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Important - Everyone! Feedback needed please! | Forum

Darryl B Leader
Darryl B Sep 6 '16
Dave wanted me to let everyone know that he will be out of commission for the next several days as his health has turned, but he will be back soon to get back to work.
Webster Molaudi
Webster Molaudi Sep 7 '16
Thanks for letting us Know Darryl...Hope he gets better soon, send him our blessings !!
The Forum post is edited by Webster Molaudi Sep 7 '16
Jobee Bendijo
Jobee Bendijo Sep 9 '16
I just want to say that I'm happy to see that the issues with the store and store owners are finally being addressed. There are a lot of really good devs in the store who offer quality plugins and top notch support. It's the bad apples that need to be plucked out or given assistance in cleaning up their act. Bravo.
dave Leader
dave Sep 10 '16
Hi everyone good to see your still working on some ideas, i think it might be time to work up a idea list and get it off to Ross so he can send a copy off to Den as well.  We can still come up with ideas and just because we submit something now does not mean we cant keep the ball rolling here.  I am proud of all of you for taking the time and steps to help make changes..  Thanks you all!  


As for me i just wanted to touch base with you and let you know im not gone im just sick. I have a MRI i hope scheduled for this next week, im just waiting for the insurance company to approve it as it is quite expensive.   I hope to know more after that.  I am taking meds that pretty much keep me sleeping or in bed most of the day and night other than to get something to eat.  When i get to feeling better i will be back and ill have to do alot of reading to catch up on things.  


Anyway out for now but keep up the great work everyone.. :)

dave Leader
dave Oct 29 '16
With limited 2hours per day on the computer until yesterday it has taken me awhile to finally get to this, i had to get caught up on some other critical issues too. Now i will be working on this critical issue this weekend and get this submitted to Oxwall.  My apology for taking so long but as you know it has not been easy for me the last couple of months.  But i am a man of my word and i will get this done for you as i said i would.  I will follow up here when i have submitted the final listing.  


Thanks for your patience. 


Dave 

dave Leader
dave Oct 29 '16

I am also adding this:


Place abandoned plugins up for auction, let other developers purchase them and the full rights to the plugin. Add this notice to the terms of service for oxwall. Abandoned will be definded as 6 months with no contact from the developer regarding support or oxwall direct contact attempts and no login from developers account for 6 months. 


The purchase of the auctioned plugins goes to oxwall as a donation to their success.


 Before the auction takes place. To be fair, give the developer one last chance to reply, 10 days should be enough, then it goes up for auction. So an abandoned plugin will go up for action in 6 months 10 days... with 0 contact from developer. 


If the developer does reply during that time and they decline to update the plugin or they just simply dont do anything at all regardless of what they say in their reply, then the plugin will automatically be disabled in 30 days. 


If after being disabled (so no sales can occur, which should get their attention if they even care anymore) for another 6 months from the last contact, then the plugin is automatically placed in the auction without contacting the developer.  This is a one time deal, there will be no exploitation of this and developers waiting for the last minute to reply just to get another 6 months. They will get 6 months (no sales ability) after the last contact and thats it, its a one time offer. If they let that time expire then it goes to auction automatically. 


So bottom line is this:  If they dont reply ever - it goes to auction in 6 months 10 days.  If they reply and deny or approve  but make no updates ( which have to pass moderation) then it goes to auction in 1 year 10 days.  


This will allow for old plugins to be reintroduced for those that have them, maybe not right away but eventually. It will also cut down dramatically consumers purchasing plugins that dont work and are not supported.


Again all this needs to be placed in the TOS so that developers know up front what will happen if they abandoned their plugin. 


The Forum post is edited by dave Oct 29 '16
Webster Molaudi
Webster Molaudi Oct 29 '16
Hi Dave,

+100.....This is the best idea ever thought of hey, i support this and now consumers we will have trust and oxwall will grow drastically :)
Quote from dave

I am also adding this:


Place abandoned plugins up for auction, let other developers purchase them and the full rights to the plugin. Add this notice to the terms of service for oxwall. Abandoned will be definded as 6 months with no contact from the developer regarding support or oxwall direct contact attempts and no login from developers account for 6 months. 


