How do *you* generate feedback?

Crepusculu · 05-24-07, 10:19 AM

I've been working on addons for a few months and have published a few to the public and my guild. Probably the hardest thing I've found is to get people's reactions to my mods. I mean, getting a response or critic beyond the whole rating system. It would be like getting a grade on your English paper with zero markings on your mistakes -- it makes it difficult to improve.

For example, I just created a quick Addon Manager mod to play with Blizzard's new 2.1 functions. I got an impressive (impressive to me =p) 600 downloads, 8 favorites, 2 ratings of 3/5 and ZERO comments.

Zero comments! I mean, it appears the two people that rated my addon had some opinion about it, but I can only speculate about what issues they had with my mod. Was it producing errors? Missing functionality? Was the layout messy? Do I have poor taste in graphical design?

So, would anyone have suggestions on how to encourage feedback? I don't want to resort to begging.

Gemini_II · 05-24-07, 10:37 AM

Well to a degree, I hear your complaint and know the feeling. I'm glad I started publishing my compilation before the mass flood of custom packages started streaming forth at such blazing speed. That gave it a chance to establish itself.

What I have found is that no news, is good news. People generally don't go out of their way to post compliments or anything like that, but if something doesn't work right then you are certain to hear of it in a hurry.

Some suggestions would be to keep your mods located in one central place (like WowInterface

) and have all your references point to it. I'll think of more after some more coffee...

Siz · 05-24-07, 12:11 PM

As Gemini_II said, no feedback is good feedback. If there are plenty of downloads, but no comments, then at least you can feel confident that there are no bugs.

In order to encourage feedback about things other than bugs, such as feature requests and other comments, try to make it clear how active you are in the development. Post updates to the download page telling users of upcoming features or planned changes. Explicitly ask users to post any type of comments that they want to. If you're really desperate for feedback, throw in a little bug

I know that many of the good ideas for one of my addons have been added at the request of users. I'm not always motivated enough to add things for myself, but I enjoy putting time into things that I know others will find useful.

**Seerah** · 05-24-07, 12:17 PM

If you haven't yet, put a thread in the released addons forum here, too.