356278 - Category abuse by "Bibirmer Toolbar"

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Administration, defect)

Description

[Todd Vierling]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7

This fits none of the Blogging, Bookmarks, Image Browsing, Message Reading, or Privacy and Security [hint: it collects usage data, so it *reduces* privacy] categories, and so it's obviously category spamming.  (Noticed when browsing bookmark add-ons via the new bundled link in Firefox 2.)

Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
The extra categories should be removed, and the author notified that this is a policy violation.

Comment 1

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

From the description: 

* Blogging: Online Dictionary,Wikipedia search (free encyclopedia),Images Search,Job Search,News,Quotes,Weather, *****Blog Search*****, Maps, Find domain name and more in next versions.

* Image Browsing : Online Dictionary,Wikipedia search (free encyclopedia),*****Images Search*****,Job Search,News,Quotes,Weather, Blog Search, Maps, Find domain name and more in next versions.

* Message Reading : Get notified when you receive new e-mails to your POP3, Yahoo!, Gmail, or Hotmail accounts.

* Privacy and Security : Includes Popup blocker, cookie cleaner, history cleaner, and cache cleaner.

Are these features not actually included in the toolbar?

Comment 2

[Todd Vierling]

Blogging: A search box that happens to search blogs is NOT fundamentally a blogging tool.  There's a Search Tools category for a reason.


Image Browsing: A search box that happens to search images is NOT fundamentally an image tool.  There's a Search Tools category for a reason.


Message Reading: A biff-like notifier is not fundamentally a message tool, but this is arguably more of a grey area than the two above.


Privacy and Security: I take great reservation in applying the "privacy" word to any add-on that transmits usage data to a central database, regardless of what boilerplate "cleaner tools" come with the add-on.  Their site directly claims the following in the fine print:

"Unidentifiable statistics are sent to our system regarding usage of toolbar features."

...though the site, and extension description, go to great lengths to claim that this is not a privacy leak "in any way".


I have no problem with this and similar extensions, but claiming that everything is an all-in-one makes add-on browsing by category frankly useless.

Comment 3

[Cameron]

Browsing by category is already useless. 

If we police this add-on, we're going to have to police them all, and we just don't have the resources for it. 

If the add-on were in all the categories, I think we'd do something, but for now, I vote WONTFIX for this and bug 356277.

Comment 4

[Todd Vierling]

I'll move it there myself.  However, "browsing by category is already useless" is a major problem with the release of Firefox 2.0, which bundles a link directly to the Bookmarks category of AMO under the Bookmarks menu.  Methinks policing this specific category may be a very good idea regardless of the rest of AMO's content....

Comment 5

[Cameron]

The bookmarks add-ons page is only linking there temporarily ;)