Add developer contact email field to add-on store template

[Qchristensen]

Issue:

There is currently no consistently used method by add-on authors to provide contact details for queries from users. Some include them in the author / publisher field, often as:

Name Email address

Some provide details in the documentation or in a screen provided by the add-on.

Some don't have easily findable contact information, or only a GitHub page for the source code.

Solution proposed:

An author contact field, ideally which allows multiple email addresses for add-ons developed by a group.

Proposal by @seanbudd during internal discussion:

• add-on manifest field called "contactEmails" that is optional, and takes a list of emails
• making that field mandatory and a minimum of 1 when submitting to the add-on store
• leave it optional for external add-ons

[seanbudd]

I think we also need a corresponding NVDA issue for this (I can do this later) to ensure this gets added to the manifest as an optional field

[nvdaes]

I understand that people needs to contact add-on authors. Personally, I include my email, and other ones from other people when possible, in the author field, as suggested in the author field mentioned in 4.2.1 section of the developer guide.

But should we handle security risks for authors?
They may come from:

• Spammers
• People with uncomfortable or offensive messages, which may be difficult to report since, in this case, reporters would be disclosed if some action is taken.

[seanbudd]

Unfortunately there is not much we can do here. I agree that sharing your email can be incredibly vulnerable to such unwanted contact.
There is a balance we have to strike here for accountability though, when submitting to the store we need one solid form of contact.
This could be done with GitHub alone, but usually they don't have security advisories on, so there's no good discrete way to contact an author without an email.

[nvdaes]

Sean wrote:

there's no good discrete way to contact an author without an email.

Yes, and some people don't have a GitHub account.
Then I advice to add some tips in the form for submitters. May seem obvious, but years ago, when I was starting to develop add-ons, considering that I joined my first email list in 2009, due to lack of experience, I was thinking in providing a public mailing list as the contact email for add-ons, believing in collective responsibility and since in fact I'm a shy or reserved person.
Now I have more experience about security, but others may face my past situation. Perhaps we can advice to block uncomfortable people, I don't know exactly where, to handle security concerns.