;
  • perceived lack of transparency, accountability and engagement with the community from the JED team.
I don't want us to cherry-pick any one product, any one issue, from the ones I've mentioned. There are ample individual topics in this forum category that people can choose from to discuss any one of these issues. It's when all of these problems are taken together that I feel it's incumbent upon us to escalate the matter of JED team management as a problem.

As I have often written, I appreciate the efforts of the JED team as a whole but, to use that famous movie quote, "Houston, we have a problem." I should appreciate your guidance, Michael, as well as the input of others, as to how we can approach the matters—focus our efforts on achieving the best outcome for everyone—differently. I'm merely summarising my observations (jaded, perhaps, when viewed through the prism of years of disapointing stories from dissatisfied developers) in the hope that we will move forward together for the benefit of the JED and the Joomla project overall.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by Claudia_A » Wed Jul 05, 2017 9:39 am

Sure the title here "JED is a farce" does NOT reflect our opinion and I think not even sozzled believes that. But unfortunately, all the mentioned TRANSPARENCY issues in here are for real! I can understand the frustration which leads to create such a title, feeling that all developers feedback is being neglected and dismissed.

The mentioned distrust is not because of the platform issues (as software) on JED, but it comes from the lack of TRANSPARENCY and the way our problems are "solved". In my opinion the "Houston, we have a problem" moment passed away in 2014. Now, we already hit the iceberg, and it's quite clear from all the stats that Joomla! lost so many users. This is also very clear for most of the developers, it seems only the JED team is not realizing it and still ignoring the facts. I never understood why the feedback from developers was so heavily neglected, especially since it's a feedback based on the experience of working with thousands of Joomla end-users. In the end, we all put our time and effort into this and it's clear that all involved parties care about the project. We also respect the work of all the other developers and JED team members, it's just that it's quite frustrating that the developer voices are rarely listened to in our Joomla community.

Michael, saying that
"As long as I've been involved with the project, there has always been a distrust amongst the developer community toward the JED. This is nothing new, and to be honest even if the current software and/or philosophical issues get addressed, the same disgruntled audience will find a new set of complaints and continue to proclaim that the JED is flawed."
gets us very demotivated as developer.

In my simple understanding this means that no matter how much we complain of the LACK OF TRANSPARENCY, this issue will never be solved.
Sure, they are always some voices of unhappy people in all communities, but I think, lately, in ours there are way too many, and only the voices of the happy ones are a few.
But we have to find a way to address the issues that harm the growth of this project, we can not embrace a defeatist attitude and give up on the developer community since "there will always be complaints".

Many developers already abandoned their Joomla! projects, and I am sure many Joomla devs are feeling the decrease of interest from the wide public. Perhaps JED is not perceiving this as an issue, hoping that new developers will come along. And I'm sure they will come. But this means no continuity of the projects, discouraging a lot of potential new users, fact which is already dramatically indicated by all stats.
As you know JED is still a central piece in the Joomla! universe, and it would be very good that it remains so.

Having a strong extension site was always a big plus for Joomla!, and lots of people started using Joomla! just because there was a very large pool of extensions you could choose from.
The sooner JED will realize the real issues and find a way to run as a user friendly platform (changes in search, listings and a more common rating) and as a community project (working together with developers and not against them), Joomla! will have a chance not to disappear and become forgotten.

I can only hope that the work we all (users, JED team and developers) put in during the last 10 years, together with our soul and passion will not be a lost cause, and perhaps in a couple of years Joomla! will be again at the top web users choices.
Best Regards,
Claudia A.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by astridx » Wed Jul 05, 2017 11:02 am

Even the guys who are responsible for the one official Joomla extension—Weblinks—haven't used the JED for over a year!
On the subject here I can not contribute experience / opinion. But, because it is mentioned here twice, I wonder where you see that weblinks are not listed with the correct version.