The purchase of the auctioned plugins goes to oxwall as a donation to their success.


 Before the auction takes place. To be fair, give the developer one last chance to reply, 10 days should be enough, then it goes up for auction. So an abandoned plugin will go up for action in 6 months 10 days... with 0 contact from developer. 


If the developer does reply during that time and they decline to update the plugin or they just simply dont do anything at all regardless of what they say in their reply, then the plugin will automatically be disabled in 30 days. 


If after being disabled (so no sales can occur, which should get their attention if they even care anymore) for another 6 months from the last contact, then the plugin is automatically placed in the auction without contacting the developer.  This is a one time deal, there will be no exploitation of this and developers waiting for the last minute to reply just to get another 6 months. They will get 6 months (no sales ability) after the last contact and thats it, its a one time offer. If they let that time expire then it goes to auction automatically. 


So bottom line is this:  If they dont reply ever - it goes to auction in 6 months 10 days.  If they reply and deny or approve  but make no updates ( which have to pass moderation) then it goes to auction in 1 year 10 days.  


This will allow for old plugins to be reintroduced for those that have them, maybe not right away but eventually. It will also cut down dramatically consumers purchasing plugins that dont work and are not supported.


Again all this needs to be placed in the TOS so that developers know up front what will happen if they abandoned their plugin. 



dave Leader
dave Oct 29 '16
Hi Webster thanks, it came to me in a dream but in the dream i was auctioning off chicken eggs lol... strange dream :)   


I been thinking if the original developer should be allowed to buy their old plugin from the auction.  And what i have thought about is yes but they have to pay a penalty fine to do so of $50-$100 (again goes to oxwall) and they have to re-agree to keep their plugin updated going forward.  


Maybe a forumla of 3x the plugin price as the penalty to re-purchase it would be good. This would force them to make sure it works or they wont be able to recoop their fees. 


here is my addition.. 


"Allow the original developer to buy the plugin back from the auction for 3x the plugin rate (which cannot be changed (reduced) to benefit the developers re-purchase) This will serve as a penalty for letting the plugin go south in the first place. And help pay for any additional manpower required to run the program."


ALSO 


"the current license holders of the plugin will be forwarded to the new owners of the plugin. And the new owners must agree to give current license holders continued support for a simple one time fee of not more than $5.00" 


this will cause several things to occure.  First plugins with alot of license owners (popular abandoned plugins) will get updated quickly because there is money to be made immediately by the developer. Then license owners will not have to pay the full fee for the plugin again but only a minimal $5.00 max and they are right back in business again with a new fresh updated copy of the plugin. 


This will require some minor update to the store code in order to keep track of who paid the $5.00 fee.


Also there will need to be a limit on paypal account associated with auctioned plugins.  We need to prevent bad developers from purchasing a plugin, getting the initial $5.00 fee for current licenses then letting the plugin go south and repeating the process over again.  So there will have to be some kind of check and balance for that possibility, im sure darryl has something up his sleeve to solve that issue ;)


 I have also added: 


Add a developer reply rating to the store.   If a developer replies to a support question


not more than 5 min they get 100 points,

not more than 10 min they get 90 points,

not more than 20 min they get 80 points,

not more than 30 min they get 70 points,

not more than 1 hour they get 50 points,

not more than 3 hours they get 40 points,

not more than 10 hours they get 20 points,

not more than 24 hours they get 10 points,

anytime after 24 hours they get 0 points. 


To regulate this have a checkmark that the developer must check in order to verify they have replied to the support issue. And then those points should be averaged by the number of tickets associated going forward and the percentage should be posted. 


This will help reflect those that give great support from those that dont. 


AND ALSO 


Create a facebook account for oxwall developement and allow developers and the public to sign up for the page.  This will be used as both a positive and negative reflection coments to the masses on who is doing a great job and who is not.  



