Categories: developers

2012 in Add-on Reviews

As we begin 2013, I thought it’d be a good idea to look back and see what we accomplished last year. Overall it was another good year for the review team, full of challenges and successes.

This year we had three major events:

  • New Year’s Challenge, where you cleared the review queues for the first time!
  • Our top contributors met with Kris, Amy and Andrew in Warsaw, Poland at MozCamp EU. Also, I got to meet Girish at MozCamp Asia.
  • We introduced the reviewer incentives program, something we’ve been talking about since 2010. Now we can show our appreciation for your extraordinary work and you have a good way to get cool Mozilla gear.

And now, some numbers for the year:

Nominations Updates Preliminary Super review Info request Total
2010 4602 (35%) 6874 (52%) 0 (0%) 275 (2%) 1568 (12%) 13,319
2011 5037 (24%) 9045 (43%) 5452 (26%) 484 (2%) 848 (4%) 20,866
2012 4056 (22%) 7819 (42%) 5673 (30%) 440 (2%) 765 (4%) 18,753

I was initially surprised to see that there had been fewer reviews done this year than last year, but it made sense after giving it some thought.

One contributing factor is the Default To Compatible feature in Firefox. Prior to this feature, every release required us to focus solely on updates for many weeks. Now, developers update their add-ons only when necessary.

Here are the top 10 reviewers of 2012:

Total Name
3437 Teo
1247 Diego Casorran
1050 Andreas Wagner
892 Nils Maier
476 Ken B
395 Archaeopteryx
377 Girish Sharma
374 Baris Derin
310 Axel Grude
70 Kent James

Volunteer reviews: 8992 (48%)

Last year we had approximately 58% volunteer contributions to reviews. The decrease is due to us increasing the amount of work contractors did for us, and also the fact that Kris joined us as an employee on 2011, shifting a significant number of reviews from the volunteer side to the non-volunteer side.

The good news is that the incentives program has reversed this trend, and recent reports have shown volunteer contributions up in the 60%-80% range.

A big thank-you!

I can’t tell you frequently enough how grateful we are for your contributions. AMO is a key Mozilla property, and the security and quality of its listings are vital for its success. Not only have we kept up with the pace of submissions, but we have also greatly increased the number of policies we enforce and the quality of the listings.

We know that reviewing code can be tedious, which makes it even more impressive that you volunteer your time to help us do this, especially those who have been on our team for years now.

Once more, thank you all. Here’s to another great year for the review team, and you being a part of it!

3 comments on “2012 in Add-on Reviews”

  1. custom.firefox.lady wrote on

    “…there had been fewer reviews done this year than last year”
    Early 2011 was the changeover to the requirement that AMO add-ons must get reviewed to be publicly shown, thus inflating reviews for that time period, I suspect.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      Good point, I hadn’t considered that.

  2. Ken Saunders wrote on

    Sincere thanks to all the reviewers.
    As a developer, I appreciative the speed in which my add-ons are reviewed, the helpful tips and follow-ups, and for your patience for when I don’t get things right and the same add-on need to be reviewed again. 🙂

    As an add-on user, and self-proclaimed add-on junkie, I trust that fully reviewed add-ons are safe to use and follow add-on policies and Mozilla common sense principles so my data and usage isn’t exploited, harvested, etc, and used in ways that I haven’t agreed to or been forewarned about.

    You all rock and are appreciated.