It’s no secret that I do a fair bit of developing for the open source platform WordPress. It’s fun to do, gives a productive outlet during my down time, and has led to the creation of a revenue source when I’m low on clients. Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do about the plug-ins I develop after I release them to the public.
From time to time, people aren’t able to get my newer systems to work. One thing or another breaks and they’ll report it as “broken” to the WordPress community. This is a great way to let people know when a system fails … but it doesn’t tell me anything. Particularly when I’m unable to reproduce the error on my own system.
I’m not the first developer to run into this problem, and many of us are debating how to handle it at the moment. In many cases, the failure isn’t with our code, it’s a user error – someone installs a plug-in on an outdated system and can’t figure out what’s broken. This would be like trying to install Office 2007 on Windows 3.1 and claiming Microsoft published an error-prone piece of software. System requirements are clearly marked, but that doesn’t stop people from trying to install it anyway. Normally, this wouldn’t create a problem. The issue lies in the community reporting and negative reputation so-called “broken” systems receive.
Like I said, though, there’s next to nothing I can do at this point beyond continuing to thoroughly test my systems and release frequent updates.
In the world of traditional marketing we run in to this problem more often, and have just about the same levels of control. You build a product, invest countless energies into its testing, and release it to the public. Then everything is up to public opinion. Was your market research on track? Did you explain product features thoroughly enough to make things foolproof? Can your reputation survive a few unearned negative reviews?
The arena of public opinion is a constant battle … how is it represented in your field?