The current stable version is 3.6 (https://github.com/joomla-extensions/weblinks/releases) and the listing displayes version 3.6 (https://extensions.joomla.org/extension ... /weblinks/)
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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by deleted user » Wed Jul 05, 2017 12:43 pm

astridx wrote:On the subject here I can not contribute experience / opinion. But, because it is mentioned here twice, I wonder where you see that weblinks are not listed with the correct version.
I took the extra effort to once again locate the credentials for that JED account to update its listing yesterday. So it is correct that it wasn't updated previously (in part noted by the "last updated" date on the listing).
Claudia_A wrote:In my simple understanding this means that no matter how much we complain of the LACK OF TRANSPARENCY, this issue will never be solved.
The JED is one of those teams that can never operate with full transparency, for a multitude of reasons (site algorithms shouldn't be publicly discussed, specific issues with specific extensions or providers in the listing should be handled through their ticketing/reporting systems preferably, etc.). This isn't to say they should have no transparency at all, but to be fair to them, not everything about the platform is something that should be openly discussed in threads on this forum. I do think they can do better, but I also don't blame them for not wanting to try because they are so openly chastised and questioned about every little thing (in my eyes there is very little if any trust from the community to the JED team in performing their responsibilities). That Realtyna thread is a prime example of that IMO; there are people demanding the extension be delisted yet as someone who isn't involved with the JED or has no interests in what's going on with that particular extension, I cannot find any public information to back their arguments for delisting so I can't fault them for having not unpublished the listing. But people are insisting on questioning the JED's competence simply because they won't take their preferred action on one listing of the nearly 8000 on the site.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by toivo » Wed Jul 05, 2017 1:14 pm

mbabker wrote:I cannot find any public information to back their arguments for delisting
It seems to have been unpublished already:
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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by jonBuckner1 » Wed Jul 05, 2017 1:19 pm

Hi all

At the end of the day, if Extension Developers are feeling disgruntled then isn't it 'bye bye' extension developers?

They shouldn't be expected to like the system unconditionally.

Isn't the bottom line: If it is a negative experience then they will go elsewhere.

On a separate note, I tried to give an extension developer a review but was unable to. I informed the extension developer and he said that it is a known quirk and that I have to create another account.

Being selfish, I didn't want to create a new email address specifically for the JED so he hasn't got my review.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by deleted user » Wed Jul 05, 2017 3:51 pm

Just so it's clear also, I'm not here trying to defend the JED or the Joomla name. But, since I'm in a spot where I see and hear some things that the majority of the public doesn't, I can share some perspective as a semi-neutral third party to all this. The main thing is I honestly don't feel like the JED team is trying to ignore people or not improve the system or address some of the major issues that exist today, but at the same time I don't think the general public is aware that the JED team does have its own internal issues to address related to the platform that makes dealing with the user facing issues (listing management, the review problems, search results, etc.) more complex. I'll let the team members get into details as they choose, but just know that it's not all smooth sailing on the admin side of things right now.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by sozzled » Wed Jul 05, 2017 9:49 pm

I created this topic—with an attention-grabbing headline—in order to draw people's attention to the issues we're faced with. I agree with Claudia that I don't truly believe that the JED product is a farce—but I couldn't think of a better way of getting people to take an interest, to draw attention to the apparent perception, to the way that things appear to be managed—and I admit to using blunt language to generate this discussion.

I can't speak from inside knowledge of the workings of the JED team; I can speak from personal experience of feeling frustrated with the length of time taken by the team to address the issues I've raised with them. On most occasions, my dealings with the JED team members has been productive and usually cordial; on some occasions it's taken several attempts to achieve mutual understanding and resolution of those matters. I also acknowledge (and agree with Michael Babker) that a lot of criticism is unfairly directed towards the JED team. And, while Michael is not directly associated with that team and writes from the perspective of being a semi-neutral observer, the perceived dysfunctionality of the JED team may be something that the OSM board could investigate and seek to remediate.

As developers, extension reviewers, members of the community and consumers alike, we view the vagaries of the "system" as symptomatic of something more troublesome than not being able to submit extensions, review extensions, search for extensions or rectify unreliable information using the JED product interface.

This is a management issue (even though people may only perceive the problems from the viewpoint of the JED "system"). The issues are people issues; the outcomes—to ensure that the voices of developers, of the community and of consumers who engage with the product, are heard and taken on-board—are not being delivered. This is the crux of the matter.

I acknowledge that I intentionally opened this festering sore because various "band-aid" approaches haven't cured the lingering problems. I feel there's a need to undertake surgery; until we collectively acknowledge that need, we're stuck with the bandages. If someone has better ideas where that surgery needs to be undertaken we may then be in a position to heal the body politic.

I also agree that "total transparency" is not necessarily a good idea; some matters are best held in camera. However, (to continue with the medical metaphor) perhaps the best form of disinfectant is a little sunlight, hmm?

