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 pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. 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.

Mofsy 6:52 pm on March 1, 2018

You can order reviews on the Yoast and it will be thrown out of the catalog?
A good tool against competitors. You can not throw out plug-ins.
- Enrique 7:31 pm on March 1, 2018
  
  great idea! 😀
- Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 9:55 pm on March 1, 2018
  
  No, we’d figure out who paid for it and we’d throw YOU out.
  
  We’re actually really good at this.
  
  Edit to add: Yoast has the least incentive of anyone to do this, by the way, so a spam brigade is incredibly trivial to track back to the competitors.
  - Enrique 12:03 am on March 2, 2018
    
    we’d throw YOU out
    
    We’re actually really good at this
    
    Uhuh, you cannot even remove an account: https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/forum-welcome/#Deleting_Accounts, so you’re not that good at it!
    
    Plus you completely misunderstood Mofsy’s suggestion. What he means is that people can pay other people to leave a review to a competitor.
    
    In the example of Yoast, one would need to pay a lot of people to leave 1 star reviews to actually make a dent, but the point is to use your rule to make the life of the competition harder.
    - Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 11:25 pm on March 6, 2018
      
      Apples and oranges about the account deletion, Enrique. You’re making a false tautology there.
      
      Plus you completely misunderstood Mofsy’s suggestion.
      
      No, I didn’t. But since you missed my point, let me explain this differently.
      
      but the point is to use your rule to make the life of the competition harder
      
      Yes, and if you do that, you would have your account blocked and your plugins forfeit. Which means its a high risk low reward for you, and thus incredibly stupid to do.
      
      And here again is my point: You’d be a damn fool to do it against Yoast because you’d lose. Yoast would be similarly stupid to do it against anyone else, because they’d forfeit all their plugins and their contributions to .org. And Yoast? Ain’t stupid.
      
      But hey, if you want to destroy your own business, be my guest. You would join the dozen other people this year who’ve done that.
David Anderson 8:52 pm on March 1, 2018

Related, but separate, I wish that reviews ‘expired’ after (e.g.) 2 years, in terms of their effect upon the overall calculated rating of a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party.

Seeing what some really plugin’s average rating since the dawn of time is, isn’t so useful. Perhaps it was great in the past, but recently has hardly worked? Or perhaps it was bad in the past, but has been greatly improved. There ought to be some sort of weighting so that recent ratings count for more. “Doesn’t count if >2 years ago” would be one way of achieving that.
- Vladimir Vassilev 9:24 pm on March 1, 2018
  
  So if I have some bad reviews, I could pay for some obviously paid reviews and I get to have ALL my reviews deleted, if paid reviews are soon enough after the bad ones? How about you delete just the positive ones, so that it hurts more those who pay?
  - Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 9:57 pm on March 1, 2018
    
    You … could. But the thing is, you do it once and we warn you. You do it twice and you’re kicked out for good. Plus if we figure out that’s why, you’re out for good.
    
    The risk of a perma-ban is way more than the reward of adjusting your reviews.
    
    Bonus? We’d probably ONLY delete the paid reviews if we could figure them out.
    - Vladimir Vassilev 6:17 am on March 2, 2018
      
      That’s a good clarification, thanks 🙂
      
      David, sorry for commenting below your comment, something messed up as I wrote from my phone. This wasn’t on purpose.
      
      +1 for having a way to filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. out older reviews, be it good or bad, so that they don’t need to do the maths on the average rating themselves.
- Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 9:59 pm on March 1, 2018
  
  It should still count. The Apple Model of “Only reviews for this version count” is literally how Pokemón Go! managed to ‘fix’ their ratings. And that’s incredibly disingenuous. Also some reviews from 2 years ago are still valid.
  
  In theory, if you’re improving and getting only good reviews, people will notice “Hey, the only bad reviews are from 3 years ago. They must have cleaned up!”
  - David Anderson 8:00 pm on March 2, 2018
    
    Definitely a model whereby you can reset your ratings with a new release is silly.
    
    Also some reviews from 2 years ago are still valid.
    
    Yes – though I was talking about the calculation of the star rating. That wouldn’t entail deleting reviews.
digitalchild 2:49 am on March 2, 2018

What can you do as a user when you see that a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party has an unusually high number of 5 star reviews coming from accounts that are only recently active and only have 1 review?

Is there a reporting system in place?
- Vladimir Vassilev 6:25 am on March 2, 2018
  
  One thing you could do is draw attention of the reviewers to this pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party on wordpress.slack.com. Not sure if #forums is the right place, but @ipstenu could confirm this.
  - Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 5:46 pm on March 2, 2018
    
    Forums is good. They usually check and can be sure it’s a legit issue.
Marcus 11:13 am on March 2, 2018

Mika, this is a good policy, but I’d say that paying for reviews, if you can tell absolutely for sure (and also confirm it was the author that paid for it, and not a competitor for malicious reasons), should warrant a permanent ban right off the bat, or maybe a temporary one?

I know that’s a delicate decision to make, but at least having that possibility in place when there is no doubt is a deterrent too… and losing reviews can be the lesser consequence in cases with no proof of origin.

Not wanting to give anyone ideas here :/ but looking at it from the other side….

The penalty of losing reviews is a good risk-reward for the kind of person who would contemplate paying for reviews in the first place. From their point of view, you can give it a go, and worst case is you lose the reviews, get a slap on the wrist and you continue with your pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party marketing it in other ways. Plus, you don’t necessarily lose your ‘investment’ if the 5 star reviews gives you good will in that time period, which equates to more active sites and therefore the ability to monetize those who signed up to your plugin basing that decision of the number of positive reviews.

The comments about paid bad reviews to competitors should be harsher, although I think you have already indicated that.
- Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 5:45 pm on March 2, 2018
  
  There are a lot of people who just don’t know how stupid and bad it is. We try to educate and improve everything, versus be monsters.
  - Marcus 5:55 pm on March 2, 2018
    
    versus be monsters
    
    I’d say ‘vs being less tolerant’ 🙂
weblizar 10:38 am on March 3, 2018

We also facing this issue, most of the new pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party going up, due to fake or paid reviews.

Our plugin going down in search bcoz we are receiving the real review from real users with supporting them on plugin support form. These reviews are FEW in comparison to Paid reviews.

You should find out any solution for that.

Is that possible only active or real user of WorPress.org can review any product? Or fix any time durations for a new user to eligible before posting a review. Limit the posting of reviews on plugins.

That rules can prevent such things, I think.
- Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 11:29 pm on March 6, 2018
  
  Please don’t make accusations like that without any evidence. Your plugins are not going down because of other people getting good reviews.
  - axew3 7:44 am on March 7, 2018
    
    Asking myself who can pay to look like a star, being only a grain of dust! By the way, may the point to not allow to a new user, registered from 2 min to review can be a good point: but human stupidity is not controllable in full: i could register several account today, and use them in the future. Could be added rule about Not only based on time, but only on inserted active posts but not sure if this would be a good choice under several aspect. Just my though on this, regards alessio-
    - Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 4:59 pm on March 7, 2018
      
      That isn’t going to happen. It would place an unfair burden on MANY legit users.
      - weblizar 10:24 am on March 8, 2018
        
        May Mika & pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party team will find out a good solution to prevent that.

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