Loxone Library will never grow with it's current moderator

[TomekWaw]

If you ever thought about contributing to Loxone Library by adding an integration templates to it... think again.
It's totally discouraging experience (not to say traumatic).
I understand that Loxone wants to have top quality integration only, but it just went way too far.
Moderator of the Library acts like community contributors were just bothering him.
And will take any actions required to just throw anyone off has back.


My first contribution (http integration with a smart bulb) has been rejected with a reason: "not a professional product".

Unfortunately, your request to publish has been declined. The moderator has cited the following reason:
not a professional product

Really?? There are *lots* of non-profesional product integrations in the Library.
And it ridiculous to call a bulb "non-professional". Are there any professional bulbs??
Ok, fine, I went over it.

Then, few months later I've created a Modbus template for Daikin RTD-RA module that I wanted to contribute.
As there are *lots* of AC integrations in the library I thought it's "professional enough".
The template was really simple - few Modbus inputs and few Modbus outputs:



I've submitted it in late May 2023.

14.06.2023, Loxone Library Moderator:

Unfortunately, your request to publish has been declined. The moderator has cited the following reason:
No modbus documentation added on the template. How do I make the settings? Can I expend this template? Please add the necessary documentation for this device describing all modbus settings and registers. The picture is not enough.

15.06.2023, me:
So I've patIently rewritten screenshot of the documentation to raw text / table on the next day.
From this:




to this:



Was it necessary? I don't believe so, as only few first of those registers are actually used in the integration.
And all register description is in module documentation that is easy to find online.
But fine. I've resubmitted the template.

[then, nothing happens for more then 1 month]

21.07.2023, me, escalating by email:

I have submitted updated description day after and my corrected template has not been reviewed for 5 weeks now. Why?

[no answer to my email, obviously. And nothing happens for another 1 month]

21.08.2023, Loxone Library Moderator:

Unfortunately, your request to publish has been declined. The moderator has cited the following reason:
Thank you for the good explanation of this template on the page. On the last line you refer to the documentation. This documentation is not in the upload of this page, or there is no link to the documentation. As this is missing we are unable to check the working of this template and a costumer is not able to expend on this template. Please add the missing link or document.

22.08.2023, me:
...patiently upgrading integration description by adding a link to "RTD-RA modle Installation Instruction and manual" pdf, found online.
Specially for the moderator and other people that don't have access to Google.
But fine. I've resubmitted the template.

[nothing happens again]

4.09.2023 - today
The integration is still under "pending review".

Really simple contribution is going through review for more than 3 MONTHS now - this is ridiculous.
And that's only because Loxone Library moderator poorly executing his job.
I hope someone from Loxone HQ will take this under deep consideration...

[Prof.Mobilux]

Solution:

Submit it here: https://loxwiki.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LOX/overview

And in the saved time, go and get a beer.

[TomekWaw]

Prof.Mobilux

I am contributing to LoxWiki, also.
But official Library has a much larger reach then LoxWiki simply because it's linked directly in Loxone Config.
It's interface is also more clean and user friendly for such integration templates.

LoxWiki on the other hand - just like almost all wiki's - is a kind of mess.
Even hard to search through because mix of german (~80%) and english (~20%) docs.
Additionally, dropping loxwiki.eu and moving to atlassion internal domain made a lot of broken links..

[<Andreas>]

Of course, everything that competes with Loxone is a non-professional product
That's why the forum and the wiki are so important

[Leigh]

The approach of loxone is the reason why I no longer contribute to their library. This all existed before in their forum and was closed because they did not want to have foreign products. About 8 years later they came up with the super idea of a loxone library.

My recommendation is the Same as Prof.Mobilux said, save the time and take a beer.

[Prof.Mobilux]

And Loxone gets all this for free and their own benefit - with no own resources. Clever idea

[TomekWaw]

This idea might have work if they'd respect the community contributors.
Reviewing a simple template for more than 3 months and rejecting submission based on details, shows they don't.
I still hope this is not reflection of Loxone policy and they just don't know how their library moderator exactly does his job.

[Miep Miep]

Did you hear back from them regarding your complaint ?

Would give it a try on their FB page, sometimes Publicity helps (if not deleted in no time).

What about the Loxonauten here in the forum ? Maybe tagging them ?

[Leigh]

Miep Miep

It's all wasted time.

[Miep Miep]

Sometimes … well … sometimes good things happen.

Not everytime though.

[hismastersvoice]

Benjamin G.
Can you please take care?

If the User of Loxone help to fill up the Library for Loxone so it would be nice to show some appreciation and don't let them wait without answers.
The speed is like to build an airport in Germany

Please help to clarify this issue.

Thanks in advance.

[Benjamin G.]

hismastersvoice Thanks for tagging me, I'll look into it.

TomekWaw Thank you so much for your effort. I will do my best to clear this and improve the process from our side.

[TomekWaw]

Finally!

Thank you for your request to publish to the Loxone Library with the following details:

Author: Tomasz Nowak

Plugin name: Daikin RTD-RA Module

Version: 1.0.0

Great news! Your publish request has been accepted.

Thanks for your intervention, Benjamin G.
I hope that library reviews will be done sooner in the future...

[dumi]

Hi, I have the same problem. I've been waiting for a review for over a month.
Furthermore, the button to delete the template in the library should have a confirmation dialog, just click the X and the template is permanently gone without any question. In addition, the X is still not visible, but it appears after hovering over the template, so I deleted the template by mistake. So the month of waiting for a review was useless. I assume the newly inserted template will be at the end of the queue again
I will greatly appreciate any acceleration of the review template.

[Prof.Mobilux]

Put your template in the wiki instead. It’s online immediately.

[Jan W.]

Same here. I thought it may be a good idea to publish a template in the Loxone library and give it a try, because it's tightly integrated in Loxone Config. It was not that long ago (about a week), but after reading this post I'm not sure if it will be published soon. The status is still "Preview pending". If Apple or Google had acted like this with their app stores, their main products would have been less successful. With apps an approval process and testing might take a few days to be sure that the app does not contain any malware. The approval process for the Loxone library is not that complicated in my opinion. I'm not sure what intention Loxone had and has with their library.

If my counts are correct: about 135 templates are from Loxone, 98 are from vendors, and 306 were created by different users from the community. Many vendors that have published templates have done it for several products, so the number of different vendors is much less. My conclusion: Loxone had to publish templates in the beginning to promote the library, but only a few vendors have spend their effort to create templates. Most of them (about 56%) were created by the community, so it is still the community that is spending more effort than Loxone and all vendors together. It is difficult to compare the quality, but for "Huawei" the template from the community has a better quality in my opinion.

Anyway, I've followed the advice from Prof.Mobilux and have posted it here: https://loxwiki.atlassian.net/wiki/s...ron+SDM630-TCP

[dumi]

Thanks, I'm trying to create an entry on loxWiki, after registration I get an error message when I try to log in: Try a different account: ***@***.cz doesn't have access to Confluence on loxwiki.atlassian.net. I am doing something wrong? What exactly is the procedure for adding a record? Thank you

[maxw]

Sorry for the late response, can you try again registration in https://loxwiki.atlassian.net/
and give feedback if it works now?

Thanks, Max

[dumi]

seems to works now, thank you!

[maxw]

good to know! welcome to the loxwiki :-)

[Jan W.]

Update to Post #13: After about 3 weeks my template was published. Compared to TomekWaw it was lightning fast .