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by Claudia_A » Fri Jul 07, 2017 9:51 am

From my understanding, even though the statistics clearly show a significant loss of users in Joomla!, the official point of view is that almost everything is perfect, with only a couple of insignificant issues.

I was not talking about unlisting extensions, I was talking about TRANSPARENCY, as in why some good reviews are not published, although we have proven that they are from real customers, why the JED team's answers provided in the ticket system (not on the forum) are very evasive and not on point, and why exactly the major complaints that almost all developers have are not taken under consideration. We are complaining here about normal things that should be transparent in such a community as Joomla's, not about some site algorithms or internal security proceedings. This is the reason why everything has become so questionable, exactly because of this lack of needed TRANSPARENCY.

I simply cannot believe that almost all developers are some tormented souls, having nothing better to do all day, rather then complaining that some of their good reviews disappeared or why a bad review is still published if the developer proved he was blackmailed to provide some free tweaks or customizations, etc.
Sure we need both good and bad reviews, but they must be fair from a technical point of view and not vindictive.

All actions taken against a developer should be very transparent (so that we also can understand what services we all can improve or provide better), especially to avoid this kind of "paranoia". Blind trust is not enough, since everybody is somehow involved in this business of providing Joomla related services.

It's not about a preferred or single action here. It's about general proceedings in our community. Discouraging the developers so much, a poorly designed and confusing JED directory (towards a new J! user), together with all the other aspects, made the complete offer to a potential Joomla user less attractive than in the past. The stats here are very clear and do not lie. Unfortunately, lately, it seems that JED does not understand that they need to work together with the developers in order for the community to grow again, and not to continue this path of working AGAINST the developers.

If this is the end goal, to be ruled only by certain, and that our feedback as developers does not count at all, then I can only say with deep and profound regret, that there is no wonder of the current situation.

We did not participate in this topic in order to just to be negative and counterproductive or attack the JED team, it's just concerning that we even have to raise this issues at all. All we want is to have a normal functioning community and that we help each other more, so that Joomla! can still be a place where we all make nice things happen.

I'm happy to see that people like Michael or Brian are still showing interest in the Joomla project and we were able to discuss this here with us, it was though very discouraging that none of the official JED team members tried to at least comfort us that they are taking this facts seriously under consideration and that the mentioned issues are acknowledged.
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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by sozzled » Tue Jul 18, 2017 10:01 pm

When I started this discussion a couple of weeks ago (as I wrote at the outset, it was not with the intention of unfairly criticising the team of volunteers who have worked on keeping the JED alive and well) I did so from the perspective of highlighting a number of failures within the JED product and the lack of management oversight to redress them.

I did not expect that any members of the JED team would respond publicly to these criticisms; indeed, I understand that they would have difficulty defending the indefensible.

I had hoped, however, that these criticisms would be taken onboard constructively in order that plans could be developed to address the several matters that people have raised over the past six months or so.

I note that there has been a general lack of enthusiasm from developers to engage with the JED and with the issues that should concern the community. I don't feel that it's necessary to continue to highlight the problems that continually dog the JED—the general silence speaks for itself.

Since the beginning of this month (July 2017) there have been no new extensions added to the JED. That, itself, is a little suprising.

Every week, or so, I look at the Volunteers Portal to see if any meetings have been held to discuss the JED. Again, there's been silence on that front, also.

I doubt that my puny efforts have caused the JED team members to "go to ground" but I'm concerned that the once-active "face" of the team has been missing in action for quite a while.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by toivo » Tue Jul 18, 2017 11:05 pm

One factor explaining the low level of activity is the current holiday period in Europe. Volunteers also need a life.
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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by sozzled » Tue Jul 18, 2017 11:35 pm

@toivo: noted. This also points to another management issue, viz. that the team should have a requisite variety of members who are capable of undertaking the day-to-day maintenance challenges—ensuring that new extensions are published, that tickets are appropriately handled, etc.—during those times when others are off vacationing.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by sozzled » Sat Sep 02, 2017 6:10 am

As developers who are used to the JED system, we all have "issues" with it from time to time: some of those issues are major worrying ones and some of them are insignificantly small. Even so, there's the good old JED ticketing system that usually gets the job done (although sometimes it can take a few interactions before we get our issues addressed). But, as I've written before and I will continue to say this, I take my hat off to the team of volunteers who do their best to reply to the requests for help that we send to them via the ticketing system. The JED team volunteers are just as badly off as we are and they need a good word spoken on their behalf, too.

