Inform the users about all addon functions and let them choose
 

Dear Traveller,

this post is about addons that have have hidden functions

These functions i am talking about
- have nothing to do with the purpose the addon it is installed for by the user
- are not mentioned in the Addon Info pages
- are not explained in the Change Logs or Release Notes
- are enabled by default
- can not be found in the addon settings and therefor not turned off.

I discovered a function called "CustomTitles" just recently and was surprised that authors of well-know addons eg. like SkyShards, LoreBooks, Destinations, AdvancedFilters, LUI Extended,... have this function included in all their addons.

So i ask the authors to look at this and give users a choice and control of function that are hidden.

So far i got replies from authors that have included function like this to their addons. Here is a quick summary:
- "Do not install the addon if you don't like it" - Well the user should be informed in the first place and have an option to chose for functions like these.
- "Delete the responsible files in the addon folders" - The function comes back after an update or (re-install)
- "I am the Dev and i did it that way, period." - Be open for changes and care about the users.
- "You are jealous" - No, users want to be informed in the first place.
- "There is other and worse stuff installed by addons" - Tell us, nobody likes software on their computer or smartphones w/o an optiont to not install it or disabling it. Same with hidden addon stuff.


I am writing this because it is important to treat users honestly, let them know in detail what is included and then let the enlightened user make a choice.


Thanks for reading you and good night!



/edit: Original post and title
Hello Zenimax,

i recently learned that there is an addon/lib called "CustomLibTitles" that allows titles to be overwritten.

Since its introduction this lib has been included into the most big addons:
SkyShards
LoreBooks
Destinations
LuiExtended
AwesomeGuildStore
RaidNotifier Updated

just to name a few.

In their release notes some addons mentioned the addition of this Lib, but most did not.
Also this LibCustomTitles is enabled by default, the user has no opt-out option and nothing is found in any addon settings to disable it.

Changeing titles (and maybe other stuff) can be very misleading - not only to new players - and it could also be used in a harmful and insulting manner.

ZoS, i want you to look into this and make changes. Don't let addons change such things on the fly w/o the permission of the user.

Addons have to get the permission of the user who install it and have a setting to turn it on (default behaviour off).

Or make Titles etc. read-only by default so prevent such things.

You are aware that you do not have to use any of these addons and if you do, you use them at your own risk? If you haven't done so, I suggest you read the add-on terms.

To add a bit of backstory to this specific library, it was created at a time when there where almost no addon authors left and the few that were still around started to get very frustrated because they took care of maintaining the most popular addons while getting nothing but complains from entitled users in return.
In order to vent a bit of that frustration and give us a sort of "reward", we collectivley decided that we want this library so we can mess with users and reward ourselves for our hard work. :P

The titles are curated and there is no intention to abuse this in a harmful or insulting way. Should that ever happen, you can rest assured that the lib will disappear from these addons in no time. So relax and accept it as it is. ;)

While I understand what you're trying to say, you're not thinking it through all the way: addons do all sorts of things far more dangerous (if misused) all of the time. If you had to manually approve everything even more so than that, most addons would have dozens of permissions that need approved and the addon size and development (for many) would end up being more checkboxes than addon.

If you want to remove the library:

• Open an offending addon.
• Open the .txt file.
• Delete the line that references it, such as: Libs/LibCustomTitles/LibCustomTitles.lua

In addition to what everyone else said, while it is of course possible for ZOS to hide it if they really wanted to, it would probably require them to rewrite quite a bit of stuff. Currently the titles are just UI stuff, and pretty much anything in the UI is global.

There is no offense, no exploit, no bad behavior caused by that addon, beside visual cool title on some of us.

I do not see at all why suddenly this could bother you.

I hope that ZoS will not take such a move just because of one

Personally, i may have encounter 1 or 2 on NA server, and i am playing since beta. And even if i admit i was quite a bit *grins* jealous of this, i truly enjoy to see those. Kind of good RP for me.

CustomTitles brings no functionality other than that and is not needed.
It is solely included by the addons authors to have their own "cool" title and include friends or beggars. Not sure if it has been used in a harmfull manner yet, but the potential is there.

Not sure if getting whispers is the right purpose So to all addon authors: DO NOT sneakily include stuff to your addon that has nothing to do with your addon, DO NOT enable it by default AND offer an option to turn it on (default off). You are doing it the wrong way so that ZoS sooner or later has to react.
Well i guess the addon others did the sneaky way on purpose - what youd be their benefit if it is disbaled by default and has to be turned on, right?

