Plugin author not watching thread

[shinyfirefly]

What do we do when a plugin author is no longer responding to requests in the support thread?   There's probably not much that can actually BE donw but I'm such a noob when it comes to this stuff - I thought I'd venture to ask the question.

[Former Member]

Check out this thread, this is the only response I've really been given on the topic

[Wormopolis]

Depends on the author as well. There are some who are currently taking vacations that will be back. others just havent had the time due to personal reasons. Indeed there are a couple that seem to never respond, and I can only say if the plugin just wont work for you, dont use it until they decide to offer better support.

if the plugin is in the library and you feel like it deserves a low rating for offering no support, then give it one and put an explanation.

You can always send them a PM asking of they will be able to address your issue. if they dont respond to that, then they likely wont be offering support and their plugin will continue to get lower ratings.

[shinyfirefly]

Dec 29, 2013 16:55:17 GMT -8 jrryan said:

From what I've gathered if a plugin author fails to respond to enquiries about their plugin one is just at a loss to get any information about the plugin at all. Unless they allow people to edit, change or work on the plugin then you're just out of luck if you have any issues with it at all, I do believe?

That's what I thought the answer would be.  Unfortunately!  Oh well, obstacles were made to be overcome or ignored, right?

[shinyfirefly]

Dec 29, 2013 17:52:40 GMT -8 Wormopolis said:

Depends on the author as well. There are some who are currently taking vacations that will be back. others just havent had the time due to personal reasons. Indeed there are a couple that seem to never respond, and I can only say if the plugin just wont work for you, dont use it until they decide to offer better support.

if the plugin is in the library and you feel like it deserves a low rating for offering no support, then give it one and put an explanation.

You can always send them a PM asking of they will be able to address your issue. if they dont respond to that, then they likely wont be offering support and their plugin will continue to get lower ratings.

Thank you.  I think I will do that.  This author hasn't answered inquiries for several months, so hopefully that will be a prompt.

[Wormopolis]

There isnt a rule about writing a plugin to do the same thing as what another plugin does, only that you cant just steal their coding and slap your name on it.

but in my opinion, if someone else were to write a code that todge or shorty or pebble or any of the others had already written, it makes them look bad to me. like they wanted to ride the coat-tails of someone who already achieved success. I have written a few plugins that I completely scrapped because I found out pebble had written them already on IOD. or in the days of 4.5, I wrote a couple codes that I didnt know todge already had, so I either made them functionally different, or trashed them. the only codes I ever kept that had already been written before, I either contacted the author to make sure they were cool with it, or in certain cases just gave them credit when they couldnt be contacted. some authors have combined multiple codes into one and claimed authorship of the package. which I guess is fine, as long as credit is given where its due. dont just change 10 pixels to 15 pixels and say its a whole new world.


but again, that is MY opinion on the matter. not anything official.

we have discussed it in the staff boards before, and the general consensus was if an author stops supporting a plugin, then dont use their plugin until they do. create a new request for it and see if someone is willing to take it on just like any other new request.

[Former Member]

I think waiting a year would be a bit excessive, though, honestly. It doesn't take too many months for a roleplay to go down because an essential plugin for the way they operate is buggy and the author is awol. I personally have had to give up on a few plugins because I couldn't get support for it and it didn't work on my site, it's not very fun to leave so many sites out in the cold at times. I dunno, I guess to me I agree with most of what you said besides waiting an entire year.

[shinyfirefly]

Dec 31, 2013 12:29:04 GMT -8 ₪» ⅀ ƪ Ƒ «₪ said:

I think waiting a year would be a bit excessive, though, honestly. It doesn't take too many months for a roleplay to go down because an essential plugin for the way they operate is buggy and the author is awol. I personally have had to give up on a few plugins because I couldn't get support for it and it didn't work on my site, it's not very fun to leave so many sites out in the cold at times. I dunno, I guess to me I agree with most of what you said besides waiting an entire year.

Actually, you and I are trying to get support for the same plugin. You were in the support thread for the plugin I'm referring to. You asked for support in September. Section titles to images.

I'm going to wait a bit longer  and then request the plugin again.  But I'll be sure to post who the original author was so credit can be given when the new coder creates it.  It's a great plugin, and I'm sure Wormopolis (cough, cough) could handle it.

[Wormopolis]

Im writing the chess plugin currently