Long reviews are deleted on AMO, without warning

Describe the problem and steps to reproduce it:

Posted long reviews (to combat license issues):
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webrtc-control/reviews/914382/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noflash/reviews/914401/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dynamichistory/reviews/914375/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/reviews/914416/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bloody-vikings/reviews/914363/

I measured the file size of text in a stand alone document: 4.9 kb

What happened?

They were deleted after 12 hours or so.

What did you expect to happen?

That they should stay.

Anything else we should know?

Please send a copy of the deleted reviews and say were they have been deleted, so I have a chance to send them to someone else. Some people don’t provide any email or bug trackers so you have to send them the issue as a Review.

1 Like

The length of a review has no bearing in this case.

Where those the reviews that related to Source Code Form License?

If so, they did not appear to be a review of the addon but a comment about its licence. The same texts were also posted to multiple addons verbatim.

Example:

by David Hedlund on September 4, 2017 ¡ permalink From https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/ Exhibit A - Source Code Form License Notice This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this file, You can obtain one at https://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/. If it is not possible or desirable to put the notice in a particular file, then You may include the notice in a location (such as a LICENSE file in a relevant directory) where a recipient would be likely to look for such a notice. You may add additional accurate notices of copyright ownership. * Can you please download https://www.mozilla.org/media/MPL/2.0/index.txt, rename the file from index.txt to LICENSE, and put it in the root directory for your add-on? * You can copy pre-defined headers from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/headers/ if you want to use them.

Another example:

[I’ll give you 5 stars once you have fixed this.] I’m working as a volunteer for the Free Software Directory. Your program is free software so in principle it should be listed there, and I’d like to add it. But it has some problems in showing what its license is. Would you please fix them, for the sake of users and other developers? Once your version with fixed license issues is public available on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ageless/ we will review it, and if it meet our requirement I will approve http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Ageless_for_YouTube. Once approved it will be listed on the official GNU IceCat add-on list at https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/IceCat. GNU IceCat is the GNU variant of Firefox. See https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/librejs/ if you want to study a well licensed add-on. # Issues ## No full copy of the license file included There are no full copy of the license file The root directory don’t have a COPYING file with a copy of the software license. A plain text version of MPL 2.0 can be found here: https://www.mozilla.org/media/MPL/2.0/index.txt ## Lack of full license headers in each file There are no (full) license notices in the non-trivial source files The source files in Ageless for YouTube don’t have notices saying you are the copyright holder and/or that they are released under MPL 2.0. I’m writing to ask you to please put a notice on each nontrivial source file. Selecting a license on a website that hosts the add-on (like addons.mozilla.org), will only show it there, the source files won’t be modified. First, here’s why license notices are needed. The purpose of a license notice is to state formally that a certain file may be used under the terms of a particular license. The MPL, like most free software licenses, applies to whatever material is released under that license. It does not say anything about which programs are released that way. Therefore, simply including a copy of the MPL with some code does not release the code under the terms of the MPL. To do that, you need a license notice, which says, more or less, “We the copyright holders release this code under the MPL.” The source files should be accompanied by a copyright notice, which says who “we” copyright holders are. That takes the form “Copyright YEAR NAME”. For the MPL, there are two other reasons for a license notice: to say which version of the MPL applies, and (for LICENSE 2.0), to say whether the MPL’s option of GPL compatibility applies. It is enabled by default in MPL 2.0, but users should have an explicit statement of where things stand for any particular code. The license notice is where you specify this. Why should the license notice be on each source file? Because doing it at the package level is error-prone. In the free software community, it is not unusual to copy a file from a free program into some other context. If the source file doesn’t have its own license notice, then its licensing comes from the original context. In the other context, its licensing may not be clear. It may not be stated at all, or it could be stated wrong. For instance, what if the other program says, “This program is released under Apache 2.0”, or “This program is released under GNU GPL, version 3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.” The result would be to misinform users about the file’s licensing. People sometimes copy part of a file, too. If the file has a license notice, people know to preserve that notice when copying part of the file’s code. Otherwise, the licensing will probably get lost. A different problem can happen if you copy code into Ageless for YouTube from some other package. Your package-level license notice would say it is under MPL 2.0, but what if it actually carries some other license, such as Apache 2.0, or GPL Version 3 or later? Keeping a license notice in each file is the way to reliably show users what their rights are. Please don’t let uncertainty creep in. You’ve made a decision about the license – would you please announce it in a way that won’t get forgotten? Other people can use your work with bad intentions, even if the mistake were honestly unintentional. That is why, unfortunately, we have to take lots of time with verifying the legality of everything. See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html for how to apply license notices. # Licenseutils * sudo apt-get install licenseutils * Licenseutils 0.0.8 can edit .js files (see patch). If you use a earlier version you need to temporary rename your .js files to .cpp (Javascript comments are the same as c++) until JS have been implemented (see fix) and then rename them back to .js. * Run this but with your name/copyright year/license: licensing notice -c ‘Yoyodyne,\ Inc.\ 2001’ -l gpl -s c -n *.cpp # References These issues are compatible with the policy listed in Free Software Directory, Requirements.

Yes, is it not permitted to post issues?

What triggered AMO to delete them?

Please post all support questions/requests or issues to their support pages (if they have any).

AMO policy … deleting any review that is not a review (e.g. bug report, support questions, feature request, spam, advertising, profanity, etc)

You can try contacting Admin to see if they can pass your queries to them via their email.

1 Like

AMO policy … deleting any review that is not a review (e.g. bug report, support questions, feature request, spam, advertising, profanity, etc)

Ok, I understand. Is this done automatically (eg by detecting long reviews)?

You can try contacting Admin to see if they can pass your queries to them via their email.

Thank you. How do I contact them?

You can try on IRC #addons

Thank you. I’ll do that.

But the issue remain unsolved, Long reviews are deleted on AMO, without warning.

As I said, long reviews are NOT deleted. Your reviews were deleted because they were not reviews. They were not deleted because they were long.

The issue is that I was NOT warned.

At the moment, there is no warning system in place to do so.

Can you please ask some admins to add it?

TBH, there are 100s of spams that are deleted everyday and sending a notification to each one is impractical.

I guess you are right about that.

I discovered side effect in the rating system.

The ratings for deleted Reviews are kept, and they cannot be deleted by the user who submitted them (because they are deleted).

Can you please change so that the ratings for deleted Reviews is also deleted?

It is not up to me. I have also mentioned the same. It is supposed to be fixed.

1 Like

Thanks, I asked Diox to re-open the issue.

I also made the experience that as soon as you talk about serious technical issues of the addon (for example security holes, privacy issues or questionable techniques to monetize the addon), the developer can successfully flag the review for being “technical” and then it gets deleted.

But I think these are valid issues to talk in a review.