We build. You grow.

Get best community software here

Start a social network, a fan-site, an education project with oxwall - free opensource community software

Plugin review spam? | Forum

Topic location: Forum home » Support » Oxwall Store
JB Tech (FoxTechs)
JB Tech (FoxTechs) Jul 18 '14
This is just a personal opinion/out look of mine and doesn't reflect anyone else's of the EWT or FoxTechs team....anyways:


I've noticed that two plugins were released recently by the user "PLUG'NCENTERAL" recently, and that the "reviews" on them seem a bit suspicious.


Now, I'm not sure if these are fake accounts made to bump these plugin's to the mot popular account or if they're genuine people, but I think the former is more probable in this case.


http://www.oxwall.org/store/item/552 - this is their first plugin, some might remember them sending a PM to almost everyone on the Oxwall website to check it out. No reviews came in, but soon this particular user left a 5 star review:

http://www.oxwall.org/user/brightideas (note they have hardly no info at all, and have not taken part in any forum discussion or any community sections of Oxwall). This was their review of the first plugin, pretty understandable, nothing too shabby:


pretty good

does exactly what is says no problems here

But then what made me more suspicious is when I seen that this "brightideas" user gave a 5 star review to PLUG'NCENTERAL's "Super Twitter Widget" ( http://www.oxwall.org/store/item/893 ) plugin, and the text in it isn't very much helpful in proving this is a real user at all:


wonderful

i love this plugin lol way better than the old twitter widget the other developers tried to sale his is a MUST HAVE!

Not only that, but going back to the first listed plugin, two more users with generic-seeming pictures and no info or community activity at all left 5 star reviews as well, also keep in mind these user's reviews all were marked as "helpful."


http://www.oxwall.org/user/HOTPLUGZ review:

this is a great plugin my members and i love it! ***MUST HAVE***


http://www.oxwall.org/user/Piccy review:

Exactly what I was looking for. Works very well with my version (1.6).



With this all in mind, if this is indeed fake-made reviews, I believe review moderation should be a bit stricter. If the store system's popularity-sorting algorithms can't change, then maybe something like only certain account types can leave reviews would be helpful (e.g a actual user who is a registered member of the community for say 20 days can leave reviews)


Thanks for your time.