Include it, add an option to enable it in the seetings and let the users decide if they want your custom tiltes to be displayed.


CustomLib was started in March 2016 and has been around since, not since beta. It has nothing to do with RP, since only a few "control" these titles as you may know:
Well not surprised you are biased but it is sad to see you and the posters above been totally fine with the sneaky way CustomLib is distributed w/o any way to let the user decide.

Make it transparent, have a place where all interested players can add their CustomTitles and i am pretty sure it is fine.

So what is your real problem with this? You want to get your own title too?
You just want to ruin roleplay cuz ZOs lacks the ability to help the roleplayers?
You don't like addons and you want to punsh the addond evs in the face because they want to have their funny way of recognition?

I mean, you could just disable your addons (Settings available already) or delete the file of libCustomTitle from the addons manually.
You are the only one that is complaining so this would be the best solution imo.

There is no possibility to harm others by titles...
If you want to complain and are bored, go and collect stupid user names on the servers and report them to ZOs...

You seem to misunderstand something here. The potential to do something harmful is given with any addon as is. Addons themselves are much more dangerous than a bundled library in that regard. I could for example slip some code into one of my addons which sells all your equipment to an NPC vendor automatically and then several others from the inventory so you can't buy them back and nobody will notice it until it is too late. Nobody reads every single line of code when an addon is updated, and it's your own responsibility to check for things like that before you use them. Libraries on the other hand have to be included into a new addon version by an author first, so in theory they get checked for malicious things by them before they are uploaded.


As Baertram said. If you do not want them, just scan your addon folder for LibCustomTitles.lua and delete the files. That's the way to opt-out.

Holy cow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Before accusing people to be biaised, check better : i asked for a title but never got one and i respect the author's addon, and since i have worked my name differently to get almost what i wanted.

And yes even with no title i am totally against you and your stupid jealousy. (sorry if i cross the limite, but you got what you deserve. You are just someone envious trying to ennoy people.)

Suddenly the addon is not trouble if you can have your own title !!!! way to go!!

Addons generally have the potential to be used in a harmful manner, but I bet most people would be very against removing them from the game.

What is my misunderstanding, the user has to accept everything that is given and has no right to speak?

@all
The point of my post is clear: Including functionalities like CustomTitles to addons like SkyShards, LoreBooks etc. w/o informing the users and giving them the option to choose is the wrong approch.

Addon authors advising people to delete files on their computer after installation (and redoing so after every update) and labeling this as the opt-out option there is are just showing that they don't care about a transparent way to handle such things.

Please put your heads together and find a solution to give users the freedom to choose. Thanks!

@Baertram @Anceane: Please try todiscuss in a constructive manner on the topic.

No. I'm the dev. You're not.


Adding options will triple the size of the library, and enable stuff that I don't want to enable for a lib. The reflexion is already done.

You don't have to discuss, the answer is no, and it's written in changelog

PPS: There is much more in your addons folder, but you don't care because it's a bit more hidden.


Signed:
The guy who did this.

Let's see...

Why complain to zenimax? This is about addons. So maybe complain to the authors first?

The content of the changelog is completely up to the author. There aren't any guidelines on what it should contain and authors are not required to even write one.

The content of the addons is also up to the author. They can add and leave out whatever they want as long as it does not violate the TOS. Having a feature like custom titles and not adding an ingame setting does not violate the TOS in any way and the author(s) clearly stated that it works as intended.

Same can be said for character names. Should ZOS disable displaying names because of that?

Again, why ZOS? And as explained earlier, you gave your full permission to let the addon change your UI in that way when you installed an addon which contains the lib.

No? Just don't install it if you don't like it.

...

There is a lot of stuff in addons that is not needed for one user, but others want it. Can't please everyone.


It's fine to voice your opinion, but what you are doing here is a) attacking authors, b) being entitled, and c) not constructive.

thank you jpdouble69 I almost forgot to update the lib in LUI

Ayantir, thank you for your statement.

Trippeling the code seems to be an issue but isn't it worth the effort for a transparent approach?
I am pretty sure you thought about it while developing CustomLib - now the train is rolling and CustomLib is included (copy, paste, edited, done) in many many small and big addons.
The vast majority of users do not know about it and what i get as feedback here a lot of addon authors are fine with it ("Do not install what you don't like even if we don't tell you it's there").

Unfortunately beside your own addons that way you lost control about the usage and distribution of CustomLib.

