Well put. I recently in the last couple months took away my previous support for a few projects that I felt were not getting proper support. I won't name them here so as not to detract from them. I did actually like a couple of them. One of them was a front end app that I felt was lacking in proper development and support. They had rolled out changes in what appeared to be a completely un-tested and un-validated method, breaking web functionality for most users beyond basic viewing.
As a past IT professional, this was not the type of paid development resources I was used to seeing, nor was the followup break/fix handled with any sense of urgency, simply comments like "it works in the app, have you tried that instead of web browser". Well, my answer was no. the work I am doing to manage a group is much more time efficient on the computer and web interface. They are welcome to continue their hobby of playing with code, but that level of non-diligence and attitude is not suitable for a production front-end (nor any app imho). Hence, I "fired" them by removing my DHF vote and also removing my 4 figure delegation. I won't go so petty as to downvote them or publicly chastise them, as I believe their founders had good intent and actually liked their interface for a few things. It was a shame to see the sloppy development put an end to my use of it.
Totally agree more transparency is needed here. Not nitpicky, but at least some targets and key milestones of what done in past and what planned for future. As you state, this is a paid effort, not a developer charity and they should act like it.
Just a note, those are in the small minority. The vast majority of dev's are doing a great job I think, and a shame to see the laggards tarnishing those active folks reputation, and causing the need for extra efforts. Kudo's to those that are working hard to improve our platform and keep it running! I certainly want to see their rewards continue to increase and be funded.
There is little professionalism in the development. I think it was okay back in the Steem days, but there should be the expectation of a bit more polish now.
I agree, but they need to have transparency too. This is a community, so there should be some level of community outreach. It is the same with the witnesses - they should be more engaged as humans with the community. Otherwise we may as well just run 20 witness nodes by the same person. What is the difference?
An easy question to answer. But that is my point, without the people showing their faces/positions and being part of the discussions, they are all the same.
alpha.ecency.com is the test site for Ecency and we can always use knowledgeable testors before doing releases. I assume other front ends have something similar.
That is a great example of how proper development and testing should work, but still requires a proper procedure to utilize effectively.
An alternate site for folks to bang upon and to test all functionality works before releasing to the masses. I know just enough to realize that this is not going to catch everything, but should certainly catch the vast majority of larger issues.
The other critical portion is having a backout and/or rollback plan. If significant workflows/functions are not working in a new release within a reasonable timeframe, someone needs to pull the plug and revert back to older versions known to be stable and working until they are fixed and then try again...
Your devotion and hard work supporting the Ecency project and helping others utilize it (including myself) are commendable.
Website migration Ecency did was a major change. They completely rewrote the entire codebase in three months and after release there were undetected glitches. We had to suggest people use a rollback site while devs worked it all out.