Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 3:15 pm on April 12, 2018
Tags: ,   

Legal Compliance Added to Guidelines

Guideline 9 (Developers and their plugins must not do anything illegal, dishonest, or morally offensive.) has been amended to include the following new prohibition:

  • implying that a plugin can create, provide, automate, or guarantee legal compliance

While the vast majority of plugins will never run into this issue, we want to explain why this change is necessary.

Over the years, by accident or intent, some developers have claimed their plugins can provide legal compliance, sometimes automatically, across various aspects of site administration. These areas have included security (e.g. FIOS, PCI/DSS), cookies and tracking (i.e. the “EU Cookie Law”), online shopping (VAT), privacy (GDPR), accessibility (ADA), copyright, and more.

Sadly, no plugin in and of itself can provide legal compliance. While a plugin can certainly assist in automating the steps on a compliance journey, or allow you to develop a workflow to solve the situation, they cannot protect a site administrator from mistakes or lack of compliance, nor can they protect site users from incorrect or incomplete legal compliance on the part of the web site.

In short, plugins are helpful tools along the legal compliance journey, but should never be presented as a solution, nor should they give users a false sense of security.

Because of that, going forward we will be attempting to prevent these types of claims in all plugins. These issues will be handled in the same way we try to make sure that people don’t use ‘official plugin’ without actually being official.

Plugins that are are currently at odds with this change, either by accident or intent, will be notified shortly and required to change their titles, descriptions, and/or readmes.

ETA: I made the FAQ public early to hopefully help you with any questions!

#guidelines, #notice

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 9:59 pm on March 30, 2018
Tags: services, trac   

Plugin SVN Migrated

EDIT: Plugins trac is up and running again. Everything should be good now. -Otto

As with all those things we migrated, SVN had to move too. It’s on shiny new servers, which hopefully will resolve the issues where a plugin was approved and didn’t generate SVN folders properly.

Currently everything’s up and running except for plugins trac. As Otto put it, “with 1.8 million commits, that takes a while” …

Systems is keeping tabs on it, and will fix anything weird with trac. Don’t panic if it goes off line or things aren’t updating properly. Be patient with us if we’re reviewing your changes (we have to do it manually now). We’ll update when there’s something to say other than “Yup, it’s syncing.”

#services #trac

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 4:49 am on March 9, 2018
Tags: make.wordpress.org/community,   

X-post: WordPress Community Code of Conduct Survey Draft

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Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 5:09 pm on March 6, 2018  

Understanding Readme.txt

At it’s heart, the Readme.txt file is pretty basic. You put in the information, it generates a WordPress page. Of course, it’s not all simple magic, and there are some weird things to be aware of.

To help people better understand how it works, the Plugin Directory documentation has been updated, but here’s a quick primer:

If you use Tags, so will the directory

If you put the stable version of 1.2.3 in your readme, the rest of the content will be pulled from /tags/1.2.3 and not the trunk folder.

Readmes use Markdown (mostly)

Most Markdown calls work as expected. Tables do not. But this means don’t put JS or CSS in your readme. It will break things.

Videos

A YouTube or Vimeo link on a line by itself will be auto-embedded. It’s also possible to embed videos hosted on VideoPress using the wpvideo shortcode.

(File) Size Matters

If your Readme is over 10k, weird parsing things happen. Some tips to keep it small:

  1. Move your previous versions’ changelogs to their own file – changelog.txt
  2. Self-host seriously intensive documentation
  3. Make your readme a ‘how to’ and ‘why this is awesome’ but not a sales pitch for your pro version
  4. Don’t keyword stuff (someone dropped their readme by 4k when they cleaned it up)

Well written readmes get more users

Want to rank higher? Write a good readme. It’s actually much less about keyword stuffing than it is keeping users. After all, we’ve all seen a plugin with 20k downloads but only 10+ active users. That means you’re getting people’s attention and not delivering. So write a good readme that sells what you do, and sells it well. Don’t embellish, like saying you’re the ‘best’ contact form plugin. Ditch the hyperbole and just write good. If you can’t, hire a copy writer. It’ll pay off.

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 5:30 pm on March 1, 2018  

Reminder: Paying for reviews is a guideline violation

Normally this comes up because we have to explain that paying a single person for a review is bribery.

This isn’t that.

I’m talking about when company or consultant on those websites like Fourrer (not it’s real name) offers to, for $50 or $450, leave 5 star reviews on your plugin. That’s a practice known as ‘salting’ (go look up ‘salting mines’ if you’re interested in why) and it is prohibited behaviour.

Reviews of your plugins should be made by users who actually use the plugin. When you pay people, either individually or en masse, to review your product, you get disingenuous reviews that are inclined to be of a higher nature. When you pay a company to get a series of 5-star reviews, you’re outright lying to people. You’re making them believe other users have reviewed when they have not.

If we catch you paying for reviews, you will lose ALL reviews made during the time period. Sadly, this is because we do not have a way to quickly or easily verify each and every review and user account. It’s an inefficient use of our resources to do so manually. In addition, we cannot accept a developers ‘word’ about which are and are not the purchased reviews, as many have lied about that in the past, and few have incentives to be fully honest. Finally, the fate of ‘valid’ reviews caught up in the removals are considered ‘fruit of the poisoned tree’ and cannot be restored.

