For those unaware, we have a review system that all new add-ons and add-on updates have to go through before they are available to the general public. The system is a combination of automatic code analysis and manual code and feature testing. The manual side is handled by a dedicated team of volunteers, known as AMO Editors. We’re a small group that has had to handle a massive amount of work, specially since the release of Firefox 3.5. We had spent the last year catching up with the numerous new submissions and updates, and the numbers will only grow once 3.6 is out.

Just 2 months ago, the new add-on review queue had over 600 pending add-ons, and the update queue had more than 250. Both had several months of waiting times, and add-on authors were increasingly unsatisfied, with good reason. Many trivial or important updates have had to wait a long time before seeing the public, causing users to complain and give add-ons bad reviews for the slow reaction of their authors.  That’s just unfair to add-on authors, and we needed a solution.

I joined Mozilla recently with a very clear objective: to reduce the review queues back to a manageable size. I have helped implement several solutions that would improve the state of affairs, like posting detailed weekly queue reports in the AMO forums, and temporarily hiring professional add-on developers to help with the burden. We estimate that our current volunteer team is large enough to keep up with the inflow, so now we just need to reduce queue size down to our ideal waiting expectations (2 weeks for nominations and 1 week for updates). After that I hope we will regain stability.

I’m happy to announce that our efforts have paid off. The latest queue report indicates that we’re down to 301 nominations, and 120 updates. That’s half of what we had 2 months ago! Just last month we reviewed over a thousand files, and our pace is increasing every week. About half of our pending reviews are within our ideal waiting time frames, and many of the ones that have been waiting for longer require an admin review for various reasons. Things are looking great.

There’s still lots to do in order to improve add-on author experience, and that is an ongoing effort. I’ve received quite a few suggestions on how to improve the reports, and I hope to implement those soon. If you’re a developer and you have anything else you’d like help with, don’t hesitate to contact me

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I made a presentation titled AMO, Add-on Developers and Editors (PDF version). It’s a very brief overview on who I am, what’s going on with AMO in terms of helping developers, and the editor community, with a call to action to anyone interested in joining the group. I was happy to realize that there were many developers in the audience, and some showed interest in becoming editors. For all of those interested, I’d look into the Add-on Policies docs and the Editors wiki page. There was also interest in localizing the Developer Hub content, which I think is an awesome idea. Having good documentation in our language is an important step we need to take if we want to increase developer adoption in our countries (I live in Costa Rica).

There was a lot of excitement around the idea of holding events that are more development-centric, like the Mozilla Add-on Workshops. There are already plans to hold one in Perú this year, and another one some time early next year. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on those.

Thanks again to all of you who made MozCamp Chile possible!

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My name is Jorge Villalobos, and I’m the new (first, really) Add-ons Developer Relations Lead at Mozilla. I’ll be working on bringing the add-on developer community and Mozilla closer together. I have been an add-on developer for over 2 years, working on around a dozen add-ons during that time. I’ve worked on a few independent projects as well, Fire.fm being the most successful one, and the one I’m most proud of.

My initial focus in this role at Mozilla is to reduce the add-on review waiting times to a point where authors can have some certainty that their add-ons will be reviewed within a reasonable time frame. The current state of the queues is far from ideal, with the recent release of Firefox 3.5 being a big contributor to the rising tide of submissions. The queues are long, and add-on authors are not happy. I actually have a somewhat important update for Fire.fm waiting in the update queue, and I can’t help but feel a bit impatient about it.

To solve the queue situation, we are working on several solutions. We’re constantly looking for and introducing new editors to our team. We are working more closely with them to understand how they work and what their concerns are, and also to focus their efforts in the areas that have the greatest needs. We are attacking the queue problem from several different angles, some which will help us in the short term, and some which are more forward-looking, such as the one I’m introducing here.

We want to change how we handle add-on reviews, specially for updates. Our current system doesn’t handle well the fact that there are add-on authors that no longer need to have the constant scrutiny of the editor team, and don’t need to have their updates reviewed every single time. We think we need to introduce a trust factor into the process, that allows us to give more freedom of publication to authors that have proven themselves trustworthy. There are plenty of those, and I bet they are the most active authors on AMO. Reducing the amount of update reviews we give to trusted authors will give more time to our editors to focus on new add-on nominations and other updates, significantly reducing waiting times and making everybody happy.

I also cover some ideas for reviewing add-ons that are not extensions, which usually have longer waiting times when in reality they should be the easiest to check.

If you’re interested in the details, please read the proposal on Google Docs: Review Process Redesign Proposal. It’s very short, so it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to read. You can take part in the discussion of the proposal in the mozilla.dev.amo newsgroup, or post a comment here. I’ll try to respond to all as time permits.

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In a recent post at Ken Kovash’s Blog of Metrics regarding Firefox in Latvia passing 50% market share, Indonesia was ranked at 63% market share. With such a love for Firefox, it’s also great to see that Indonesia has finally had it’s first Mozilla event last month.

Romi Hardiyanto, Mozilla’s localizer for Bahasa Indonesia, led an afternoon of presentations on Add-ons for Mozilla at ITS Surabaya, a university in the second-largest city in Indonesia. Romi has a great write-up of the event, Mozilla Day at ITS, at the brand new Mozilla Indonesia blog.

A photo of the students

HΛniF: Hadits, Now in Firefox

Photos from the event are available at Romi’s Flickr, Aini-san’s Picasa and Kiki’s Facebook.

I would like to take a moment to thank Romi Hardiyanto, Mozilla’s tireless Bahasa Indonesia localizer for Firefox who, in addition to localizing Firefox for Indonesians, is also working to spread Firefox farther in Indonesia. Thank you Romi!

This event would also not have happened without the support and coordination of Nur’ Aini Rakhmawati of ITS Surabaya who hosted the event. Thank you Aini-san!

Thank you also goes to Mary Colvig who provided support from Marketing/Events.

Since there has been so much interest in Add-ons in Indonesia, we would like to explore the possibility of doing a similar or related Mozilla-focused event in Jakarta later this year, after the launch of Firefox 3.5. If you would like to have a Mozilla event in Jakarta, please feel free to comment and leave your email so we can contact you. We are looking for people in Jakarta who would volunteer to help us with some of the organizational work to create such an event.

Here is Romi Hardiyanto’s presentation on Add-ons (in Bahasa Indonesia, not English.)

Here is Kiki Ahmadi’s presentation on the PureZilla add-on.

Thank you Romi and Aini-san and everyone who made Mozilla’s first event in Indonesia a success!

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