With any decent help desk system, if your problem can't be resolved at first-line support you would normally expect the problem to be escalated to second-line support without the need have to to learn a different system used by the second-line support staff. You would normally expect first-line support people to have a "direct line" to their second-line support when they can't resolve a "user problem", right?

I want to share an experience that I had a little while ago. I had a small problem with my list of "favourite" extensions attached to my JED user profile and I asked if I could have the "favourites" removed. A simple request. The screenshot below is word-for-word my question and the answer. The only changes I've made have been to obscure the name of the extension I was enquiring about and to obscure the name of the JED team member who replied (and closed my ticket) because I don't want to embarrass that person. I will leave you, the reader, to arrive at your own conclusions. :laugh:
JEDt17839.png
I'm not particularly concerned that my problem wasn't fixed; that's just "situation normal" these days. I just thought we could all use a good laugh. Cheers. :)
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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by darb » Sat Sep 09, 2017 6:53 am

I 100% agree with all you say Claudia_A.

Thanks for you good input on these important issues for 3pds for Joomla and your insights. Transparency is the keyword here.

Part of the problem seems to be that leadership teams don't understand how important the transparency for Joomla community as a whole is. For example the JED project. We don’t have any boss or are employed but we have the relation to the community to care about and respond to. That’s our boss. We try to do things together and agree about what to do.

Be open and discuss these matters to solve them in the best way. People do mistake and its ok but don’t try to put them under the mattress.

We all together learn from mistakes and that’s good for improving not to try to do them again. But if we hide things and not are open and transparent how should we improve?

And thanks sozzled for bring this up and continue to drive the opinion and remind Joomlers about this issues. I don’t always agree with you with all questions but thanks for bringing this up and discuss it for the aim of improving Joomla for all of use. I work a lot with 3pds and know how they feel about this.

There were no transparencies why Joomla people decide to abandon the great Mosets tree? Instead of improve it and went for a new start up customized built directory listing that have to be built from scratch, with people with no experience of building a complex directory like this and didn't have a UX experience dev project mgt approach.

Mr Lee had 10.000 of hours experience and user input to his directory development extension that Joomla used for several years and everybody using it as end-users was happy with it. This decision was a great mistake and could have been avoided if there have been transparency about this important decision and decision process.

So question now is instead in a positive way asking and lead:

What can be done to improve the JED now to solve these issues? Its crucial for Joomla future to live or die.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by darb » Sat Sep 09, 2017 6:57 am

Another thing is the Joomlers portal if we should allow people spaming with "fake" profiles just to making advertising for their services etc..

Example. https://volunteers.joomla.org/joomlers/2228-sizo

I have report these issue and hope someone take care of it.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by H13 » Sat Sep 16, 2017 8:21 pm

Hi,

I'm surprised there's a large difference between the versions shown on the JED and the latest versions available either via the automatic Joomla update procedure or what's available from the owner's website.
Not sure if other developers get the same problems like I have but in case of my extensions, they all have obsolete version numbers and the clarification is really simple - I just cannot save edited items :-(
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- Phoca Gallery - powerful image gallery
- Phoca Restaurant Menu - https://www.phoca.cz/phocamenu
- Phoca Download - download manager for Joomla

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by itoctopus » Sun Sep 17, 2017 8:28 am

toivo wrote:One factor explaining the low level of activity is the current holiday period in Europe. Volunteers also need a life.
There are 2 key words here "volunteers" and "Europe". In Europe, people take a month of holiday every year, they just vanish during that month. It is a completely different thing in the US, where many work on Christmas eve and on Christmas morning, and where most people don't take real vacations (they keep answering their emails).

The other word "volunteers" is where the problem really lies - a volunteer is someone dedicating some of his free time to something. The "free time" can be the whole day, or can be zero minutes. It depends. Volunteer work is usually at the bottom of any person's priorities: first comes the work, then the family, then the education, then the relaxation, and then, if we're lucky, volunteerism.

There are 2 things powering Joomla: The Joomla core, and the JED. Joomla is thankfully handled by competent developers and has good leadership (there is, however, issues with testing the product). Additionally, the development team actually listens and handles complaints about the product. Just last week, I discovered that a weird bug was quietly fixed in Joomla 3.7.3 after someone mentioned it on stack exchange (see https://joomla.stackexchange.com/questi ... 1514#21514 ) - it was very impressive.

