Hi @all,

I have quit the development of Redirect Cleaner! :-(

Some of you have asked, if there is a problem with the new version 3.0.0? There is no problem with the new version! Personally I think the new version is the best version of Redirect Cleaner: It removes more redirects and creates less false-positives than ever. However, there is a (probably) small group of very vocal users, who gave me a very hard time.

I started Redirect Cleaner back in June 2009 - before I released the first version on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) - because the developer of Redirect Remover quit the development and there was no other replacement available. I did not want to take over Redirect Remover, because I had no experience in developing an add-on for Firefox and the code quality of Redirect Remover was quite poor.

But I still needed a replacement for my personal use. When I finally succeeded, I knew my add-on could be useful to other users of Redirect Remover. That is why I released my add-on Redirect Cleaner on AMO.

Although the first versions of Redirect Cleaner were far from being as good as Redirect Remover, I got quite a lot of positive feedback - both reviews and emails. Everybody seemed to be happy that there was a replacement for Redirect Remover.

However, this positive feedback became less and less in the upcoming years. With every new version of Redirect Cleaner and with every new feature it seemed like the users become more and more critical. In the last years I hardly ever got a 5-star review. Instead I got a lot of complains (both reviews and emails), mostly because Redirect Cleaner broke some website - which could easily be avoided by adding the website to the whitelist.

In the meantime Redirect Remover regularly got 5-star reviews, although it wasn't even compatible with the latest versions of Firefox for years. And the new add-on Clean Links regularly got 5-star reviews as well. In fact both Redirect Remover and Clean Links got more than 66% 5-star reviews - Redirect Cleaner not even 50%. (Not counting all the negative reviews for Redirect Cleaner, which were deleted by AMO.)

In all these years, I never got an email with just a "Thank You". But even emails from users, who experienced minor problems - which usually could be solved by adding the website to the whitelist - hardly ever said "Thank You".

Another possibility to say "Thank You" were donations. However, I almost never received a donation. I didn't develop Redirect Cleaner for the money, but receiving a donation is a very nice feeling and makes your work really being appreciated. In total I received 4 donations / 35 Euro.

Especially when I released Redirect Cleaner 3.0.0, I got a lot of negative feedback! Not because Redirect Cleaner did not remove redirects anymore - it did better than ever - but because it worked differently. And there was a (probably) small group of users, who were not only criticizing the new way, but also were attacking me personally (both reviews and email).

Honestly, I don't see the point in developing and supporting an add-on for the community, if I get personally attacked and my work seems hardly being appreciated. As I said in the beginning of this email: I started Redirect Cleaner, because I needed a replacement for Redirect Remover for my personal use. And I can still develop Redirect Cleaner for my personal use without releasing a new version on AMO.

I guess I would have continued developing Redirect Cleaner in spite of the negative feedback, if I had the feeling that my work was more appreciated. But I lost this feeling a little bit more every year.

Best regards,
Alexander

P.S. I have developed another add-on, Mail Merge for Thunderbird and SeaMonkey. And I get an email about every day from users with minor problems - which usually are caused by a mistake by the user. Every email starts with a "Thank You"! Of course I will continue to develop and support Mail Merge in the future!