Extensions fiasco Boonex take note

sammie posted 28th of October 2008 in Community Voice. 10 comments.

The fiasco over the extensions is a joke. and sorry Boonex but this needs addressing here and now.

Having talked to a few people and seen a few posts about the extensions and unreasonable time delay in getting approved, i had a look at all the extensions on offer and i am appalled at what i see.

Of all the extensions on offer, only one is from a member that is neither staff or from Kyrgyzstan.  Yes thats right ONLY ONE

Now this begs the question, who did they bribe to get their extensions passed? i am not saying DolphinElite bribed anyone, but when presented with the facts, how else does it look?

While your staff and anyone from Kyrgyzstan. can make money and sell extensions while it appears no-one else can, this looks like one of two things, favoritism or corruption,

For example:

what if no-one is checking the extensions and a member of your staff puts up a new extension tomorrow when a member submitted his extension that did the same thing, or was along the same idea 3 or 4 months ago. do you think for one second this is not going to look like corruption?

It wont matter how innocent your staff member is, its the implication of this happening and the tarnished reputation of the staff member and Boonex thats going to be damaged more than ever.

The more extensions submitted and the more your staff sell of their own, the more chance of this happening soon is real and going to happen.


What i propose to address this is this:

#1 Boonex put everything on hold for one day and pay all their staff, for one day, to validate and verify as many extensions in that day as they can. (you can start with people like http://www.boonex.com/unity/okweb who has had his extension moved from pending to Drafts after the requested edits where made) he submitted it back in July

#2 No staff member in future can offer an extension for sale, untill they have validated and approved two other members extensions. (if the staff can make money in their spare time, they can approve two extensions to earn that right)

This is Urgent and something needs to be done real fast.

i know you hate when i post things like this, but in all Honesty, someone has to look out for Boonex well being and reputation, as Boonex is failing to do it.

It would really look bad on an innocent staff member if this was to happen by chance, i know your staff are honest, but what can happen by chance can also look like a deliberate act of Dishonesty. thats why we need this addressing and fast. protect your staff and your reputation from any harm by acting on this soon.

Sammie x

 
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VictorT
Well, Sammie, I would rephrase your question in another context.

Your variant: who did they bribe to get their extensions passed?

My variant: what did they bribe to get their extensions passed?

The answer to your question may remain without an answer. Otherwise, there can be so many answers, so that we can't be sure which ones of them are true, which are not.

My variant has the opposite situation. There is an answer to my question. This is Extension Requirements. But the most important see more fact that requirements are incorruptible. They are checked very properly. And believe me there is no way to cheat them.

We may consider them as Bible in the world of "How to write and make good mod for Dolphin". The requirements are the main tool to make mods which won't harm Dolphin, which will take care of future upgrades, will be properly structured and many more.

The reason that extensions from staff members are getting approved is that they are written in a proper way meeting all the points mentioned in requirements. The guys really know Dolphin in terms of programming.

We have examples that some mods from other Unity members do not meet the requirements in terms of file naming rules. This means that the owner did not take his time even to read the requirements. Note, I am not saying to meet them.

Yes, there are some issues with the time which takes approve process. This can be resolved in reasonable way by PMing to one of admins to mention about the mod and to speed up the process.

Sammie, your point is clear and has full right way to exist. But please consider my feedback reasonably in terms of that we pay attention to requirements firstly, not to whom it comes from.

Best regards,
VictorT.
sammie
Hi Victor
i think you misunderstood my intentions here.
what i am trying to say is that on appearance, all extensions are from staff, apart from one.

my post was mostly hypothetical, if a member has sent in a mod a few months ago, and was asked to make changes, and has made them and it is now sat for 2 more months and still not been passed, the risk of a staff member later posting an extension thats almost the same, would give the member an impression his extension was stolen by a staff member.

i see more understand why the rules for extensions where made, and i fully support them we have to move away from the fiasco on expertzzz but the risk in delays of approving extensions and staff posting one almost the same, would give a wrong impression to the member who would feel cheated. and therefor to him, nothing has changed from expertzzz if extensions can appear to be stolen.