Indicating that there might be more going on unnoticed in the addon folder is worrying - nobody seems to care as long as it stays hidden :(

That's not how libraries work here on ESOUI. If somebody changes the code of a library in a way that impacts the functionality and the author of the library reports it, the offending addon will be removed from the site by admins. Every reputable author will try to avoid having his addon removed. If you download an addon from a well known author with a good reputation, you won't find any customizations in the libs.

I can guarantee you that you don't know most features the bigger addons offer. That's what Ayantir is referring to. Addons are hobby projects we make in our free time, so of course not everything gets documented. Besides you have the full Lua source code available. There is no better transparency than that. If you don't want or can't read the Lua code, you will have to trust the author of the addon and if you can't trust the author, you should not download and install their addons. It's easy as that.

And while it's true that you have your right to voice your opinion, it's also true that authors have the right to theirs and can ignore your requests.

Seeing as we all do this for free: no, it's definitely not worth the time or effort to us.

However, if you think making it possible to disable this functionality is a worthwhile endeavor, you wouldn't mind taking it up yourself? I'm sure Ayantir won't mind if you take a copy of it, change the version to be higher and clear out all of the titles in there, so that your version will supersede and remove the functionality from all of the addons.

I wasn't trying to unfriendly. That's just the way I write and I'm no native English speaker. I tried to contribute to your topic and have shown you 2 ways to opt-out the library.
It's up to you if you ccept them or keep on fighting against windmills.

As I said: You are not forced to use the addons and we are not forced to fullfill every request and think about every think that COULD and MIGHT happen.
You could learn coding for example and update the library with an option, use your free time to code instead of complaining. This would be great :rolleyes:

Updated the original post - if there is a way to edit the title let me know to remove ZoS in it.

Good night!

/edit: Found it, title changed - hope it is better now

Just a side note, as i want to be honnest : after checking more the addon, following your post, it appears that in fact my title existed since at least may 2017, and i did not know. So thank you, i am happy to show my new title in game :)

(no irony nore bad spirit, i just say what i think, and i am really happy)

If you want to modify an addon it's your problems not ours.

How can you even say that? There is a huge difference between do an addon for yourself and do an addon for users. Every addon which were put on esoui and maintained require more works for authors cause they want to give that to everyone not only to themselves and for doing that correctly, they need to adapt the addon to everyone. If you still think no one care about users you're wrong all the addons that you incriminated are done by authors who cares about users if not they will not be so popular from the community.

No, the majority of users want addon which are working and are user friendly, nothing more.

In the last news Windows, macos, android and ios have software that you can't disable or uninstall...
Oh, and you can uninstall or disable an addon and even modify it.

Look at this website and all the addons there is years of work doing by the community for free. You have no right to say they don't care about users.
All your arguments are around a function which is not harming anyone except you so don't talk for the community about addons downloaded by Hundred thousand of player.

I find this whole topic pretty disgusting. On one side you got someone that's noticed that popular add-ons are using libs that do nothing but change the game's behavior without the user's knowledge and on the other you got add-on authors that feel that they have the right to abuse their add-ons so they can feel better about themselves with personal titles.

You bring up how no one's complained about them? In the case of LibCustomTitles, there's merely just not enough people in there to be noticed on a regular basis, especially on NA. But there has been people that have noticed and have complained about it. I suppose it never got to the add-on authors because people aren't aware of who to blame. That's certainly the case with the OP here.

Then there's LibAnnyoingUpdateNotificationInGame, which certainly does what its name implies quite well and annoys its users. People I've talked to about it thought it was just something ZOS put into the game but upon learning that it's from add-ons, including ones that haven't been updated in months, they were rather annoyed to learn about its nature.

You guys can go along and argue how much you have the right to put this stuff in here and how you deserve to do it but that doesn't make it any less wrong for doing it. You say you do these things because you do so much for the community and how little add-on authors there is but have you ever thought about the other way around? What if you stopped maintaining old add-ons that other people made? Its not like you're the only ones out there and if it became a big enough issue, new people would surely come along and pick it up themselves. Instead you pick it up almost immediately after the author can't handle it anymore then gripe about how many add-ons you absolutely have to maintain all by yourself when you could easily just find someone else to do it. There's certainly been other add-ons that have fizzled out but picked up new maintainers, maintainers that haven't even posted an add-on on here before. So quit acting like you're the damn saviors of the add-ons on here and the only people here that can keep things going because you're not. Frankly, your horrible attitude here likely helps to push people away. I know it has affected me. While my personal life hasn't always allowed me to work on things, I have wound up producing some rather sophisticated add-ons for myself and have shared them with friends but never got around to posting any of them here out of fear of having to deal with the other authors here that have such a self-righteous mentality to themselves.

