Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog
Categories: developers

Join us and help reviewing add-ons!

4 responses

The long version

If you’re an add-on developer and have an add-on hosted on AMO, you should be familiar with our review process. You’ve had to wait in line, sometimes for long, to get your add-on code reviewed and ultimately published. Waiting for your submission to be approved can be frustrating, specially when it takes longer than expected. It’s even worse if it is rejected for some reason and you need to resubmit and go through the whole thing all over again.

In the past couple of years we have been working hard to reduce waiting times, and we were doing really well. New add-ons were reviewed in under 2 weeks and updates in under 5 days. All was well and we were all pretty happy.

Then 2 things happened: Firefox 4 was launched, and we reformed our review process in a way that demanded all add-ons submissions to be reviewed. We are now getting much more submissions (which is great!), and while we have been able to keep updates reviews roughly under a week, new submissions are taking longer than we would like.

The short version

We could use your help! As some of you should know, the review team (known as AMO Editors) is composed mostly of volunteer add-on developers who lend their spare time to help us review add-ons and make sure they’re safe to use.

If you’re an add-on developer and want to help us, I encourage you to visit the AMO Editors page and learn how to apply.

Why become an AMO Editor?

I can think of a number of reasons:

  • The more editors we have, the shortest the waiting times will be for all developers, yourself included.
  • You’ll gain a ton of development experience by analyzing the coding and design practices of many other developers. Plus, you’ll be part of a small community of very experienced add-on developers.
  • Editors help guide our add-on policies and provide valuable feedback to the rest of the AMO team on their development experience.
  • Every so often we hold editor competitions with awesome prizes. A few months ago we had a very successful one, where the top ranking editors won phones and a laptop.
  • The most active editors make a significant contribution to the Mozilla project and are highly appreciated.
  • Becoming a notable AMO Editor is a step in the right direction if you want to become much more involved with Mozilla and take a more formal position. That was certainly my case :).

We’re thinking of other ways to give incentives to editors so we will get more applications and have better retention within our group. If you have any ideas, fire away in the comments.

4 comments on “Join us and help reviewing add-ons!”

  1. mcgooley wrote on

    I am a member of stampboards,com and I also have a photobucket account.

    I love mozilla, but I find it slightly frustrating that every time I update to the L&G firefox, I have to wait before I can access the new uploads to photobucket.

    As a simple user, I know I have no control over what the ‘powers-that-be’ choose to do, but is there any way I can be forewarned of what is, and is not, available as add-ons to the latest editions?

    I post this question on behalf of many SB members who prefer firefox, but have neither the knowledge nor the expertise to go the extra mile to find out what they can do. (Stamp Collectors are generally in an older age bracket, and are not necessarily techno-savvy.)

    Thanks

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      I’m not sure if you’re talking about the PhotoBucket website, the stampboards website, or an add-on that helps use either one of them. Either way, we announce to developers well in advance when a new Firefox release is coming, and give them enough time to update so that everything will work correctly by the time the final release is out. Unfortunately, not everyone is as responsive and users such as yourself end up being affected.

      My recommendation to you is that you follow the Mozilla Blog (http://blog.mozilla.org) and look for beta version announcements. These are preliminary releases that happen before the final release. When a new beta version is out, you can download it and install it in your system to test and see if the websites/add-ons/whatever are up to date, and then you’ll know beforehand if you should update immediately or wait a little longer.

      If you need more info about this, you can contact me directly at jorge AT mozilla DOT com

  2. turbo wrote on

    Do you have to know any web development languages or your job is just to see if everything works fine?

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      You need to have at least some experience in add-on development. So that means knowledge in XUL, JavaScript and the Mozilla platform.