The JED is completely different - and I think the JED needs to have paid personnel. It seems that this job is too much for volunteer work, and must be compensated. Joomla can run donation campaigns (similar to those Wikpedia runs) so as to gather the money to pay for a serious JED team. Joomla can charge for JED inclusions as well. For some reason, every time I suggest this, everyone dismisses the idea as if it's impossible to work. WordPress, the main competitor with the largest market share, has paid staff, and look where they are.

I have no idea what kind of politics influence the JED, and, as such, I cannot guarantee that the paid staff trick will work, but it's a start...
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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by jonBuckner1 » Sun Sep 17, 2017 2:01 pm

My reply is in response to a previous reply stating 'they might be on holiday''

That seemed to ignore any criticism made, but also highlights a communication problem ...
if on holiday, let people now.
Simple. If you disappear without telling the community that relies on your services for a living then expect them to be 'annoyed'

Next issue please :)

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by deleted user » Mon Sep 18, 2017 2:18 am

itoctopus wrote:WordPress, the main competitor with the largest market share, has paid staff, and look where they are.
Each of Joomla's direct competitors are driven by a commercial company with an invested interest in their platforms. Joomla does not have such a corporate backing. While it is factually correct to state "WordPress has paid staff and Joomla does not", said paid staff is primarily from Automattic or one of Matt Mullenweg's other organizations and is therefore not a direct employee/contractor of the WordPress Foundation (in terms of organizational relationships, the foundation is the closest thing to what Open Source Matters, Inc. is for Joomla).

I get where you are going with the commentary, but there are a lot more intricacies involved with it than most care to be aware of. For a lot of people not familiar with each project's structure (to include their corporate relationships), for them the perception boils down to "Acquia provides support for Drupal, Automattic provides support for WordPress, nobody provides support for Joomla" but in reality these relationships are a lot more complex.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by itoctopus » Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:25 am

While differentiating between wordpress.org and wordpress.com, there are 2 main sources of revenue from the Wordpress brand itself: 1) Adsense ads on site hosted on wordpress.com (wordpress.com has huge traffic, so their monthly adsense revenue must be in the millions), 2) Premium hosting on wordpress.com .

Automattic is essentially Wordpress, and every person hired by Automattic must spend 3 weeks supporting Wordpress the first year, and 1 week/year supporting Wordpress afterwards (see: https://automattic.com/work-with-us/ ). Yes, this support is for wordpress.com, but it is obvious that any bug fix/enhancement/security patch will make its way to wordpress.org (e.g. the Wordpress CMS product itself).

Going back to the original issue, I really want to hear if my proposition on donating to Joomla (Wikipedia way) is workable, in order to support a few paid JED staff.
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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by darb » Mon Sep 18, 2017 11:45 am

No I dont belive its workable.

I will cost to much and Joomla cant afford and organise that I guess.

I would like to see were the template directory project is and why Joomla never let the template clubs get into the JED bcs thats a end user driver to see a lot of good Joomla template design also with extensions.

And then get a payment commission fee for direct downloads from Joomla JED from the template clubs & extensions devs to monetize Joomla.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by deleted user » Mon Sep 18, 2017 12:22 pm

darb wrote:And then get a payment commission fee for direct downloads from Joomla JED from the template clubs & extensions devs to monetize Joomla.
A commission based system is IMO a bigger challenge than a donation system. You're mandating at that point that commercial listings push some of their profit margin toward the Joomla project and Open Source Matters, Inc. To me this either results in fewer extension listings or the ecosystem raising prices to accommodate for the commission fees, hurting the consumer.

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Re: The JED is a farce

Post by sozzled » Mon Sep 18, 2017 4:14 pm

@itoctopus, @mbabker and @darb: between the three of you, you have made a farce of this topic. The topic began as a criticism of what's wrong with the management of the JED and no attempt to help the hundreds of helpless developers of Joomla extensions. It has now, somehow, be turned into a comparison study of how other cultures (e.g. Wordpress) conduct themselves.

I've tried to direct the conversation towards a discussion about the disinterest that's been shown, is being shown and will probably continue to be shown by the JED management team towards our needs. If people believe that restructuring the [currently dysfunctional] team with a financial incentive will somehow arrest that disinterest then I'm all for hearing about it but, to me, this sounds like a Monty Python sketch about a dead parrot.

No, wait, we're probably all wrong: everything will be hunky dory with JED 4!

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