An update on the Plugin Developer tag system

Discussion in 'Community News and Announcements' started by EvilSeph, Dec 5, 2011.

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    EvilSeph

    As previously announced, the Plugin Developer tag system had become difficult to maintain and was frozen as a result of this. Since then, we’ve been actively discussing the future of the Plugin Developer tag and, consequently, the Bukkit+ forum.

    We do have a couple of possible systems in mind that will take the place of the Plugin Developer tag and will be making an announcement as soon as we decide on which we feel is best for the community.

    Until that time, we have decided to remove the developer tag from all existing profiles, while still keeping Bukkit+ available and in use. Any developers who have access to the Bukkit+ forum will retain that access and for those of you who don't have access, we'll be providing a way to get access to Bukkit+ provided you are an upstanding member of the community.
     
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    matejdro

    Not really. You can create BukkitDev account and just link it without posting any plugins.
     
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    agafaba

    If the badges are just to show who is actually useful then wouldnt some posters who have not made any plugins need one too?
     
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    CainFoool

    Whether this post will be long or short, I honestly have no idea but I will state my opinion on this "new system".

    A "new system", for example, is BukkitDev. Some developers like it, and some developers hate it. We have all seen the requests which Administrators of Bukkit are not going to put in because it takes the Reality of it out, for example, I posted a long time ago that current developers of Bukkit should not need to get their files approved, did they add that in, even though everyone agreed with me? No. Which is why I specifically, out of all things I hate, I specially hate BukkitDev.

    BukkitDev, being a new system, was in some cases, a fail. What the administrators are trying to do with the Plugin Developer Tags is create another new system, this is just going to fail and to be honest, the only reason some developers are still developing is because of that tag, including me.

    You may think I may be selfish I may not be updating my plugin CommandBin as much simply because of the fact that I have been a developer since July and I feel that people should know who you are. So far, the system has failed. When I look through Plugin Releases, I can barely tell who is who so I can't tell who is experienced at coding or not.

    A quote from EvilSeph, "The plugin developer tag became difficult to maintain". How? If you can make Bukkit then god damn you can make a very easy way of giving the Plugin Developer tag to people who created a very decent project. Simple; Moderators, under a persons name "Make Plugin Developer". Job done. Difficult to maintain? I think not.

    I have experience with XenForo, and I understand that the coding is a little weird as it has it's own way of coding but it's still doable in many ways.

    I speak on behalf on the people who agree with some of the things I may have just said,
    "Bring the tag back".
     
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    agafaba

    Sounds more like you are part of the group that makes the tags a bad idea. The old tag didnt tell who was experienced at coding anything even remotely complicated. It did however give a false sense of superiority where even good advice from people without the tag was attacked because they didnt have one.

    You get special access to bukkit+ that nondevs didnt get (and even some newer devs dont have) that you can use if you want to make sure your talking to someone who made a plugin, there is no need for you to use the rest of the forum just so you can ignore everyone else anyway.
     
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    resba

    The Plugin Developer system was on its way out along with the Forums system which will follow soon. Instead of the Plugin Developer system being frozen with a select few it is now formally removed; also, removing the system answers the basic questions we get like "Can I get a developer tag?" or "When will my plugin get me a tag?"

    EDIT: Ironically, BukkitDev's plugin developer promotion system works whenever your plugin is approved and is removed if your plugins become inactive automatically. The forums system was cluttered because Moderators had to keep track of who was active and who got to keep the tag by hand.
     
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    NuclearW

    This is not the new system, this is only an intermediate step taken towards it.

    I'm not sure what you're referencing, but all files currently have to pass through the approval system, regardless of who posted it. That being said, this is a system we are required to follow because of Curse, and is far harder to change.

    We've worked towards making file approval times shorter; various tools written for moderators to help us be alerted to new files as they are posted, or other checks on new projects that we would normally have to do manually being automated, for example. (Even as I write this post I've been alerted to a new file which I've handled)

    It is true, we are trying to create a new system because we believe that the old Plugin Developer tag was no longer what it originally was intended to be. It wasn't a symbol of someone's knowledge or ability to help, but instead a thing to be desired by developers to show off with.

    That second point, in particular, had led to quite a number of lower-quality plugins being developed simply to gain the tag.

    Yet again, this is not the new system, this is only an intermediate step taken towards it.