And if that’s not bad enough, if you do it again, you lose your plugins.

Don’t pay off people for reviews.

Samuel Wood (Otto) 5:22 pm on March 1, 2018
Tags: make.wordpress.org/support,   

X-post: Dealing with Angry Users – Workshop on March 16, 2018

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Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 10:34 pm on February 20, 2018
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Keyword Stuffing is Spamming

In January 2017 we clarified what was meant by not spamming in the directory.

Since then, the language has been tweaked slightly, but the crux of the matter remains as follows: Public facing pages on WordPress.org (readmes) must not spam

To whit:

Public facing pages, including readmes and translation files, may not be used to spam. Spammy behavior includes (but is not limited to) unnecessary affiliate links, tags to competitors plugins, use of over 12 tags total, blackhat SEO, and keyword stuffing.

If you have a keyword or phrase repeated over 30 times in your plugin, you’re probably spamming. There are exceptions, especially when a term is a common word or you’re listing your shortcodes. However please be reasonable. If we see you using the same word 50 or more times in the readme, you’ll likely be receiving a warning.

Please take these warnings seriously. If you get asked to fix one plugin, we expect you (and ask you) to take care of any plugins we didn’t list as well. Be mature humans.

#guidelines

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 6:44 pm on February 13, 2018
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“Not Updated In …” Warning

The old warning that a plugin has not been updated in 2+ years has been changed to an indication of what version of WordPress a plugin has been tested up to. If that version is more than 3 major releases old, a plugin will be flagged as being maybe out of date.

Why the change?

Two years was rather arbitrary, but also wasn’t helpful to as many people. That is, two years had little meaning, since there were many plugins that didn’t need updates.

In addition, developers failed to understand what we meant by the multiple emails (the ones we send every major release) asking them to bump the tested-up-to value, without releasing new code. By doing that, the 2-year warning would go away. With this change, developers have a clearer one-to-one understanding of why their plugin is showing up as ‘old’ and users can see that a plugin has or has not been tested with the version of WP they’re using.

What do I put in for ‘tested up to’ versions?

We recommend the MAJOR release. For example, WordPress is currently on version 4.9.4. If you put in 4.9, then it will show as compatible. Don’t use words like “WP 4.9” – just use the version number.

Can I put in 5.0 as a version?

Yes, but it won’t do what you think it does. That is, you won’t show as compatible with 4.9. Don’t try to be clever on that one.

Does this make more work for developers?

No. A year ago I would have said yes, but now that we’re not releasing new major releases of WordPress 3 times a year, it works out to needing to update plugins’ readmes every 18 months or so. That changes the time by roughly six months, depending on the status of projects.

Can we indicate version compatibility with other plugins?

You mean like bbPress, WooCommerce, and so on? No. We recommend doing that within your plugin code.

Will this change the functionality of plugins?

No. This will neither alert your users nor will it disable your plugin within WordPress itself. You still have to handle that manually.

Is this a guideline change?

Nope. If you don’t want to update it ever, we don’t mind. The only reason we’d close a plugin for being ‘old’ is if it was broken or your email bounced.

#directory

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 7:32 pm on December 28, 2017
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Guideline Update

The previously proposed changes have been merged into the plugin guidelines.

It’s important to note that I do not think this is a ‘complete’ or ‘finished’ project. The guidelines are imperfect, in part because it’s impossible to create a rule for every single possible variant of a possible conflict, but also because we cannot predict the future.

There are people who are unhappy we didn’t go far enough with certain guidelines — like not saying “you may have 3 links to your own products on your plugin admin pages.” Others are unhappy we’ve gone as far as we did in certain situations — such as the 9th guideline’s prohibition against harassment.

Accepting the imperfection of English, as well as the flaws built in to creating guidelines for such a large audience, many of whom do not speak English natively, has led to situations where we have to settle. These guidelines are not perfect. They are not complete. They will be constantly evolving and adapting as we try to please and protect the majority of developers and users.

I encourage all of you to help us write them better. You can email us at plugins@wordpress.org or make pull requests on the GitHub repository. While we may not accept all requests, I promise we do listen to and read every last one.

#guidelines

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 4:37 pm on December 3, 2017
Tags: ,   

Reviewing the Guidelines – 2017

I do this regularly, but recently I received a comment that the guidelines were still too vague.

I need to stress that this is by intent. If we make guidelines like “You can only have 3 external links” then people will find ways to exploit that. However I do not think that guidelines are perfect. Which is why I’m proposing a minor update to them to address the following concerns:

  • Overall tense of guidelines made consistent
  • Update introduction for readability and unpack what we mean by keeping email updated
  • Explain the converse of 3
  • Put the important part of 5 on top
  • Add link to forum guidelines to 9
  • Add prohibition against harassment to anyone in WP
  • Clarify self-dismissible alerts are acceptable in 11
  • Changed tense of 12 and 13 to emphasize their importance
  • Grammar fix for title of 15
  • Fix reference to zips in 16 (upload now vs link to)
  • Reword title of 17 to explain that PLUGINS must honor…
  • Guideline 18 has received a full rewrite to clarify what rights we reserve and reiterate our promise to do this as fairly as possible.

You can see all the changes proposed here on GitHub

Please read the guidelines and leave comments or pull requests on Github. The plan is to make these live in January 2018 so please jump in and help! Thanks.

#announcement, #guidelines