Oh and don't act like it'd take a lot to allow the users to disable these libs either. You can easily throw in a single global variable that can be set by any add-on that tells the lib to not initialize. Of course, there's other brute force ways to prevent them from loading too and saving users the time to sift through all of their add-ons to find these libs that otherwise serve no purpose than to allow the authors to bask in pitiful e-glory at the user's displeasure. Honestly, just having produced an add-on that people love and couldn't live without would be enough to make feel great. I seem to remember Garkin having that sort of attitude as well and I still view him as the greatest add-on author we ever had.

You're either on something or you are a paranoid schizophrenic. Addon authors are not constantly berating each other and they wouldn't care about your addons, unless you ripped off an active addon and thought you'd fork their work without asking.

He wants the user to be able to decide on what permissions to grant the addon. That's not a little boolean for a lib. That would require so many toggles for dozens to hundreds of setting that he doesn't even know about. I gave him two options of manually dealing with it himself.

That particular library is a MUST. Addon users generally do not update addons. There have been many times where I publish a fix, and yet continue receiving bug reports about the very thing I just fixed for weeks. It's also worse for addons like skyshards and lorebooks, where if there is a lorebook or skyshard out of place, and the massive userbase, the author will be receiving mails for months, and not just one or two, but hundreds. False bug reports like these waste our time, and a lot of it.

And besides that, it does it how often? Once a week or something? Not really anything to complain about tbh. :confused:

No, it's utterly simple - a tool called "search", ships with windows.

I don't get your point. We're doing this stuff for a hobby. Every single add-on I've written I've made in my free time for myself. I put it up here because I think other people might benefit from the work, since I already had done it. I gladly accept praise and donations, since I put in a ****ton of work and time. But honestly? It's my stuff. I put it up. If other people accept it like it is, then that's on them. If I eat the free soup and find out later that the cook added nuts, it's my bad luck if I die.

It's not as if any of us ever put malware into any of our add-ons (one person stole gold from their users, ZOS changed the API within a week). You're literally complaining about free stuff here and being all snowflake-y on behalf of the poor users (who neither complained nor bothered to check their free stuff).

Some of the addon users just don't seem to realize the fact that they don't have to use the addons at all :confused: I don't think that we force someone to use an addon :eek:

We only try to force you to update them on a regulary base so we do not get false information about bugs etc. and invest time into fixed stuff, jzst because you are too lazy to check before you login. And we only try to make the game even more fun (for everyone, not only ourselves).

The deactivation of libraries was discussed and described several times now. There won't be anybody who will code several options into existing addons & libraries to just let 2 guys feel better, or more save ... As I said before: Go and learn coding, do it yourself.
Or just go play the game without addons -> disable everything if you don't trust/like them.

False bug reports made by a small fraction of the users who are not properly updating their addons takes time away from making new features or addons a much bigger audience would enjoy. A few ways how to deal with this have been discussed and said lib was the way that came up.

For CustomTitles it only makes sense if as many people as possible have it.

Also you seem to imply that there are greedy authors that jump onto addons as soon as they are abandoned. It's more like people who know authors ask them if they can fix it and once you do that of course it makes sense to share those fixes. There have been calls from some authors to take over addons, but rarely people answer to that. So to me the idea that there is a league of evil addon authors seems simply ridiculous to me, but I admit I would really enjoy being in one. :D

An early summary
 

All authors that posted here in this thread are arguing pretty much the same way.
They say that it is their right to implement any function into their addons and hide them to the user who is installing the addon. They do not document these function(s) nor do they give the user any option in the settings - the user has to execute them in the client - that's all.

The authors that are posting here all have these kinds of invisible/hidden functions implemented.

They argue that they put in a lot of work into it and it it their addon(s). So they have the right to do whatever they want.
There is not a single author in this thread having doubts about the way these functions are handled and distributed nor that they might change it in the future.

You can call it coincidence, bias or whatever you want. The issue stays the same: The user has to execute this stuff not knowing about it. No declaration, no option, no control, no choice, nothing. That is the way these authors want it. It was not done that way by accident, it was meant to be exactly that way.


I hope more and more people will become aware. Then there is a good chance that users concerns and rights are not taken lightly anymore and changes are being made by the authors – not ZoS.

