Add-on "Status: Disabled by Mozilla "

I recently uploaded an add-on which is a revival of a now non-compatible version I had uploaded many years ago.

Just a few minutes after submission the status of the add-on turned to “Disabled by Mozilla”. I sent an email to amo-admins[at]mozilla.com asking about the reason of the deactivation, but for 2 weeks now I’ve got no answer.

The add-on has afterwards got successfully published for Chrome and Edge browsers:

  1. Social Friend Finder (for Chrome)
  2. Social Friend Finder (for Edge)

Is there a way to find out what the reason for the deactivation was and if possible to fix it and republish the add-on?

Visit your developer hub: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/addons

Then for your addon click “More” / “Manage Status & Versions”.

There you will see all versions and each one has “Review History” which should tell you more (maybe some messages from reviewer).
Good luck! :slight_smile:

1 Like

@juraj.masiar

Thank you very much for your answer!

By clicking “Review history” I don’t see any messages, only a textarea with a placeholder “Leave a reply”, but the form is grayed out and I can’t leave a message to the reviewers.

So there no text at all? It should always say some text…
Did you get some warnings / errrors after uploading?
Also, are you sure you didn’t clicked “Disable” button by accident? I know there is one in the final page when releasing new version :slight_smile:.

Anyway, what you can do is try again - increase the addon version in the manifest file and release it again.

No, there is no messages at all.
I haven’t clicked the Disable button. The status is “Disabled by Mozilla”.
I have already tried reuploading the add-on with a greater version number.

The reupload fails with this error: “Your add-on failed validation with 1 error. Duplicate add-on ID found.” When I visit the Validation results I only see green check marks and no errors.

If you are uploading as a New Version of the existing add-on, you should not get a duplicate ID error. Unless someone else’s add-on also has that same ID, which would be unusual.

Oh wait –

Did you change the extension ID in the new version? If not, you probably need to do that.

The old add-on has vanished from the system. It was from the XUL overlay era and it does not appear in the list of my uploaded add-ons any more.

In the browser_specific_settings of the manifest, I have set my own id which is an email address.

Maybe the fact that the add-on has got the status “Disabled by Mozilla”, means that I can not even upload an updated version of it?

Is there any way to directly contact the review team?

As I have already written, I have sent an e-mail to amo-admins[at]mozilla.com since November the 5th, but I never got a reply.

So are there any alternatives for conatcting someone who is qualified to give an answer?

Sorry, I have to ask again…
Is there a way to contact a reviewer?

So far I have sent an email to amo-admins@mozilla.com (that’s about 1 and a half months ago)
I have also sent a message to https://twitter.com/mozamo
and lastly I have written a message on https://matrix.to/#/#addon-reviewers:mozilla.org room.

Always the same result, no answer!

In case someone knows an alternative way of communication let me know.

I don’t know if this will help, but you could ask on Matrix at #addons:mozilla.org.

https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#addons:mozilla.org

That’s the room I first wrote to. I didn’t get an answer, but someone referred me to https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#addon-reviewers:mozilla.org

Same result, no answer.

It seems Mozilla reviewers have vanished!

Having the same issue with https://github.com/ActivityWatch/aw-watcher-web

Managed to reply in the listing comments, but it’s now been 16 days without reply. Our users have been complaining here: https://github.com/orgs/ActivityWatch/discussions/818

The review process is very frustrating, your reviewers often do not follow our instructions and when we respond with a comment telling them that they have not followed our instructions, they never respond and then two weeks later our extension is just disabled - even versions that were previously approved. How can we get a timely reaction to incorrect instructions without disabling our extension.

Hello, did they removed suspension for you?

This specific issue has been solved, but the add-on is currently self-hosted, because the reviewers didn’t allow it to get publicly listed on AMO.

I may be able to dig up some more information for you. Could you share the ID of the add-on you submitted to AMO?

I’m not sure if you are referring to my add-on.
In case you do its id is: developer@sffaddon.com
And here is the add-on itself: https://sffaddon.com/fxaddon/social_friend_finder-4.2.1-fx.xpi

Yep, I was referring to you, @CostasAthan. I was replying directly to your post, but unfortunately Discourse’s UI doesn’t make that very easy to see :confused:

I only see a very small amount of history for that ID and nothing terribly useful at that. If you can, I’d suggest submitting your latest version as a listed add-on on AMO to get a fresh perspective.

You can read more about that in this topic: Add-on listing and Mozilla policy

I may do as you suggest, but I’m not sure that it will make a difference if there isn’t a rule change, although the rule is obviously arbitrarily applied.

I’m sorry that the AMO review process has been so rough for you. If you’d be open to sharing more, please book an Office Hours session with me to talk about your experiences.