The Forum post is edited by dave Oct 29 '16
dave Leader
dave Oct 29 '16
They may not care if they have points or not, but higher point plugin support numbers get more sales. 
The Forum post is edited by dave Oct 29 '16
dave Leader
dave Oct 29 '16

Quote from Webster Molaudi Let me explain how this works i have noticed what some developers do like "ARON"

They just make unnecessary changes if there's any changes at all just to push their plugins as the 1st one on "LATEST" page so that users notice their plugins first. I doubt they make any changes this should be regulated to make them tell us what changes they made, if ou pay attention with aron is there's a new plugin he will update to push it down so his plugins show up 1st.
Webster i actually sent an email to ross about this very thing oh about 2 years ago when i noticed this same thing. I noticed that all of his plugins hit the update at the same time and there were pages and pages of them, so i ask ross to check it out and he sayd yes he did update them, so i dropped it.  But i didnt think that aaron may have been making small text changes or something simple to get them on the list, that cannot continue to happen. 
dave Leader
dave Oct 29 '16
The easy fix to that is the wayback website, im sure they have screenshots of the plugin pages and what the price was.  So if anyone does change the price to benefit themselves (price gouging) then we as the public can check it out on wayback. 


Do you know about wayback marcus. 

The Forum post is edited by dave Oct 29 '16
dave Leader
dave Oct 29 '16
ok i have my final rough list. i will format it an post it here by tomorrow.  


thanks all 

dave Leader
dave Oct 29 '16
All of those are already included guys... :)
Webster Molaudi
Webster Molaudi Oct 30 '16
So Dave

That being said do you think this would be implemented ?
I have seen a couple of great ideas we come up with but oxwall.org doesn't take them into consideration. The only thing they took into was the seo because we fought for it and everyone pushed. We can't be always fighting with oxwall.org to have things done I know they have other things or busy with other things but things like the store need to be looked at with a higher priority

dave Leader
dave Oct 30 '16
I agree with you Webster that this is a critical issue.  I was asking for this behind the scene and they agreed.  So yes i think some of the more practical ideas that do not take alot of manpower to run will be implimented quickly. The others will need go be done as they can.  Which ones they will do i dont know.   
dave Leader
dave Oct 30 '16
Ok folks here is the final list and actually a copy of what i sent to the Ross so you all can see.  All of the suggestions were great, really AWESOME!  Some of them i did not agree with only because it would put Oxwall in a bad situation by making them liable legally for things they should not be liable for, and also because with their limited staff there is no way they could do them now, even if they accepted the liability.  This turned out to be a wonderful fact finding research project and now it is in the hands of those that make the decisions.  


I again wanted to apologize for it taking so long on my part to get this done, i did not expect my part be delayed this long and certainly did not expect to be the one holding up the progress.  But now its done and lets give Oxwall time to obsorb this as well, lets give them time to go through the suggestions about the possibilities and lets not be hounding them all the time about this.  Myself or Darryl will check up on this from time to time to make sure its not collecting dust, you have our word.


Also thanks for putting up with my horrible typo's in the text, i found some that i was like "where did that come from"  but i have corrected them. 


With that said, thanks to all of you sincerely, i mean it... Here is the final list... 


-----------------------------


 Hi Ross, well it took some time but here is the final list of suggestions from the users of how to improve the store. We did not get much involvement from other develpers but that does not surprise me, most of them dont give a rats butt about anything but themselves.  So my feeling is that if they dont like the new setup or the changes then its their own fault, they had the opportunity to get involved and passed it up. 


I am including all wether i agree with them or not, a few of them i have stated my reasons for not agreeing, some i have not. I will leave to Oxwall to make the right decisions. 


Here we go: 

1. Accurate description, and representation of the item.


2. Limit the item forum topics for the dev. They should only need four.  A. Sticky and locked for changelog   B. Sticky and locked for special item info  C. Sticky for bug reports  D. Sticky for suggestions, and if the review system was taken out there could be a category for customer reviews.


3. Keep the main store clean by moving old items to a repository while keeping them active for use.


4. Implement a support policy with the possibility of an annual support fee to entice devs to stay and maintain their items.


5. Improve and enforce Oxwall side TOS to hold devs more accountable.


6. Improve the dev'x TOS to be inline with the Oxwall TOS.


7. Items are created for use on Oxwall, and are of no use to the dev elsewhere. If the dev no longer supports their item after a set period of time, they should be made available for another dev to update. Keep in mind here that no dev will want to just update, and take over free support. There needs to be something there for them after they take over. Re' list item  If a dev takes over an item and agrees to keep it updated/make it work properly, then that item should still be available for purchase, and the new maintaining dev' should be entitled to a percentage of the sale fee.


