Joomla! Forum - community, help and support

Hi,

In the last few days we received 2 serious blackmailing threats and 2 downrates for one of our main extensions at the same time after we declared that blackmailing doesn't work with us.

We can provide all the information (emails, forum posts) necessary to prove these attempts.

My question now is how to proceed? Waiting until these reviews get published and then report or submitting a ticket with access to further information about these cases before they get publish?

Thanks in advance for any advise!

Regards,
Markus

i would submit a ticket first, then advise your would be blackmailer you have done this

Thanks mandville, don't really know how the processes are in these cases in the Jed.

Actually, and this is irritating me most, both blackmailers seem to be hosted in the Netherlands an blackmailed us with a distance of just a few days. If somebody out there has similar experience, sharing experience would be welcome.

I will try the tickets then as suggested.

Regards,
Markus

Markus has made some outstanding software for the Joomla Community. Most of the time he replies to my forum post (I am on free support). He has made some very decent replies and has been thoughtful on my suggestions and ideas. So I just want to step up and say that this is not right nor fair for Markus to be having to deal with this.

I recently saw someone suggest in the joomla forums that a rating should not be submitted until the review itself has been approved. I agree that this should be so, unless a rating goes away after a review has been declined (which I doubt works this way).

If the review is removed/not approved during moderation, the vote goes away with it. Reviews are moderated along with the votes (since a review is required to submit a vote) however the vote is automatically shown until moderated.

Glad to hear. Then the current system on that works just fine then.

I can see some of the developers are playing nasty games to de-rank their competitors extensions. They should be banned along with their extensions if found guilty.

Not sure how helpful some of the posts here are? A few months ago are site was over ran with spammers, can u guess from where? the Netherlands! A few small changes wiped them out all together. and i my self don't care about ur ratings, what really matters is how ur extension works, up front price if any/ free should be free period/not false advertisement, integration, And focus on all users of the site not just the admins.

As far as ur question with blackmailing can u be more spasifik. as to what it is there holding over ur head like in general, ie; user info, data, features, etc... the name of the the extension. and u did the right thing by reporting them... if u need help i would be glad to, in any way i can... feel free to contact me any time. best of luck

Paul007 wrote:I can see some of the developers are playing nasty games to de-rank their competitors extensions. They should be banned along with their extensions if found guilty.

The JED agrees with that statement. It's a reoccurring problem. Though most of all the developers that have listings in the JED abide by the TOS and are really great people, there are some that misbehave and are nearly always caught. This is why, if you go to a JED listing and the owner has been caught downvoting competitors, soliciting votes in a way not in compliance with the TOS or adding false votes/reviews - you'll see an Unpublish Notice along with the UR-10 code, which spells out Fraudulent Voting. Whenever this notice is seen, you can rest assured that the developer received at minimum a 30-day suspension (it increases up to permanent based on the number of times bad behavior is repeated.)

It's a heavy drain on volunteer time to have to process and investigate these, but in the end it does help keep the directory fair for reviews, votes and ranking.

captjay wrote:. and i my self don't care about ur ratings, what really matters is how ur extension works

I personally don't agree with that statement as I believe most of the users wouldn't even try an extension if they have bad ratings and so, they will never find out how good/useful the extension was.

mlipscomb wrote: If you go to a JED listing and the owner has been caught downvoting competitors, soliciting votes in a way not in compliance with the TOS or adding false votes/reviews - you'll see an Unpublish Notice along with the UR-10 code, which spells out Fraudulent Voting. Whenever this notice is seen, you can rest assured that the developer received at minimum a 30-day suspension (it increases up to permanent based on the number of times bad behavior is repeated.)

Thank you for the information. This could be very helpful for users in avoiding dishonest developers. I personally have never seen any notice like this on any extension. I would really appreciate if you could give us an example link which I believe will help other users as well while selecting extensions for their sites. Thanks again!

Unfortunately that would be a "Wall of Shame" post, so I won't post a link to any currently-suspended listing/dev (despite how much their behavior annoys the team).