Nekkid Ninjas

Follow up:

Firstly, the JED has positioned itself to be a virtual monopoly on the Joomla extension listing market. Because it is attached to the main Joomla site and is the "official" extensions directory, it controls the flow of the vast majority of extension seekers.

Yes there are other ways to get traffic, but because of the status and positioning of the JED, it significantly reduces the effectiveness of any competing avenues.

This is not necessarily a bad thing! I would much prefer to be able to go to the JED and search there than randomly traverse the web, hopping from site to site hoping to find what I need.

As an extension developer, this can also be a good thing because we don't have to spend thousands of dollars on advertising, and can make ourselves known to our intended audience more easily.

However, this also puts the JED in the position of virtually controlling our life and death as a group. If we were to be removed from the JED Ninja Forge would very likely vanish over night as we could no longer afford to keep going. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to attract the amount of traffic we need to survive by other means.

By taking the role of chief traffic controller, the JED has assumed a massive amount of power over the success, and survival of extension projects.

This applies to both commercial and non commercial projects alike as non commercial developers usually work for the satisfaction of seeing their project on other sites, so if they get 0 downloads and 0 exposure they are far more likely to fail than a project that has lots of visitors and encouragement.

The way the JED is working now, with massive updates a couple of times a month, a few lucky projects that end up on top of the pile for a few weeks get incredible amounts of traffic and success and those that get approved 'first' in a bunch get pushed to the second or third page and get virtually no exposure at all.

As a result a couple of projects succeed, and the majority (at least partially) fail. Purely due to the chance of when they appear on the JED. Once off the new extensions page, traffic for an extension drops to a tiny amount.

Yes it is not the JED's responsibility to guarantee fair exposure to every extension. I agree totally.

Yes it is run by volunteers, so it can be argued that we have no right to "expect" them to work to our desired schedule.

However, it doesn't mean we need to be happy about it. We are completely 100% free to be dissapointed when our new extension we worked for months on, spends weeks waiting and then finally appears on page 3 and gets 1 download.

Even if we can't expect good service, we can want it, and we can need it for our survival.

We have volunteered to help but the reply always is that they don't need help and it would be too difficult to train someone new. But how can they not need help? they are weeks behind on approvals, and the list get's longer every day.

The JED is failing dramatically in the role it is meant to fill. But because it is the monopoly holder, it is difficult to do anything but take it.

Even if they do pull a week of overtime and get them all cleared, only half a dozen people will actually get any benefit and the rest of the 200+ (estimate based on our position in the line) projects will get gimped and pushed off the page.

This can not be good for the community no matter how you look at it. It does not promote a healthy ecosystem for extensions. It does not lead to any sort of confidence in the system, much as we want to feel it.

We do not want to complain about this, we do not want to be favored, we do not want special treatment. We just want a fair, reliable system.

We are prepared to help with it! We are prepared to put our money where our mouth is. We have offered many times to help, but been rejected every time. This is why we are frustrated.

We then get told to help in other areas. This is definitely a good idea, I can't deny that. But it won't change the JED.

This sort of attitude also completely dismisses our concerns and needs as a group and tells us basically that we don't matter, and they don't care.

Which they don't have to. I don't expect the JED team to care one bit about us or any other group or project on there. However, if they don't care, then it completely defeats the purpose of the JED, and completely removes our desire to help there or anywhere else in the project.

Care and concern needs to go both ways.

Why would we want to help someone else with their problems when they tell us that our problems don't matter to them, even though their behavior is directly causing our problems?

Before you say it, I can also see the reverse, why would they care about our problems if we don't seem to care about theirs?

So we have a catch 22.

We don't want to help the project that doesn't give a damn about us, and the project doesn't want to give a damn about us until we help the project.

The other catch 22 is that right now, even if we wanted to help we cannot afford to, because the JED inconsistency has hurt us financially. If the JED was more consistent and fair, then we may have the spare resources to give to the project.

In better days I had discussed with the team about us making contributions to the core code, the docs, and helping on the forums. Because we wanted to give back. We really did. But we can't do it now even if we wanted to as we are too busy doing the things we would rather not be doing.

In all honesty I am at a loss what to do.

We are tired of arguing, we are tired of fighting. We want to extend an olive branch, we want to help, but we are hurting, and every time we put our nose out of the hole it gets bitten and we hurt more.

We know we can't expect the J! team to care about us, or anyone else in the community, but until they do, how can we be expected to care about them?

What motivation is there to help in another area when our concerns in one area are answered with "We don't care, just suck it up because we are volunteers"?