415331 - "other" category should not be selectable in conjunction with other categories

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Developer Pages, defect)

Description

[Dave Garrett]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20070914 Mandriva/2.0.0.11-1.1mdv2008.0 (2008.0) Firefox/2.0.0.11
Build Identifier: 

AMO allows extension developers to select as many extension categories as applicable, however, they are allowed to select the "other" category in addition to any others.  The whole point of having a miscellaneous category is to list the extensions that don't fit into any of the other categories.  It doesn't make sense for something to be categorizable... and also not categorizable.  Letting extension developers do this clutters up the "other" list with extensions that don't belong there (because the DO belong somewhere else), and makes it harder to browse through the extension listings.

An example:
PicLens:  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579
in categories:  Search Tools, Interface Customizations, Photos, Music & Videos, Social & Communication, Other

The first 4 categories clearly describe what this extension does and is used for, yet by allowing the label of "other" in addition to those it shows up near the top of the popularity list for the "other" category.  This is fairly pointless, and the extensions that do this drown out the extensions that validly need this category.

Reproducible: Always




On a side-note, adding categories to better describe extensions also helps.  Also, it might be a good idea to set a maximum number of categories to about 4.  Extension pages could artificially get more views by putting themselves in too many invalid categories, and while this doesn't seem to be abused that much, it's a distinct possibility.

Comment 1

[Basil Hashem [:baz]]

Actually, devs are limited to choosing 5 categories but that is probably too much. I've recommended that we limit it to three to keep from spamming the groups. We should also enforce some logic (as suggested above) that says that Other is exclusive of other choices. Adding dependency on bug 424472 & targeting for v3.4 as well.

Comment 2

[WKDPOWER]

Sounds about right Basil.

Comment 3

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

This bug has been fixed on the AMO 3.5 Developer Tools revamp branch and will go live when 3.5 is launched (date not currently set).

There is a staging site available here: http://remora-3.5.php5stage.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Comment 4

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

Verified FIXED on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/addon/edit/7431/categories