Posted in the addons review thread but the last 10+ comments there seem to have been ignored…
I’m having issues with my getting my addon approved. It’s pretty basic, and is open source.
Is there a way to request a different reviewer, please?
The reviewer unicorn2020 seems to be well known [1] [2] for being unnecessarily difficult to work with.
My experience with the Chrome web store has been much better.
Mozilla is short of stuff, so fixing the issue may be a better approach 
.
Also, I’ve read the blog you linked and I have to say his build process was way too complex.
If you have a build system, then your build steps should be as simple as possible, like:
npm i
npm run build
And not installing packages globally (what version??) and adding things to PATH? That’s just insane. Imagine you being a reviewer and getting this kind of steps…
And even after all that, the result build doesn’t match! 
. I’m surprised there are actually people that want to do this kind of work, because it’s for sure not easy.
Anyway, there are skilled addon developers here, maybe we can help .
PS: I had to deal with addon rejections in all stores and in Chrome it was the worst - it took weeks to release an update and the problem was “tags list” in my description!
And Apple made me remove a video of my addon because of the donation buttons visible on my homepage in the video (all payments must go through Apple so they can cut their 30%). And there is even more insane stories… So trust me, it get even worse!
Thanks for your reply
I try and remember this is a volunteer-led program but it just feels like that seems to equal no accountability and very limited communication?
Yeah, I appreciate that the blog post steps were quite involved. It’s just not very encouraging to see. Neither are the countless posts here that never seem to get resolved…? 
My other issue is that I’m not really a developer, more of a sysadmin. I’ve just built a simple plugin as part of an open-source project we’re working on to fill password forms. It’s in beta and I thought that was the point of the experimental flag.
Developing my first addon through docs, StackOverflow, and YouTube tutorials was quite fun to be honest.
But then after all that effort, I’m sure you understand the frustration that the issue Mozilla had was that it wasn’t “appealing” enough…
Content rejected by unicorn2020 5 days ago
To help users discover your extension and decide if they want to install it, please include more information in your add-on listing. […] For more tips on how to create an appealing listing, please visit https://developer.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Listing.
This was after the addon had been automatically approved, so they took down the listing instead of giving me a chance to adjust it and “add” (reword to make it look longer) more detail. And now I’ve got the same reviewer making me jump through more hoops.
It’s just frustrating I guess, especially as there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot wrong with the add-on? Now the issue seems to be that it’s for a limited audience, despite this being very similar to something like the KeePass HTTP connector or nearly any other password/form filling addon (with the exception there’s no public SaaS version - self-host only currently).
Is this likely to continue to be an issue? Would it be easier if this was self-distributed at all? I really don’t have the time or the energy to keep going back and forth at the moment
I know the feeling, when you are doing something good for others for free and yet they treat you like some enemy.
But as I found out myself, even the “free” has some minimal requirements .
And the second problem is all those malicious addons in the mix.
So reviewer (with their limited time) needs to be able to distinguish what is good and what is evil. And that can be pretty hard even for pros (see these deep analysis from adguard and avast).
But don’t be discouraged, usually it’s a one-time issue and later on things should be smooth (they don’t have time to check all addons and all updates anyway).
And when replying to a reviewer, try to make it short. The guy on the other side is just like you and me - a lazy developer () with a bunch of deadlines that doesn’t have time to argue with some random person.
I know the reviewers can be tough but I believe it’s because of all the shit they have to through every day (imagine arguing with kids, trolls, automated bots, amateurs, evil devs, and some normal persons - again, who would want to do this kind of job! ) .
Again, thank you for explaining a little more. Had a read over the links you posted and I have no idea how the review process would even hope to catch these, to be honest. Especially where some are sending requests to a remote server, and then the response changes to something malicious after a certain time - I can see why someone would be cautious regarding this.
To be honest I made this post more in the frustration surrounding the review process as I have very limited free time during the week outside of work and have wasted it arguing with the reviewer.
I’ll keep pushing through and maybe eventually we’ll get there. As you say, they can’t possibly have time to check all addons and updates after this!
Thanks again for your insights, appreciate your time.