8. Add buttons to report the store item, if the plugin is from a team member the email should go to their supervisor.


9. Have payment go through the Oxwall store with a 10 day warranty period before issuing payment to the dev. During that period the consumer has the option to cancel the purchase which will refund their account, and remove the item from their store purchases.
Ross i do not agree with this one number 9, it would put too much liability on Oxwall to handle payments and Oxwall would be liable for any mistakes, but i am including as i said i would. 

10. Remove the review system, and replace with the last 14 item forum topics. The current review system has to go, its outdated, allows fake reviews and its not effective at all.  It is not just a problem with oxwall it is a international issue with fake reviews. There are international teams working on answers but none yet.
We all agree the current rating system does not work and is totally ineffective and needs to go.  What you replace it with is your choice of course. 


11. Place abandoned plugins up for auction, let other developers purchase them and the full rights to the plugin. Add this notice to the terms of service for oxwall. Abandoned will be definded as 6 months with no contact from the developer regarding support or oxwall direct contact attempts and no login from developers account for 6 months. 


The purchase of the auctioned plugins goes to oxwall as a donation to their success. Before the auction takes place. To be fair, give the developer one last chance to reply, 10 days should be enough, then it goes up for auction. So an abandoned plugin will go up for action in 6 months 10 days... with 0 contact from developer. 


If the developer does reply during that time and they decline to update the plugin or they just simply dont do anything at all regardless of what they say in their reply, then the plugin will automatically be disabled in 30 days. 


If after being disabled (so no sales can occur, which should get their attention if they even care anymore) for another 6 months from the last contact, then the plugin is automatically placed in the auction without contacting the developer.  This is a one time deal, there will be no exploitation of this and developers waiting for the last minute to reply just to get another 6 months. They will get 6 months (no sales ability) after the last contact and thats it, its a one time offer. If they let that time expire then it goes to auction automatically. 


So bottom line is this:  If they dont reply ever - it goes to auction in 6 months 10 days.  If they reply and deny or approve  but make no updates ( which have to pass moderation) then it goes to auction in 1 year 10 days.  


This will allow for old plugins to be reintroduced for those that have them, maybe not right away but eventually. It will also cut down dramatically consumers purchasing plugins that dont work and are not supported.


Again all this needs to be placed in the TOS so that developers know up front what will happen if they abandoned their plugin. 


Allow the original developer to buy the plugin back from the auction for 3x the plugin rate (which cannot be changed (reduced) to benefit the developers re-purchase) This will serve as a penalty for letting the plugin go south in the first place. And help pay for any additional manpower required to run the program.


"the current license holders of the plugin will be forwarded to the new owners of the plugin. And the new owners must agree to give current license holders continued support for a simple one time fee of not more than $5.00" 


this will cause several things to occure.  First plugins with alot of license owners (popular abandoned plugins) will get updated quickly because there is money to be made immediately by the developer. Then license owners will not have to pay the full fee for the plugin again but only a minimal $5.00 max and they are right back in business again with a new fresh updated copy of the plugin. 


This will require some minor update to the store code in order to keep track of who paid the $5.00 fee.
Also there will need to be a limit on paypal account associated with auctioned plugins.  We need to prevent bad developers from purchasing a plugin, getting the initial $5.00 fee for current licenses then letting the plugin go south and repeating the process over again.  So there will have to be some kind of check and balance for that possibility.

12. Store fee for developers, monthly or annual payment discount. 


13. Plugins (that dont work) not updated for 180 days need to be disabled. Plugins that work and DO NOT require updates have no limit on when to update next. 


14. Set a cap for plugin prices, there really should never be any plugin that is over $75, not for oxwall consumers.


15. Add a developer reply rating to the store.   If a developer replies to a support question as follows:
not more than 5 min they get 100 points,not more than 10 min they get 90 points,not more than 20 min they get 80 points,not more than 30 min they get 70 points,not more than 1 hour they get 50 points,not more than 3 hours they get 40 points,not more than 10 hours they get 20 points,not more than 24 hours they get 10 points,anytime after 24 hours they get 0 points. 
To regulate this have a checkmark that the developer must check in order to verify they have replied to the support issue. And then those points should be averaged by the number of tickets associated going forward and the percentage should be posted. 
This will help reflect those that give great support from those that dont. 

