[wp-forums] Supporting Plugin Authors

[Les Bessant]

I think we can only really help in the case of plugins we're familiar with,
or we have the time (or inclination) to have a quick look at when someone
reports a problem.

For those plugins where the author isn't currently around, we're pretty much
all people have, of course. 


________________________________

Les Bessant les at lcb.me.uk
Losing it[1] - http://lcb.me.uk/

-----Original Message-----
From: wp-forums-bounces at lists.automattic.com
[mailto:wp-forums-bounces at lists.automattic.com] On Behalf Of Lorelle
VanFossen
Sent: 23 August 2005 01:12
To: WordPress Forum Discussion
Subject: [wp-forums] Supporting Plugin Authors

I'm starting to hear a lot of whines from WordPress plugin authors about 
the demand on their time and energy to provide support for their 
plugins. I'd like us to talk about how we can help them. Currently it is 
the semi-official policy that if people need help with plugins, they go 
to the author first, search second, and last resort, ask on the Forum. 
But I'm worried about "plugin author burnout". We need these creative folks.

We need to make it clear to plugin authors that clear and intelligible 
instructions need to be in a readme file and on a specific web page on 
their site. I think that plugin authors should "beta test" their 
instructions as much as their plugin to make sure they make sense. ;-)

And to be honest, some plugin authors get so jazzed about what they have 
done, they hype it all over the place, so everyone runs to it and then 
the author gets bombarded with support questions. It's great to have the 
fame, but there is a price to pay.

What can we do to help them out? Is there anything?

Lorelle

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