An open letter to responsible script guys at XBMC

It's an approach, balance no of downloads against no of "non working" reports. Some things arise to my mind at once.

What to do when the author updates the addon?
- reset all values to zero?
- keep downloads and reset reports?

If we "nag" people to vote with a popup, wouldn't you get annoyed that every time you used a plugin there would be a popup.. Think in 8 out of 10 cases most users would just click first available button to get rid of the popup.

Feels kind of pointless to have that, since you would need to try the addon a few times before reporting. But we could always let the user start the addon for 10 times, then start doing the popup.

This will also require either 1: rewrite of xbmc to make xbmc do the popup or 2: have the addons author to implement that check (of course we could make it into a module that you just import to any plugin/script)

For this to be parsable by an automated script, the output would have to be really strict. This isn't an easy task, since we would have tons of revisions of xbmc (eg: you can compile it yourself for every revision)

Besides, a few times errors in addons isn't even the addons fault, sometimes something in xbmc is borked.

When it comes to self compiled versions of xbmc i bellive the best thing there would just be to put them in a "selfcompiled category". Most user will however use stable builds so statistics against stable build would be important.

nagging with a popup after says 10-15 runs is a good idea in my mind. if the plugin doesent work there will probably not come in any reports, however if it works and the users actually uses the script a likely report would then be "working"
This would again lead to that scripts wich doesent work will have very few reports (most likely) because the user never ran that script 15 times.

About versions of the scripts:
I bellive keeping everything is the best idea. When a script goes up to a new version it will be added above the old version. So the new version starts of with completely blank sheets again. This is important because we would like to keep a script that has good stats, regardless of the version.

I wouldn't care to have any type of non-user initiated nag.

What I would find useful as a user would be a single menu entry on the script/plugin/etc context menu that says something to the effect that this item doesn't work for me and when clicked pops up a more detailed box which can then be submitted along with any useful information prepopulated (version/architecture/log/etc) to the author/QA/interested parties.
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Buy no2

Well i know most users dont like popup that much, but i bellive sometimes
one needs to nag the casual user. If not im sure that no one will ever find that button/option We have to remember that the goal itself sometimes rectifies the means.

I don't understand why are you so bothered about users.. not many of them commented on this thread so far nor complained about not working add-ons in general. If someone wants an add-on to work properly - he'll find a way (via SVN installer update option?)
Don't get me wrong, but if you all feel like you need some kind of 'tool' to verify/update plugins/scripts - do it your way. Everyone else who's interested will adjust accordingly.

Regards,

pajretX no offense but i think you did not read my initial post.
My point was that as of now plugins is not for the mainstream users since
there are so many broken ones.

The idea is to get a working base of plugins for everyone to use.

I bellive team XBMC cares alott for their users, not only thee geeks in these forums. The really big audience for xbmc is the casual non geeky users. this thread was about what plans team xbmc has for their plugin function...

pajretX -- why would one NOT be bothered about users? Going to this forum, registering for an account, then figuring out how to 'properly report' bugs -- give me a break. Most people aren't even going to remotely understand that as the process. You want to make XBMC a better user experience, right?

The-Boxhead - I have read it. However, the thread has transformed slightly into 'lets get users to do that or that' - maybe they don't want that? Not many said they do. That's what I meant.

w3___:I think it's just the way I wrote it. I did not mean 'screw users'. It was more like 'there is enough of people that know what they are doing, who can help and support the project' kind of post. - My bad.

Regards,

Twist of the popup nag.. What if it would show when ending the script ? Eg: "Did this script work for you?"

blittan Wrote:Twist of the popup nag.. What if it would show when ending the script ? Eg: "Did this script work for you?"

That would certainly be better than a popup, but what if it throws an error before the script has a chance to open up? I've had plugins or scripts just say something like:
"error in default.py" and refuse to go any further.