netorio.us

We have certain rights as consumers and, by and large, we exercise those rights. If I buy something I have certain expectations of my purchase. First and foremost, I expect it to work as advertised. If it’s a toaster, I expect it to make toast. If I bought a 4 slice toaster, I expect that it will toast four pieces of bread at the same time and that all the bread will be evenly toasted. Anything that is counter to my expectations will lead to disappointment, frustration, etc. I will pack the toaster back in its box, grab the receipt, and take it back to the store from whence it came.

Gifts, especially handmade ones, fall under a different set of behavioral expectations. If my Aunt Tilly brings me a jar of homemade jam that tastes like a combination of laundry detergent and burnt rubber, I will smile politely, thank her profusely, and jettison the jam soon after she has departed. I will not complain to Aunt Tilly, nor will I return the offending jam and ask her for a replacement jar. She gave me a gift, I didn’t like it, end of story.

Which brings me to plugins. The open source aspect of WordPress has inspired a whole group of creative and dedicated programmers to develop software solutions that improve the functionality of the WordPress blogging platform. Because of their plugins, my WordPress blog has all of the features that I want it to have.

Since WordPress and its plugins are free and open-source, I consider them to be a gifts; provided, in this case, by total strangers. I thank them by posting on this blog and by publishing my list of plugins. But what do I do when a plugin has problems?

I recently discovered a plugin I thought was perfect for this blog. I installed it and it did exactly what it was supposed to do. I was quite pleased until, a few days later, this plugin produced an error message rather than the stellar content it had been designed to display. I was disappointed and uninstalled the plugin. I then went to the author’s website and posted a very polite comment explaining my problem.

You may have noticed that I have assiduously avoided naming the plugin or its creator. I will continue to do so since this post has not been written as a complaint. As I said, I consider these plugins to be a gift and gifts require a different protocol than do purchased items.

The plugin homepage has a number of comments in which users like myself describe the same error. All the comments are polite, complimentary, and constructive in nature. From what I have read it seems that the error is happening with blogs that have upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1.

The author has not yet responded and someone on the comments page has suggested that he might be on vacation. This is fine by me. If this were a commercial product I would be incensed. But this was a gift. Where this diverges from the ‘Aunt Tilly’ metaphor is the public nature of this gift. I sent the creator of this gift a comment for two reasons. The first is, hopefully, to have the use of this plugin.

But, of equal importance, it is my responsibility to inform the plugin author that there is a problem. He needs to know this because one of his motivations for doing this is to develop a software portfolio. His reputation is at stake. So unlike the situation where it is understood by the whole family that Aunt Tilly has always made inedible jam. The author of this plugin ‘wants’ to make improvements and, hopefully, unlike Aunt Tilly his feelings won’t be hurt by a little well meaning feedback.