*comes out of his hole*
brf: It's not a perfect world. The MOD Team is trying to keep things fair for all the MOD authors. A large queue happens sometimes, other times it's small. While 4 weeks does tend to be a bit excessive, it does happen sometimes, because everyone is a volunteer and does have a personal life to contend with.
First of all, there is no way to tell the size of a MOD by its cover. The team has no way to tell how many lines a MOD is until they've already downloaded it. Furthermore, if small MODs were given priority, then the large MODs would never be tackled, because there are many more small MODs in the queue than there are large MODs. The large ones take long enough already!
Next up, if you write a MOD and then don't care about it, then you shouldn't submit. The reason for the MOD Database is to provide a collection of MODs that are safe, secure, and coded to phpBB standards (hence the MOD Team's job), and to provide a place for users to receive support and devs to provide support (that's your job). If you do not offer support to the users, then you've basically abandoned the MOD. I wish I could serve as an example, unfortunately, I've had to abandon my MODs and quit authoring them because I don't have enough time anymore to offer support.
With regards to having to fix and resubmit little errors, well, the MOD team puts the documentation out there and does everything possible to point to it (note
this topic). They cannot be responsible if the author didn't find out about it. To make an analogy, suppose you're driving, you decide to change lanes, and you run into a car in the other lane as you're changing because you didn't see them. You're still liable for the accident.
Josh Yelon wrote:
2. Allow people to update their submissions, without losing their place in the queue.
This can cause a lot of heartaches for the MOD Team. If an author updated their MOD after it had been validated, then the MOD Team would have to start over and revalidate it. If this continues and continues until the MOD is perfect, then that MOD has been validated a few times, and the MODs below it haven't been touched yet. This is not a good scenario.
Josh Yelon wrote:
3. Allow your users to see not-yet-validated mods, and submit bug reports: in other words, let them do the debugging for you.
Post your MOD in the MODs in Development forum as a release candidate for a week or two, that will give you about the same effect.
Being in the MOD Database is a privilege, and it does require the authors to put some effort and cooperation in it, and be understanding of the fact that the MOD team at any one time has many many MODs to sort through. Most authors will only have one to worry about at any given time. If you want your MOD to spend less time in the queue, take more time to check over your code. Read through the tons of documentation on the forums (see the topic I linked to above), run it through the validators, install your MOD with EasyMOD, test your MOD on a live board under as many scenarios as you can think of, and put it out to the public as a release candidate. This will catch most of the issues in your MOD before you submit, meaning that the MOD Team won't have to catch these issues and can get your MOD out of the queue quicker and public. Then the queue will get smaller quicker, and then the turnaround times will decrease for all the other MOD authors. Everybody wins.
As a sidenote, I am not a current MOD Team member, only a former one. Anything I wrote here is only my own opinion and does not reflect the opinions of any team member, as far as I know.