I'd love to know what invisible functions my addons have so that I can properly boast about these features.

I'm arguing that I've done enough work that I don't want to create more work by adding a toggle to ever minute facet of my addons. I can add toggles for the toggles so you can toggle the toggles or I can keep addons up to date and add features.

The funny thing about downloading open source addons is that you have all of the power in the world to change how they function. What you meant is "I'm not fed control on a silver platter" and thus it's too much to bear. I've already explained two methods in which you could stop that functionality but they are both too much effort for you because you want everything done for you, which is typical of addon users. Nothing we do is ever enough and when we turn down more work to appease the few, we are tyrants.

Right, because I'm holding a gun to their head and make them run my code. I forgot.

The user has every control about what they execute. The AddOns don't download or install themselves. There's a ZOS thingy that you have to accept before you even can enable them. If that's not enough, then I'm afraid the issue is not the code.

But we all knew that already.

It's too funny. I'd love to see my hidden code myself so I know what you found and mean. Maybe there is some spyware in every addon o0
My last words:
QT, is this you with a new user?

Rhyono, while not 100% agreeing i really appreciate you are taking the time and arguing in a constructive manner which is very welcome since the latest comments have been "bizarre".



By raising the issue it might seem like i am one of these users who are never satisfied with your work. I am using and trying out new addons a lot. Minion makes it easy keeping them updated, searching for and trying out new stuff, re-installing, deleting etc.

While Minion is convenient in that way it also reduces the interaction between authors and users. As long as everything is working fine no one seems to care about the work put in. On the other side errors are expected to be fixed like updating an addon - fast and easily like pressing Update in Minion.

The offset between authors and users is also found in this thread. Both sides do not understand each other - the willingness to interact is hidden behind preconceptions.




Yes, i would like to see changes being made. Does it need to be an option or just documented properly?! There are a variety of ways. Making it a standalone addon focusing on Role-Playing and adding more functions over time would be my favorite.

I doubt it will come easy and soonish but i would greatly appreciate changes.

I'm not sure how much I can/should contribute to this, but I'll give it a shot.

I personally am not a huge fan of hidden stuff in addons that I write. I've been known to throw in the odd April Fools joke, but it's often more trouble than its worth, and I always at least have a slash command toggle to turn it off.

As for whether it is moral or not to include the library with no way to opt-out, I don't really see an issue with it. It's a harmless cosmetic thing with almost no performance impact. Game developers have been putting in fun easter eggs to their code since the dark ages, and this isn't really any different.

Could it potentially be abused to harass players? Sure, I guess. But that's a clear violation of the TOS and would almost certainly lead to a ban if an addon author did that.

As for the matter of providing a toggle for the custom titles library, that's not really possible unless every single addon with that library offers it. Libraries are stubbed out so that only the first addon to load it will actually load the code. There's no way in ESO to force your addon to load first. I guess it's technically possible to make yours load after all the others with the library - if you take on the daunting task of adding every single one as an optional dependency and then maintaining that list - but some of those addons might depend upon your addon, creating a circular dependency.

As long as LibStub is being used (which, I'd assume it is in this case), it ensures it loads the most recent version. So if someone were to take the custom title lib, up the version to something well beyond what it'll ever reach (like 100), then clear out all custom titles: hypothetically, it would stop the rest from loading.

Interesting idea. Perhaps rather than having a toggle in our addons, there could be a separate "revert custom titles" addon to do what you suggest.

and we will end from changing #OptionalDependsOn to "#DependsOn: LibStub" and then you could add options to disable libs :P

Yay for loading performance.

You're right about that:

- You complain that we're secretly sneaking in code that we aren't telling the user about.
Yes, we are doing that. We're not doing anything harmful, though, and we're controlling each other pretty well. By continuing to complain you're basically saying

• You are okay with using our AddOns and thus benefit from our work
• You don't trust us to not do something harmful
• You can't be bothered to control us yourselves
• You want us to put in even more work to give you a way to control us

Point four is somewhat of a paradox, because if you don't trust our libraries, how can you trust our trigger to disable our libraries?

I hope you understand why many here aren't too constructive towards that sort of attitude.



A better way to solve that "problem" for the individual user would be a bat file to recursively delete the LibCustomTitles folder, something like
and simply double-clicking on that every time you ran minion, or, if that's too much work, to set up a folder watch of your AddOns folder and automatically run that file every time a new file is added.

I haven't tried it, but that should work.

