Allowing authors to force updates

[fanboy]

It would be nice to have the ability to force an update (even for a temporary time) on user.. maybe issuing a remote command, that'll force adblock to check for updates..

Thinking of user issuing a special checksum/string thats only active for X-mins/hours or whenever, basically if I make a change and wish to push it out to any users affected (complaining), I can force a fix without making user wait 5days for a fix to be applied

[Wladimir Palant]

There is no way for the user's client to know that you issued a "critical update" without contacting the server. And I doubt that you want them to poll the server all the time.

[Ares2]

Maybe only 50% on-topic, but I would suggest to at least update users that are trying to send an issue report so we don't get flooded for a whole week with the same stuff...

So after selecting missing ad or false positive, a page that asks for a subscription update including a "Update all lists and refresh page" button to do so would be great. Ideally, it would be a little more sophisticated, e.g. try an update, check whether the download was successful, if no -> explain possible solutions, if yes -> refresh the page and close the reporter.

Of course this would make the reporting process a little more complicated, but I think it would be well worth it especially if it also helps in diagnosing download errors as mentioned above.

[Wladimir Palant]

Given the many dynamic pages reloading the page might have unexpected side-effects - this is not trivial. Adblock Plus could update subscriptions for false positive reports however and warn the user if any of the filters applying on the page are no longer there.

[Ares2]

Well, that would work for FP reports. What about still updating and asking users to manually reload the page for MA reports then? And what about verifying whether the download was successful?

[lewisje]

I think that false positives are more urgent than false negatives.

[Wladimir Palant]

What about still updating and asking users to manually reload the page for MA reports then?

That would mean complicating the submission process too much. As lewisje said, this doesn't seem to be a high priority.

[Wladimir Palant]

This has been implemented: https://hg.adblockplus.org/adblockplus/rev/d74cb837db13
Also, reports with subscriptions that went more than 14 days without an update are no longer accepted.