Again i am not saying anything is being done underhanded, its just pure hypothetical and pointing out what might happen one day if the extensions approval is not dealt with.

you can not tell me that only one extension has passed in the last 6 months

sammie
AndreyP
Another one little issue,
We wait until our mods passed long time too.
And, yes, we are moderators, but, we can perform moderation only in off-work time. So it mean at home, so I sure that nobody from us don`t want do this for free at home. We have many other work at home.
buckmcgoo
So you are saying most of the members of your staff fall under "what" and not "who"? Ha!
VictorT
You got it wrong. I have said they could fall under "what" but there is no way to do that.
Andrew Boon
There is a problem and we do realize that. On one hand we HAVE to impose requirements, thus protecting customers, and one the other hand checking every single submission slows down the review process.

Many of our staff members are moderators, but they can't approve their own submissions, and they can't even have their extensions checked until all previous submissions are processed. I track submissions personally and I can assure you that everyone is treated honestly and equally. The problem is see more that requirements are not being followed and we still insist on them to be adopted.

Big queue of submissions is definitely a bad tendency and is not the way to go for the upcoming releases (which should bring even more interest to the system), so we are now trying to find ways to make the process more little, but still secure.

One of the possible ways is to open a post-moderated submissions (similar to Expertzzz), but offer a paid review service for special "BoonEx Approved" certificate. Non-approved extensions would still be available for download and may become approved eventually, if they gather enough positive feedback.

We also have some other ideas in mind and we definitely welcome discussion.

Thank you Sammie for bringing the subject up.
sammie
While there continues to be a free for all over on expertzzz, there is no incentive for mod writers to keep submitting and failing to get approved here,
when they can just go over to expertzzz and bypass all the protection and post the same failed submitted extension here, as a mod over on expertzzz.

maybe its time to close the shop and stop new mods being uploaded and offered for sale over there?
then they would have to come here to sell anything new and then comply with the format rules.

paying see more $50 or so for a fast track approval submission, would be a good idea, but it should also offer a more detailed report as to why it was rejected and include a second submission of the script after the changes where made, for free.

as English is not the 1st language of a lot of people here, myself included, a visual report of the errors that need to be improved would be far better than just a written note. i.e. copy n paste a few parts of the code that needs to be changed and highlight a few of the points that need to be changed and a comment on it within their own script.

This would give them a better understanding of whats wrong and whats expected from them, it also teaches them.

its all academic as long as the can say "well FU i'll upload the crap on expertzzz"

With 6.2 beta only a few weeks away, its a shame that only one extension passed for 6.1 that was not a staff members
Stuart038
Good point. Having two sites for extensions, one free of any oversight does seem to defeat the object.
iced
One solution is to have a time frame within a year for submitting extensions. An example of such is between January to March. After that timeframe no submission is allowed till the following timeframe. This allows moderators/staff to work on approving extensions after the time frame... (in this example, from April to December).

This way everyone knows when they have to submit extensions and when there will be an answer. This is the strategy that "steambans" uses for gamers who submit see more demos of hackers on their website.

You can also make this solution a little bit complex.

A. Standard users get a timeframe of "first 3 months of the year"

B. Contributors/Pundits/Staff get "first 4/5 months of the year".

Also to allow for transparency, there should be a status page/display that shows how many extensions are being reviewed and how many extensions have been (or are being)

1. refused
2. accepted
3. queued for approval

This solution allows for transparancy, and incentivises ppl.

.....

Back to my lunch... :)
praveenkv1988
I have submitted my extension long back on the day when Unity was launched for public.

Till now it was not approved. Nearly 5 times they have refused. Each time I have made corrections. But till now I have not met the requirements. I lost my hope on this.
 
 
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