I hope that solves your problem.

About trust
Yes, i don't trust everybody but trust the author of LibCustomTitles. He has been managing and maintaining several addons for a very long time. He is doing a great job on updating, fixing and responding. So i got trust in his work over a long period of time.
There is no need to trust someone else on the functionality not being harmful.

About work
Beside the lib-author the only thing other authors did was copying & pasting it to their addons. And when the lib is changed or updated the only one working is the author.
Instead you are working in this thread to provide a "solution". Now that you provided a solution it would be a good time to update your addon info page.
That way you can finish your work that you already started here.
But instead it is not about defintions of work anddoing it here where is belongs somewhere else. It is...

About control
When you put in work in this thread and offer a solution to "my problem" you are basically doing work trying to control me here and to control your addon users. To conclude...

About paradox
You copied & pasted a lib of someone else to your addon - you call that work. You control the users by not providing information where it belongs. You are putting in work in this thread to control me while your addon users are being controlled.
But you are twisting it so much that you dare to say "You can't be bothered to control us".

About trust
After all that you want me and others to trust you...

I'm an addon author myself. And for a living, I do write code which ends up in security applications.

So you can imagine that hidden/undocumented functions are a big NO in my books.

Just see it from the user's perspective - the game starts behaving in an unexpected manner, in these specific cases titles being replaced or popups showing up where there were none, and on the first glance you don't see a culprit.

Worse, if the popups happen often enough, it just feeds the "Windows reflex" of clicking "OK" whenever a dialog opens. And that's the root cause of many security related issues, since serious warnings get clicked away as well.

When trying to track down the culprit of any unexpected behavior, it is a pain in the ass to search through the complete installed addon base because any of them could contain the code guilty for it.

Sure I appreciate to see the odd Easter Egg and addon authors giving each other some sort of recognition. But I'd like to see it mandatory that ALL of the addon's functionality should at least be mentioned in the addon description. One-liners in the addendum may suffice, like

• May contain Easter Eggs
• Contains LibAddonMenu, for a description see (URL)
• Contains LibAnnoyingUpdateNotification

After all, it is a measure of gaining/keeping trust as well, to be completely up front with what the addon does.

http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1...Reminders.html
http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1...tomTitles.html

I want to propose a compromise, since there are two wildly different points of view here and I don't want this to descend into something toxic.

Those two addons above will disable the libraries that are presumably so offensive. Let's see if they end up being popular at all. If they end up being popular, then the devs can use that information to evaluate if the libraries are doing more harm than good and either deserve to be removed or disclaimers need added.

If the addons above prove unpopular with the rest of the communtiy, then OP et al, please just use them yourself and let the poor devs be.

I was already thinking along the same lines. Write stub libraries containing no-op replacements of these functions and raise the version number to "infinite" so that they will override the real versions.

I abstained from doing this because it could set off an edit war no one really wants.

Add to that, twice already - at least as I know of - an Easter Egg in some addon set off a thread with confused users asking "where did that come from?", often enough falsely placing blame or praise unto ZOS, and only after several days someone found the real culprit.

That definitely shows that these two libraries are only the part of a bigger issue and the reason why I proposed that addon descriptions should at least mention any additional functionality besides the intended one.

WORSE, Easter Eggs can bug. AFAIK one of them did bug on me. If it happens large scale, then you have a ****storm in the making where feces are wildly flung around, hitting people unrelated to the issue.

So basically each solution we provide is not good enough for you, except the one you want: Remove the library.
Maybe the control stuff is not that trivial.

And btw: some libraries were developed and tested by several, and not only one author. The time and work, that you only describe as "copied to your addon", invested is not visible to you...

As I said before:
No one forces you or others to use
AddOns.
Disable them, remove the files from the addon, use the batch script Manavortex provided, or simply enjoy the funny (or RPG) titles.
But please not make everyone pissed even more because you fight Facebook, or God knows which of the social media platforms is your windmill. This is no data mining and you are totally anonymous.

in this whole thread something amaze me.

I am user mainly. I do not use minion. I install myself every addon. And i do look at what is inside each folder of addons, not because i am paranoid, but because i am interested, and because sometimes i just want to change little things.

