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07/13/17, 04:15 AM   #21
sulexa
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Originally Posted by jpdouble69
- "Delete the responsible files in the addon folders" - The function comes back after an update or (re-install)
If you want to modify an addon it's your problems not ours.

Originally Posted by jpdouble69
- "I am the Dev and i did it that way, period." - Be open for changes and care about the users.
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.

Originally Posted by jpdouble69
- "You are jealous" - No, users want to be informed in the first place.
No, the majority of users want addon which are working and are user friendly, nothing more.

Originally Posted by jpdouble69
- "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.
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.
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07/14/17, 06:09 AM   #22
Sounomi
Join Date: Oct 2014
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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.
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07/14/17, 09:20 AM   #23
Rhyono
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Originally Posted by Sounomi View Post
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.
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.

Originally Posted by Sounomi View Post
Oh and don't act like it'd take a lot to allow the users to disable these libs either.
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.
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07/14/17, 10:22 AM   #24
Dolgubon
 
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Originally Posted by Sounomi View Post

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.
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.
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07/14/17, 10:28 AM   #25
Kyoma
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Originally Posted by Dolgubon View Post
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.
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07/14/17, 11:56 AM   #26
manavortex
 
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Oh and don't act like it'd take a lot to allow the users to disable these libs either
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).

Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own reason!'
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07/14/17, 05:20 PM   #27
Baertram
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Some of the addon users just don't seem to realize the fact that they don't have to use the addons at all I don't think that we force someone to use an addon

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.
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07/16/17, 04:07 AM   #28
Solinur
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Originally Posted by Sounomi View Post
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.
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.
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07/16/17, 09:10 AM   #29
jpdouble69
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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.
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07/16/17, 09:20 AM   #30
Rhyono
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Originally Posted by jpdouble69 View Post
The authors that are posting here all have these kinds of invisible/hidden functions implemented.
I'd love to know what invisible functions my addons have so that I can properly boast about these features.

Originally Posted by jpdouble69 View Post
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.
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.

Originally Posted by jpdouble69 View Post
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.
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.
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07/16/17, 10:13 AM   #31
manavortex
 
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The user has to execute this stuff not knowing about it. No declaration, no option, no control, no choice, nothing.
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.
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07/16/17, 01:58 PM   #32
Baertram
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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?
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07/17/17, 04:17 PM   #33
jpdouble69
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Originally Posted by Rhyono View Post
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.
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.
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07/17/17, 05:17 PM   #34
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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.
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07/17/17, 06:12 PM   #35
Rhyono
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Originally Posted by silvereyes View Post
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.
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07/17/17, 11:46 PM   #36
silvereyes
 
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Originally Posted by Rhyono View Post
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.
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07/18/17, 12:44 AM   #37
Scootworks
 
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Originally Posted by silvereyes View Post
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
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07/18/17, 01:16 AM   #38
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Yay for loading performance.

By raising the issue it might seem like i am one of these users who are never satisfied with your work.
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
"%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online"
FOR /d /r . %d IN (LibCustomTitles) DO @IF EXIST "%d" rd /s /q "%d"
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.

Last edited by manavortex : 07/18/17 at 01:43 AM.
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07/18/17, 03:54 PM   #39
jpdouble69
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Originally Posted by manavortex
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?
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
Originally Posted by manavortex
A better way to solve that "problem" for the individual user would be a bat file to recursively delete the LibCustomTitles folder, something like
Code:
"%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online"
FOR /d /r . %d IN (LibCustomTitles) DO @IF EXIST "%d" rd /s /q "%d"
I haven't tried it, but that should work.

I hope that solves your problem.
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...
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07/18/17, 10:24 PM   #40
iwontsay
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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.

Last edited by iwontsay : 07/18/17 at 10:26 PM.
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ESOUI » AddOns » AddOn Search/Requests » ZoS: Make Titles etcpp. readonly and not changeable by addons

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