    You assume that the issue is with the website and tools given to staff to affect change in a person's group, when you are absolutely incorrect. The act of promoting or demoting someone from the group is actually very simple, the issue is guidelines staff is expected to follow. A simple guideline like "If they have a plugin, make them a plugin developer" is easy to follow, but then you also have the fact that at the time that was stated the number of staff was relatively small, and managing the submissions forums was(is) a pain for staff.

    So at the time that comment was made, staff were scarce to handle the system. Now that there are more of us, it's plain to see that while we can easily follow a simple guideline, it leads to undesirable results. Namely those issues with the old tag listed above.

    The tag as it once was is not coming back. A new system will come, though, and it may include tags.

    I should note that we do have a system in place for new developers to get access too, we aren't giving up on Bukkit+

    EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 22, 2016
    Don Redhorse and agafaba like this.
  8. Offline

    Cogito

    Speaking (mostly) for myself here:

    Any system that requires one user to award another (with a tag for example) for an achievement has a high potential for inadequacy. That may be due to needless bureaucracy, heated politics or corruption. I do not believe that the Plugin Developer tag suffered from these complaints directly, however it was definitely less than perfect (as many have pointed out already).

    I do not believe that simply adding more layers of artificial rewards (which is in many ways what a tag system is) is the best solution here. Almost always, a reward system boils down to some kind of metric. We reward people who achieve some measure of success, with the dual aims of promoting new successes and identifying individuals who are worthwhile following in the future.

    When the bar being measured against is too low, or too high, the usefulness of the reward is thought to diminish. This is the basis of @Afforess's idea, as I see it; create new bars that are progressively harder to attain, thus giving greater granularity to the reward system.

    Purely in terms of plugin development, we have much better measures available to us: the code the person has written, the community they foster around their plugins and the success of their plugins, to name a few. When we start trying to partition users based on these metrics (using tags or similar) it can be difficult to draw a line, as these measures are quite subjective. That does not make them bad! Rather, the issue is the fact that we are trying to partition people, when instead we should make it easier to judge a persons merits directly for ourselves.

    For a coder, that can be simply looking at another's source code - for that is a great way to work out how proficient someone is. For a server admin that might be seeing reviews of a plugin, and how many times it has been downloaded.

    If we want to recognise plugin developers in the forums, I believe it should be by allowing others to measure the developer for themselves. One option for that is the person's BukkitDev profile and projects. If it is hard to find information about a developer from BukkitDev we should focus on making that easier. Adding user tags on the forums may be useful for lots of things, but in the end I think it will be less good then the ability to judge for yourself.
     
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    Kainzo

    I agree with Cog in most aspects.
     
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    feildmaster

    Yes, actually. They are based on experience, achievements, wealth and merit.

    The truly good ones are the ones that simply.. do not care of their rank. In my opinion.
     
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    Deleted user

    Are you Drakia O.O
     
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    ZachBora

    Yes he is.
     
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    Deleted user

    Well then REPORT THAT MAN! I've already reported him once, 2 more to go to get him banned.

    You're an old man, you hardly move at all! xD Jokes, jokes.

    EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 22, 2016
  14. Is it bad that I feel like this is a reference to a line in a certain dating sim that was never released in English?
     
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    TnT

    The biggest issue with different ranks of plugin devs, is the difficulty separating up the ranks. A time based rank will get easily abused. So instead of creating a TNT plugin for the tag you create a TNT plugin and make sure the post is updated for the bare minimum time and get the tag. Number of plugins created is also a terrible measure and easily manipulated as well. Make it a popularity contest and you'll get valid people who don't get the tag, and invalid people who do, entirely due to how popular they are in the community. If the system is easily manipulated, I do not see how it is an improvement over the previous system.

    I cannot think of a simple way to distinguish the ranks without requiring a great deal of oversight. @Afforess please list more criteria in which you wish those tags to be handed out. So far, for every criteria I have seen I could easily manipulate the system into giving me the top level tag. If I can easily see ways to manipulate it, so will everyone else.

    For me, personally, the plugin tag has never meant anything. I judge who is knowledgeable and who is not based on how well their plugins work, and what support I can get.
     
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    pyraetos

    How well one's plugins work and how helpful he is definitely constitute the qualities of the best plugin makers. Too bad these criteria can't really be measured orderly enough to allow a system of developer ranks to be implemented.
     
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