With years, i learned how to use the -- before a line i want to remove, i learned how to replace fonts, to change .dds with one i want (that i create myself), change size or transparence of things, and to replace library that some author's addon forget to update (no critics, i would forget those myself if i was doing what you do)

So my point is : if the OP is not happy with some addons, nothing bare him to modify a line, supress a lib, by himself. I know a lot of users that do as me, some are even very comfortable to do so and they do not need to make such a mess as this post do.
Some users even made some great additions to addons. Some authors removed themselves parts of addons they were not satisfied with. Nothing is perfect :P

We users are not sheep, nore stupid. We do not need a drama to make realise that suddenly a library which is openly posted in the download, is hidden is some addons. Nothing is hidden. The embedded library is mentionned in the .txt, and the library itself is downloadable by anyone,

If you dont trust an addon, then stop to use it. If you dont trust any addon, then just stop to come here and avoid this place. No one is forcing you with a gun to download them, to use them. If you decide to download them you make your decision. Same as if you buy a book. You do not know what is inside. The title could be sweet and the story totally macabre giving nightmare. So what ? you would yell at the author ? you decided by yourself to buy it.

Here you dont even buy, you benefit from a gift. Each addon i use is for me a gift. The author decided to do it for their use, and then offered to share thinking we might enjoy. And i enjoy. Of course i do not like all addons : i do not download them. But this is my taste, the addon is enjoyed by others.

For me this whole thread is a drama. i hate drama. There is enough in real life all day long from every part of world.

So to the OP : if you do not like an addon or part of it, do not download it or modify it. You can without breaking an addon using this -- to *silence* a line, or a library that is just optional.

I did not do any of the things you claimed and I feel a bit offended about that.

Of course I can do whatever I want with my addons because I write them for myself and maybe a few friends. I offer them on esoui because its a nice framework to publish the addon, thats all. Anyone who wishes to have a different addon can do it themselves, like I did. Of course I will always consider feedback but in the end I make the decision what goes into my addon and what not. If there is an issue with any ZOS terms or terms here on ESOUI I might consider to abide the rules or simply take it off from here and distribute my addon a different way.

(posted in response to jpdouble69)

Seconded. The wild accusation that every author does that is as wrong as it is offensive to me, especially since I already posted twice the 'guidelines' I set for myself (be upfront with the functionality of the addon) and would dearly like to see all around.

• No hidden/undocumented functions.
• If there is a functionality besides the main purpose of the addon, please mention it at the very least.

Users should not have to ask themselves "is it a bug or a feature?" if they encounter unexpected or worse unreasonable behavior.

Thank you Ancean, at least some users are able to "do the job themselves" instead of moaning :p

A small correction, so everyone knows how to comment lines in addons and mainfest files:
The manifest TXT file needs a ## in front of a line to comment it. You are not able to use -- in there.
Only the lua files use -- as single line, and --[
...
]]
as multi line comments.

haha oups sorry, thanks a lot for this :)))

Well first of all, thank you very much! I downloaded both files and installed them. Is there a way i can test it on the client to see if it works or provide any feedback?
This way me and others can provide feedback in case it won't work in the future.

Also, I am wondering about commenting on Disable Custom Titles and posting additional informations like linking to this thread and giving examples of addons that heven't done any documentation of the EasterEgg.
I understand you want to stay neutral as much possible so i ask here if that is okay for you.

I second your concerns about this being a bigger issue especially after reading most comments here from addon authors that included "EasterEggs".

But it is a good starting point that these two new addons exists and can be found. I know a lot of players that test new addons like me and see it via Minion (sort by date).

Next step would be to inform a bigger community and posting it on ADD-ONS & UI MODS so more people can make up there on decision.




@Baertram
I edited and rephrased my starting post (+title) a couple of days ago - but the new title wasn't carried over in the forum list.


@Anceane
It is a discussion and controversy about a topic. The topic is if and how to inform users about addon functions.
If you crawl through every code before updating and not using Minion that's perfectly fine. Telling users to use "--" for things they don't know about in the first place is misleading. The discussion is not a drama, the "-- solution" you found for yourself isn't either nor your pretentious "we" is.

pre·ten·tious
prəˈten(t)SHəs/
adjective
adjective: pretentious

attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.


First you do not know who i am in real life. You can only suppose that i do not understand or that i want to show off.
So far since i am on this forum, i never hide the fact that i had difficulties with LUA and the way it is working. My only help comes from having created some years ago my websites and to remember some html things.
i have more than often asked silly questions and asked Author's addon to help me with little things that i could not do because it was out of my comprehension.

Now on the little things i mentionned, those are nothing that simple understanding after comparing two files. You call me out pretentious for that. Fine. Personally i see it as a way to learn something.