16. Provide a (optional) license free version of plugins, this will mean that there is no license key required to run use the plugin, a consumer can purchase a license free version for the baseprice of the plugin + no more than 220% percent markup for that version.  So for example a license free version for a plugin costing $20.00 would be no more than $64.00


17. Clear highlight points on the plugins... what it does... what it does NOT do.


18. Incompatibility with other popular plugins... and conflicts... (if any, to the best of the devs knowledge) clearly marked.


19. Last updated - Clearly- marked.


20. Much clearer plugin reporting proceedures and quicker followups.  Anyone that needs to report a plugin needs simple proceedures and quicker followups.


21. Crack down on Oxwall team members that do not support their product. 


22. Assign a oxwall team plugin captain every 3 months (quarterly) on a rotation basis to look at other team developers plugin sites and make sure they are sending the right message and putting the best face of oxwall forward to the public. And especially be sure they do not have any plugin complaints that have not been resolved or plugins that do not work.  At the end of the quarter the current captain will issue a report of thier findings and resolved issues and the overall status of team developers products. This report goes directly to Den,  Then a new captain is chosen for the next quarter.  


23. Create a facebook account for oxwall developement and allow developers and the public to sign up for the page.  This will be used as both a positive and negative reflection coments to the masses on who is doing a great job and who is not.  


24. Create a bug report system that the team will update with new bugs.  We cant let the public do it because it will be spammed for sure.  But it will allow the public to view it so that they can see the Oxwall bug roadmap and issues that they are aware of.  This will help keep repeated questions about the same bug out of the forum.  Bugs will be reported in same fashion to ross and ross will post them in the bug tracker system if they are valid bugs.  A link should be provided to the users on the Oxwall site to view the tracker and search feature for bug keywords. 


25. Add the ability to report plugins that dont work via a button. Just add a report button to the plugin store page.


26. Require that all support issues be handled via the support forum for the plugin, too many developers are doing support via email or private messages which keeps the public out of the loop or support issues and how the developer does at customer service. 
Ross this is a big one, so many developers hide their support issues and their lack of offering good support by saying they do so by mail, this has to be public not private. They need to use the system that is in place and not hide their support in private messages. 

27. Product Description: Many products lack the necessary, detailed description that a user must have. From false claims to leaving out necessary details, have asked for a refund multiple times due to the fact that the plugin did not do what it stated to do, or left out key information that  would come to find out after purchasing.


28. Developer Communication:  MULTIPLE issues when contacting developers about their products. Sometimes it is just a basic question when I am inquiring about their plugin, and other times it has been no responses after I purchase their plugins. If a dev can't respond to customer questions, they should not be selling their products.

29. Let me explain how this works i have noticed what some developers do like "ARON"
They just make unnecessary changes if there's any changes at all just to push their plugins as the 1st one on "LATEST" page so that users notice their plugins first. I doubt they make any changes this should be regulated to make them tell us what changes they made, if ou pay attention with aron is there's a new plugin he will update to push it down so his plugins show up 1st.
Ross here is my reply to webster on this, i thought it was important to include this.  There are so many complaints against Aron i really do feel that someone needs to put their foot down on him to bring him into line with the rest of us. If any developer is dragging down the store success its him, he would be the posterboy for that.
 Webster i actually sent an email to ross about this very thing oh about 2 years ago when i noticed this same thing. I noticed that all of his plugins hit the update at the same time and there were pages and pages of them, so i ask ross to check it out and he said yes he did update them, so i dropped it.  But i didnt think that aron may have been making small text changes or something simple to get them on the list, that cannot continue to happen. 

30. Someone mentioned developers creating multiple accounts in the store to scam users. How are developer accounts confirmed? Do you actually check to make sure they are real people? 


