Team of reviewers for all extras

This idea was mentioned by another forum user, but I thought it was important enough for its own discussion.

Generally, how do people feel about this?

I personally would participate in an Extra Review Team, this is how I'd envision the system working.

All the reviewers would have access to some sort of feed or page which displays the latest incoming extras to the main MODX.com extras portal. From there the team can comment or vote based on some pre-set criteria (e.g. flexible, no need to hack the core, fit for general use, etc). If the criteria is met then the extra is added to the main extras portal, if not then the developer is given some critical feedback and encouraged to improve their extra and submit again.

If an extra was originally created for a specific use or a specific client, then perhaps before its submitted to the general extras portal some features could be adjusted, so its fit for a general wider use.

This would help reduce the amount of low quality extras being submitted and also prevent newbies becoming overwhelmed by the choices when some of the buggy or incomplete extras shouldn't be there anyway.

We could also perhaps still incorporate the extras that didn't "pass the test" to some other portal, for more advanced users or "beta extras only"; for more critical feedback and discussion.

Then perhaps later a list of "missing extras" or "opportunities for extras" could be complied, which highlights gaps in the extras portal; this way some sort of future roadmap could start to be formed for the development of third-party extras. But that would be something for later.

To get this off the ground quickly we could just use the Ambassador user group, which is already a vetted group of MODX users.

Anyway, those are only my thoughts on this - I'm keen to hear everybody else's ideas.

I think it's a great idea, but personally, I don't have enough time even to work on my own extras.

Great idea, but ya a ton of work. What if there was just a way to separate extras on GitHub vs ones that aren't? Seems like the easiest way to distinguish polished extras from the rest. Rely on Github for comments, bug reports, etc.
Every 1-2 weeks I comb through all categories of extras (at least ones with 1000 downloads or less) looking for potential MADX award winners. It's starting to take longer to look through them all but I'd also hate for the crappy ones to be Torched completely. They serve a purpose even if just to motivate collaboration or competition.

I'm not afraid of a ton of work as long as we have a clear plan. I think something like this would really benefit the growth of MODX.

Do you guys think maybe just another layer onto the extras categories system could help to start with?

There's already a "solid" tag for some extras, but I can't see a way to only view "solid" extras. Maybe a couple more tags could be introduced to help organise the extras? E.g. "beta", "abandoned", "needs work", "incomplete" etc

I agree, we could rely on Github for comments and bugs, this would take some strain away from MODX setting up some sort of infrastructure to support this idea; but that would only work if all extras submitted to the extras portal were hosted on Github.

I don't think this would be an unfair request to make; the MODX core code is on Github so it would make sense if all the extras in the main portal were also on Github too.

Then perhaps if the extras listing had a direct link back to the official Github page + a better category system this could be the first step in organising and maintaining quality of the extras portal. [ed. note: AdamWintle last edited this post 11 years, 2 months ago.]

Reviewer Team sounds like a very good idea to me (to get valuable time for the core devs or whoever is doing the reviewing now), I also would participate in that team =)!

This is a great idea but I think current distribution system already has it own issues. Example being a new version of Articles was released recently, I saw the tweet about it, opened PM in my MODX install and it told me my package was already up to date. This is one of the first things I think should be looked at, jQuery's new package management system is the way I think MODX need to go.

Back to the topic at hand, Review system is definitely necessary. I for 1 would participate in reviewing packages if necessary but I think this will need to be broken down into various parts.

• Documentation Review
• Code Review

These will require some sort of guidelines for the user to follow and conform to.

Ya what's the deal with that? Is it broken Extra functionality or are users supposed to manually reinstall Articles?

Quote from: easylancer at Mar 05, 2013, 11:40 AM

This is a great idea but I think current distribution system already has it own issues. Example being a new version of Articles was released recently, I saw the tweet about it, opened PM in my MODX install and it told me my package was already up to date. This is one of the first things I think should be looked at, jQuery's new package management system is the way I think MODX need to go.

Back to the topic at hand, Review system is definitely necessary. I for 1 would participate in reviewing packages if necessary but I think this will need to be broken down into various parts.

• Documentation Review
• Code Review

These will require some sort of guidelines for the user to follow and conform to.

This was something I suggested over a year ago and after reviewing the comments from that thread I don't actually think it will work.

We have to understand that anyone that takes the time to write a package does it for their own needs, does not have the time / willingness to start writing tutorials for it, and doesn't have the time to check that it doesn't break other packages and keep updating it.

I totally agree with a system that we can test packages on but I also believe ( after the last thread ) that we can't leave everything down to the developer, if we do it will see less addons being created.

How about ( and this is just putting it out there ) that any extras must work with a standard ( IE all extras built by the modx team ), then from there extras can be submitted with a text file with the default settings ( IE: all & atributes ).

We can then test all extras with the info given, give feedback and write basic how to's in the docs for it, we can have these in place before the addon is approved.

Also it would be good for the person that approves it to be responsible for the forum thread as well as the developer, that way we would have 2 people updating the docs ?

Just thought I would put that out there ;o)