{"id":7202,"date":"2014-07-14T11:14:19","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T18:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/?p=7202"},"modified":"2014-07-14T11:14:19","modified_gmt":"2014-07-14T18:14:19","slug":"the-amo-reviewer-community-turns-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/2014\/07\/14\/the-amo-reviewer-community-turns-10\/","title":{"rendered":"The AMO Reviewer Community Turns 10"},"content":{"rendered":"

A decade ago, Firefox introduced\u00a0the world to a\u00a0customizable\u00a0web browser. For the first time, you\u00a0could use\u00a0add-ons<\/a> to\u00a0personalize\u00a0your entire browsing experience\u2014from the look and feel of buttons, to tab behaviors, to content filtering. Anyone with coding skills could\u00a0create an add-on and submit it\u00a0to addons.mozilla.org<\/a> (AMO) for others to use. The idea that you could experience the web on your own terms was a powerful one,\u00a0and today,\u00a0add-ons have been downloaded close to\u00a04 billion times.<\/p>\n

Each add-on listed on\u00a0AMO\u00a0is thoroughly\u00a0reviewed<\/a>\u00a0to ensure its\u00a0privacy\u00a0and safety, and volunteer reviewers\u00a0have shouldered much of this effort. To properly inspect\u00a0an add-on, a reviewer\u00a0has to\u00a0dig into the code\u2014a taxing and often thankless chore. Nobody notices when an add-on works as expected, but everybody notices when an add-on with a security flaw gets through. These reviewers\u00a0are truly unsung heroes.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0the beginning, volunteers recognized the importance of reviewing add-ons, and self-organized\u00a0on wiki pages<\/a>. As add-ons\u00a0grew in popularity, it became necessary to hire a few people out of this\u00a0community to keep it organized and nurtured. Ten years later,\u00a0volunteers\u00a0are still responsible for about half of all add-on reviews\u00a0(about 150\u00a0per week). Our top volunteer reviewer is approaching 9,000 reviews.<\/p>\n

As a community manager working with volunteer reviewers, I’m sometimes asked what the secret is behind this enduring and resilient community. The secret is there isn’t just one thing. Anyone who’s ever tried\u00a0giving away free food and booze\u00a0as their primary community-building strategy has learned how quickly the law of diminishing returns kicks in.<\/p>\n

What’s In It For Me?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

To understand why people get involved with reviewing add-ons, and why they\u00a0stay involved, you only\u00a0have to\u00a0understand human nature. Altruism tells just\u00a0part of the story. People are often surprised when I tell them that many\u00a0reviewers began volunteering for selfish reasons. They are\u00a0add-on developers themselves, and wanted their add-ons to be reviewed faster.<\/p>\n

Some of these developers authored\u00a0add-ons that are\u00a0used by tens of thousands, sometimes millions of people, so it’s\u00a0important to be able to push out updates quickly. Since reviewers are not allowed to review their\u00a0own add-ons, the only way to speed things up is\u00a0to help burn down the queue. (Reviewers can also\u00a0request expedited reviews of their add-ons.) Also, they can\u00a0learn how other people make add-ons, which in turn helps them\u00a0improve their own.<\/p>\n

Intrinsic Motivation<\/strong><\/h3>\n

People\u00a0who create add-ons are people who write code, so the\u00a0code itself can be\u00a0interesting and intrinsically motivating. In Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us<\/a>, <\/em>Daniel Pink writes\u00a0that\u00a0self-motivated work tends to be\u00a0creative, challenging, and non-routine, and add-on reviewing has it all:\u00a0every piece of code is different (creative),\u00a0security flaws can be cleverly concealed (challenging), and\u00a0reviewers contribute at their own pace (non-routine).<\/p>\n

Not Just Carrots and Sticks<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A few years ago, we\u00a0began awarding points for add-on\u00a0reviews and introduced a leaderboard that lets reviewers see their progress against other reviewers. The points could also be redeemed for swag as part of\u00a0an\u00a0incentive program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While this is admittedly a\u00a0carrot-and-stick approach to engaging contributors, it serves a larger\u00a0purpose. By devoting time and resources\u00a0to sending handwritten notes and small tokens, we are\u00a0also sending the message that reviewers are\u00a0important and appreciated. When you open your mailbox and there’s a Fedex package containing\u00a0a special-edition\u00a0t-shirt in your size, you know your efforts haven’t gone unnoticed.<\/p>\n

Community and Responsibility<\/strong><\/h3>\n

AMO reviewers know that they play an important role in\u00a0keeping Firefox extensible, and that their work directly impacts the experience people have installing add-ons. Since about\u00a0half of the hundreds of millions of\u00a0Firefox\u00a0users\u00a0have add-ons installed, that is no small feat. I’ve heard from reviewers that they stick around because\u00a0they like being part of a community of awesome people\u00a0who are\u00a0responsible for keeping add-ons safe to use in Firefox.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Magic Formula<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Online communities are complex, their\u00a0fabric woven from a mesh of intrinsic and extrinsic, selfish and altruistic motivations. A healthy, lasting community benefits from a combination of these factors, in varying proportions, some of them driven by the community and some by the\u00a0attentive community-builders tasked with nurturing it.\u00a0There isn’t a silver bullet; rather, it’s about\u00a0finding your own magic formula and knowing\u00a0that often, the secret ingredient is whatever it is that makes us human.<\/p>\n

Happy 10th birthday, AMO reviewers.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

The original text of this blog post appears in MozAmy<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A decade ago, Firefox introduced\u00a0the world to a\u00a0customizable\u00a0web browser. For the first time, you\u00a0could use\u00a0add-ons to\u00a0personalize\u00a0your entire browsing experience\u2014from the look and feel of buttons, to tab behaviors, to content … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":377,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,581],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe AMO Reviewer Community Turns 10 - Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/2014\/07\/14\/the-amo-reviewer-community-turns-10\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Amy Tsay\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/2014\/07\/14\/the-amo-reviewer-community-turns-10\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/2014\/07\/14\/the-amo-reviewer-community-turns-10\/\",\"name\":\"The AMO Reviewer Community Turns 10 - 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