31. Must have enforced coding standards, they really do need to be inforced. 

32. Clearly mark any conflicts with existing "default - base" plugins. 


33. Require some kind of demo of the plugin, either by website or by video demo on youtube.  


34. If it is determined by the oxwall moderation team or den that a developer has taken unfair advantage of a consumer, the team can demand that the developer either fix the plugin or give a refund to the consumer. This must happen within the first 60 days of the sale. If the developer refuses either option or does not comply then the plugin will be put up for auction and the developer will waive the time required for auction. 


35. minimum of 10 topics on front page of store. So increase the number of topics shown to 10


In closing,  

There comes a time that oxwall has to put their foot down hard in order to protect the longevity of oxwalls store survival.  There is no way to make everyone happy and regardless what oxwall does to correct the store issues, someone is going to get mad. But tough times call for hard decisions and what is best for the business.  We have to start cracking down on the lacking of enforcement of the store policies and take quick direct action before the consumer confidence is so bad that there is no recovery option to bring it back.  Once it is lost it is lost forever.   Once the good developers stop making sales, they will leave and none of us wants this.  


We can still save this if we act quickly and decisively and show the users that oxwall will take more measures to help protect their investment and even show developers that the rules are there for a reason and they WILL be strongly inforced.  This is how you regain the respect and quality that the store once stood for. 


I wanted to personally thank Den and Ross for the opportunity to do this research. And for their willingness to take a look at our suggestions in real time to help resolve some very serious issues regarding the current store situation.  

  
Oxwall all the way, thanks guys and gals... :)
Dave 
---------------------------


Thanks everyone... dave :)

The Forum post is edited by dave Oct 30 '16
dave Leader
dave Oct 31 '16
Marcus some of yours are included, some are not because honestly i could not understand them.  Also we cant require mobile support, it would be detrimental to the success. We can ask that a checkmark be added in the event it does support mobile or at least be sure that developers say so to the best of their ability, but we cant require it, not at this time. 


I have added the test site idea, and the solved idea.  i missed those sorry. 


Plugin control is already suppose to be happening in the moderation stage.


The report button is already on the list. 


We cant force developers to commit, it has to be voluntary, i wish it was not that way but if they have no intention of being better, forcing them will just make it worse.  We have to manage it via whats important to those kinds of developers, money and taking it away. 


Chris, have added the extra comment about facebook.  

Senior Developer Leader
Senior Developer Oct 31 '16
It looks like I'm late on this party.


I disagree with the auctions, If for some reason stop making updates, I rather make my plugins open source so anybody can edit it, add some features and resell it at the price that they want. And the users that don't need the new features can have the old plugin for free with the old oxwall version.

An auction on dead plugins is somehow bad, because:


1.- The auctions could be manipulated, always. 

2.- The new owner can resell the rights on that plugin, so that opens a new business for non developers, i don't like that.

3.- There is something called retroactivity, so this new terms and conditions, will only affect to new plugins and not old pugins, so the main problem (aron's plugins, puru's plugins and other dev's plugins) can not be solved with that.



dave Leader
dave Oct 31 '16
Great points SD,  and thanks for chiming in.  Better late than never i say :)  


Regardless of the solution and the reason for the auction idea, whatever they do has to solve several issues. 


1. Allow users who have purchased the plugin to continue to use it even when its pulled from the store. 


2. Allow the plugin to be updated or a new plugin developed in its place. 


3. Pay Oxwall for any additional manpower which would be involved in the management and enforcement of the new store policies. 


4. Give users with current licenses of the plugin (if updated) a way to get the updated version at little to no cost. So they dont have to repurchase the same plugin again.


5. Somehow reward the developer which takes over the plugin. 


If we can find some process which solves these issues then i think we have a winner, and im all ears.


One of my earlier ideas was to just have each developer commit to taking over 2 of purus plugins each, updating them and offering them for free.  However that went over like a rock in water.  

The Forum post is edited by dave Oct 31 '16
Webster Molaudi
Webster Molaudi Nov 1 '16
Hi Dave,

"One of my earlier ideas was to just have each developer commit to taking over 2 of purus plugins each, updating them and offering them for free.  However that went over like a rock in water."

I would love to see this happen because my site runs on 70% of his plugins and i paid a lot i wouldn't mind $5 - $10 to have them updated so they work proper.
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