But as you go as name/adjectif calling, dont spend more time to quote me, i just put you on ignore.
I have not the will nore the time to deal with your petty problems.

I asked you to stay on the topic but instead you don't.

Instead you mock me about grammar and ignore people how have an opinion you do not like...

To be fair, you're the one who has been calling them names, and overall your whole behaviour is pretty aggressive. (I'm on the autism spectrum, and even I notice).
I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve by communicating here, but the effect you're having right now is to antagonise everyone. You might want to reconsider your wording?

I have considered rephrasing and have done so. I rewrote my inital post and changed the title (that was not carried over in the forums overview).

What i try to achieve is making authors sensible and inform their users. Show them ways so they can turn it off but inform them in the first place and don't just run these unlinked function hidden on the clients permanently.
There are authors that argue hidden/un-documented functions are a no-go. For others it is not a problem, others might not have thought about it before.

Some authors argue it is too much work to inform or change something that initially was launched hidden.

Other authors say they will not include such things unknown from their users. And even a workaround/compromise has been introduced by two addons disabling hidden functions.
I like it though it does not change the issue for many users. They still don't know so why should they install them?

But it is a starting point and it is good feeling to see that there are people who care. I want to inform as many authors and users and make them sensible. And i would love to see some progress and improvements in the future.

Ultimately I think the issue here is that this is a hobby. I believe most authors strive to document their features and list all changes clearly. However in practice, in the amount of time it takes to code features or if you're handling a lot, its easy to forget small things you did. On top of that, its easy to be complacent or lazy about certain things.

I don't feel this is really an issue because authors are not held to some professional standard nor should they be. As long as an addon operates close to how its advertised thats fair enough game. You reserve the right to discontinue use of an addon if the way it is managed doesn't suit you.

I try to document most of what I do with LUI but theres a ****load of code packed in there, and a lot of old stuff I haven't had time to resort or deprecate where neccessary. It doesn't help I'm torn between enjoying the coding and the general game and the aggresive toxic marketing scheme they're running putting me so far off I can hardly stomach it. I'm sure theres plenty of things I've failed to document, but I just don't have the willpower to reorganize the addon description. Maybe if I decide to continue overhauling things down the line.

Also another thing to keep in mind here is most of us are stretched pretty damn thin. Relevant to the user base ESO probably has one of the smallest active addon development communties. If someone decides to stop working on their addon its entirely likely nobody is going to pick it up. Or in some cases one of us pokes at it a bit to keep it functioning with each API update.a

Yes, yes, we addon authors can do whatever we want. We're not forcing people to use our addons. Etc.

But just because we can doesn't mean that we should. I don't care about what we can do, but I care deeply about what we should do.

And I'll be honest here: I absolutely detest LibCustomTitles as a matter of principle. This library simply should not exist. It does not provide the user any benefit whatsoever and it alters functionality in the game unnecessarily and quietly. Is it malicious? No. But it is a breach of the implicit trust between users and addon devs, and I would never include that library in any of the addons that I write. It's a harmless breach of trust, to be sure, but still a breach.

It doesn't violate any rules per se, and it doesn't warrant any action from ZOS. But, again, there is a difference between "can" and "should". This is an matter of trust and principle. And it bothers me that so many in the addon dev community is dismissing this concern.

As for the update reminders, I have no issue with it in principle, because it does provide something valuable... in theory. However, in practice, it is just extra noise for the user. The reason is that this library simply checks to see if you have any addons whose target API version is lower than the game's current API version. It gives false positives for addons whose latest available (and perfectly functional) version is "outdated" because it has not had an API bump. And it gives false negatives for addons with critical bug fixes within the same API level. Since any user who is using an "outdated" addon is doing so explicitly (since the game automatically disables them every major patch, and the user has to manually reenable them), this library is unnecessary, given how it actually works in practice.

undocumented functions are unacceptable, these two have now been removed, all future addons from these sources will be treated as suspect

this is true or bull****?

English is probably not his first language and he's simply referring to what he's done for himself.

Let the authors of mods do everything that is enough imagination and possibilities for modifying this already practically unmodifiable game! I continue to play this defective TES only thanks to mods, without mods, the game is so easy and stupid, where you are constantly led by the hand, that at first I was very sorry that I spent the money on it, only after installing a lot of mods, it became a little more interesting, but and they do not completely save, as there are too few opportunities for modification.

Custom Titles was removed from Dustman

is this what Ayantir, ex-author of it, will glad to see?
like maintainer of the addon doing such things?:mad: