Extremely long waiting time for review

Add-ons addons.mozilla.org
#1

Hey mozillians,

I really love Firefox and Mozilla ecosystem. I have developed Mozilla extension for 6 years and nowadays I faced ridiculous problem: I am waiting for my add-on review for 3 months!

When the same version already have 100k+ users in Chrome Store and full FIVE star rating I can’t even publish my extension on AMO! Agrh!

We develop pretty strait forward extension that allows people in restricted areas (such as Iran, Russia or China) bypass regional firewalls and have full and free access to Internet. Our service is completely free and reliable.

So, Mozilla’s mission is “to keep the Internet alive and accessible”, isn’t it? Please, please, approve us. We are good guys.

Add-on URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hotspot-shield-free-vpn-proxy-/

Love!

#2

@jorgev, Could you please help me?

#3

Uh, now the queue position is even increasing. )

#4

We are experiencing the same problem. We’ve been waiting for 1 month for a preliminary review which used to take 1-2 days, if not within 24 hours.

#5

I thought it was just me, I already tried contacting them via IRC and email, no reply back from anyone. I suspect this would only occur if something big has been happening.

Strangest thing is that the review queues have been decreasing, I don’t remember if the queue has ever been smaller than 200 for the past year and it currently dropped down to 147 (one can only assume add-ons are still being reviewed) but my add-on feels completely ignored and, like you said, the reviews used to be fast, no longer than 2 days for me and sometimes less than 24h.

I have even observed on certain occasions my queue position increasing instead of decreasing as if somehow people are able to push add-ons ahead the preliminary review queue or someone is pushing the add-on behind manually.

It would be appreciated to have an official feedback on this situation to make things clear. Currently it feels like AMO is almost abandoned or being run by just one new reviewer that is only reviewing simple submissions and leaving behind all less-simple updates.

#6

(not official feedback)

From this blog post: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/10/14/add-ons-update-72/ :

We had a regression in review times in the last week or two due to reviewer availability, but we expect to catch up soon. We’re also adding another contractor to our team, hopefully soon.

Just from looking at your add-on listing, it is pretty big, 1.7Mb. That is a lot to review and it takes time. If you also supplied source code or if there are any special conditions about it (it has been admin-flagged), then only admins will be able to review it as well, which only increases the complexity, and thus waiting time, of the process.

There could also be a specific cause for that long delay, but I don’t have access to that info. But it is likely because of some degree of complexity with your add-on like I mentioned.

This happens when an add-on is put back in the queue after being reviewed; they are put back in the position they were before review. Usually this happens because it requires a second look or something came up that should have been considered in the review and wasn’t.

These cases shouldn’t happen very often though I believe.

You have to keep in mind that many reviews are done by volunteers, and most of them usually pick add-ons that are within their capabilities to review, or sometimes pick simpler add-ons because of time or other constraints. Which means they don’t necessarily always pick from the top of the queue because of that, or that the queues run smoothly all the time (see blog post linked above).

#7

This week we’ll be particularly slow to respond, since most of us are away at an event. The queues have also been slower than usual because of a reviewer who took a short break from reviewing. We hope to have him back soon.

We’re also in the process of getting a new contractor, who should make a big difference as well.

We’re really for the delays, but I’ll assure you that queue waiting times are our top concern now and we’re working on changing the current situation.

#8

Honestly, it feels like the queues have been flying for the past weeks (queue length decreasing by as much as 45 positions in 1 or 2 days), it’s just that some add-ons (like my add-on) haven’t been lucky enough to be part of that train, especially when it usually took no more than 2 days to be reviewed/rejected.

I really hope webextensions will decrease this work load significantly, would be really great to have less wait and less worry all around.

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