[Q] How long does it take for a review to become active?

[TheEdge]

G'Day,

- I posted a review to http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/ a number of days ago and as of yet I have not seen it appear on the extensions site. The extension site knows I have done it as it wont let me post another one for that component 

TIA

[LorenzoG]

It's very difficult to say exactly how long time it normaly takes for a review to be approved. It depends a little on our workload and as with all the others WG groups, we work voluntary. But we trying to do our best to approve them as fast as possible.

[TheEdge]

It's very difficult to say exactly how long time it normaly takes for a review to be approved. It depends a little on our workload and as with all the others WG groups, we work voluntary. But we trying to do our best to approve them as fast as possible.

I understand that people's time is voluntary but to me 9 days is rather an excessive delay. Why exactly does a review need to be vetted before it is visible? I understand the need for moderation but as the rest of the forums here do not require moderator approval before a post appears why is it that reviews are special? It seems that having to approve each post adds to your workload as you need to get through approvals ASAP rather than at your liesure once they are up. In the general course of things most reviews are constructive and it is only a small minority that would need to be excluded by moderators.

Just my 2c worth.

As an aside the ordering of reviews seems to use its own random ordering. Can we please have the ability to order reviews on date & rating? To me at least having the most recent review at the top (ie reverse chronological order) would make the most sense as a default ordering.

[ot2sen]

Hi TheEdge,

We certainly would prefer not to have a backlog.
But opening up for autoapproval is not the solution when it comes to reviews.

There are several reason for reviews being delayed:
1. We are short of man hours, and are hoping to introduce 1 or 2 new editors soon.
2. Its true that most reviews are constructive - but sadly we do have a lot of incoming non-reviews.
These non-reviews are the reason we need manual approval/rejecting. We sadly see quite a few bug report, comments, non-english reviews, spam, rants and so on that dont qualify of being a review.
3. We see same problem in incoming submissions of new "extensions". Again lots of these don´t meet the simple terms of being listed as an installable/uninstallable extension. Some are just ads for external scripts or websites, others are hacks that need manual installation, others are valid extensions but required info is missing. In each case we need to spend lot of time checking URLs and validity of download, and often need to send one or more emails.
4. And finally and most saddening we spend way too much time fighting abusers of the voting/review system.
Some users and developers still try to manipulate the voting system by creating clone accounts and placing false votes.

So in short: If users and developers actually did follow the simple guidelines for submitting reviews/votes/extensions, then we probably wouldnt have a backlog at all. 

[TheEdge]

Fair enough. So do you have the new editors available? If not what is the criteria to become one? I figure that seeing as though I have "complained" I may as well offer to be part of the solution. 

[TheEdge]

So what is the criteria for becoming an editor within the extensions area? Its very frustrating to go to this area and still find it in a poor state of repair  . For instance if we navigate to galleries http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,listcats/cat_id,1779/Itemid,35/ there is a link there to a "Features Comparison". However the link it contains http://www.gallery-addons.com/content/view/64/124. And then ofcourse there are all the other things that make it look like the extensions area never moves forward.

• No indication on main browse of a category whether the component is for 1.0.x or 1.5 RC3. As RC3 is stable enough for use knowing what components are available for 1.5 would be nice.
• Still cant sort category listings. Would be nice to sort by popularity, number of votes, number of downloads, last updated, joomla version etc.

I *really* would like to help with what I know must be a huge undertaking keeping the extensions site up to date. So how do I become involved?