ABout 6 weeks ago there was a lot of fanfare about the upcoming availability of the timestat plugin (tracks student time within activities as I understand it.)
Has this plugin yet been made available for general use?
Marcel,
Once the block was ready the code was shared with each contributor and submitted to Moodle.org at that time, unfortunately it's approval is still pending here. Once it is available it should be at this URL https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=block_timestat (Hopefully soon).
Thanks,
Joe
Curious to see the alternative approach that has been implemented compared to the already long living Use Stats plugin coupled with Training session reports
How long does it take to approve a plug in?
2 months and counting to approve the add-on?
Am I missing something here?
I thought the whole point about an open source platform was to disseminate changes quickly and let users make their own decisions if they want to use anything in particular?
Marcel
I thought the whole point was freedom. But to address the issue of approval most people are not in a position to make a decision on when a plugin is worth using and that is why it can take time to approve. The code is actually read by a an expert human (David Mudrak), not just put through a style checker. I put my code in github and make an announcement that it is available when I think it is complete. So people who are able to make such a decision have the freedom to do so. I then ask for it to be approved in the plugins. Before approval it usually comes back with a request for some more work. For example my latest release of my BTEC marking block
https://github.com/marcusgreen/moodle-gradingform_btec
had some possible internationalisation issues, but I am not sure it would make sense to translate to other languages. However I have addressed these as it is just good style and who am I to know what speakers of other languages might want? There were some other minor things I am tweaking and for me the approval process is a "Good Thing" (tm).
Having said that 2 months does seem quite a long time.
Two months is too long, indeed. And I've been trying to apologize and explain recently on this elsewhere.
I would not mix different things together though. Open source does not mean we are blindly redistributing everything we get. That is why every single plugin gets pretty extensive peer-review before we publish it at moodle.org. And based on responses from plugin developers, such review and feedback on their work is usually very welcome. So we may be digging through the submitted plugins queue a bit slower. But I would not give up on quality standards that evolved during the time.
I would not mix different things together though. Open source does not mean we are blindly redistributing everything we get. That is why every single plugin gets pretty extensive peer-review before we publish it at moodle.org. And based on responses from plugin developers, such review and feedback on their work is usually very welcome. So we may be digging through the submitted plugins queue a bit slower. But I would not give up on quality standards that evolved during the time.
4 months now?
Marcel,
It's not a product of Moodle.org or the approval process any longer, while it did take time to get the details, we did receive some feedback from HQ regarding the way in which the block was constructed and how it adds to a core db table which is now a no-no (though it was accomplished using the same method in 1.9).
Based on the feedback from HQ on the fixes required to release it we're in a holding pattern as the developer frees up time and we work out a new agreement (it will be additional development). My preference would be to continue working with the original developer to bring it to fruition rather than get someone else up to speed (for consistency and efficiency).
As I mentioned before, the funders did get the copy of the code very early on as promised as part of the community funding. We're just not able to release the code via Moodle.org at the moment.
Cheers,
Joe
Hi all,
Rather than wait (and in hopes of expediting a fix that will meet the requirements of Moodle.org): here's the code http://www.moodlenews.com/2014/timestat-block-code-help-us-fix-it/
Please read the specific concerns that Moodle.org shared with us and if you have a solution, apply it!
Best,
Joe
BTW this is now available through the plugin database: https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=block_timestat