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We have registered our new extension JoomDalf to extensions directory on 8th March and we have been announcing it since that day on twitter emails and linkedin as well as some forums and email campaigns. After being approved on 20th March the extension page got a huge impact and went to New & Noteworthy status which we were glad to see.

Yesterday we got the below email with a fake IP and fake email:
The Joomla Judge <thejoomlajudge@lawyer.com>

We caught you faking your views at JED.
There are unwritten rules!
We know how you do it and when you do it.
If you ever fake your views again we will report this to the JED team and give them all evidence we have.
You will be banned with all of your extensions for lifetime!

Now you need to learn a lesson fist
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And today we got another email with blackmail going further
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Joomla Guru: Messing around with the wrong guy
Well, you are a really stupid person.
If you are not honest and don't follow rules we know much more effective punishment.
You shouldn't wonder if your extension has a bad reputation someday

Right now our extension has a Views of 4745 and this will increase as we bought a mailing campaign for it which will result this guy taking action about his blackmail also which he clearly states giving our extension a bad review and vote.

We would like to know how to take action against such an immature and childish act with no honor.

Also we would like to suppose the new & noteworthy section rules to be revised as those actions may be happening to other developers as well.

Also this brings another question on table why votes are immediate while reviews are not? We think votes also need to be reviewed as such guys would do their utmost to slander others names.

For New & Noteworthy section we suggest it to be based on votes and reviews while also votes to be reviewed. We are stepping one step more and becoming volunteers for a new voting system especially registration required extensions to disable the users voting for the extension without buying it. We suppose all commercial extension developers would agree to this point.

Hi xenous!

I bought JoomDalf for $17,50 yesterday and sold it to 5.000 different people for $18,50 each today. This is abolutely covered by the GPL. Do you really think, that the JED should forbid those users to vote/review the extension just because of the fact, that they bought it from me instead of you?

Best regards
Andreas Berger

_________________
bretteleben.de

Andreas,

First of all congratulations for earning $92482.5 from my work I hope to see a generous donation from you :P
The voting and views system right at the moment sucks and you know that too I am shooting ideas from my mind and I think yes if they are buying from you they would not vote for me the votes are generally for support on JED and if they dont buy from me I do not support them so how can they vote something named under my name while they do not buy from me?

Hi xenous
this thread is very enteresting because it combines two topics which I discuss here:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=262&t=692140
and
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?p=2711616#p2713721
This is also the same thread where Andreas Berger reveals a big views manipulation.

It is not nice to get blackmailed as I discuss in the firtst thread but I am also not a friend of people manipulating JED.
I just checked your extension it is has now almost 4900 views in two days and 7 tweets.
As I wrote in one of the mentioned thread aboves I have a huge database of customers and newsletter subscribers.
When I have published a new extension and I have informed them via newsletter I never got more than 1000 -1200 views at one day.

7 tweets altogehter with 2 tweets of yours in the last 2 days. The others from a dubious lady.
And your statement "... as we bought a mailing campaign ... " will be something that JED doesn't really like to hear.
Please don't take it personal but this is really odd!

The persons who are threatening you do not have a personal advantage/background when "blackmailing" you as my customer here:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=262&t=692140
This sounds more like that somebody feels or wants to be the sheriff in town like John Wayne.
The background is that (s)he / they think that you are manipulting your views and the aim is to be do something good for JED.

I don't know if this wasn't a fault to open this thread when you are talking about "... as we bought a mailing campaign ...".
At last this is also a kind of artifically populating of your views.
My experience with the moderators is that they don't tolerate things like these and you write it to public.

_________________
Google says: Don't be evil!
Just imagine: Darth Vader used to be once Anakin Skywalker!
http://www.mooj.org

Hi mad4Joomla,

What is wrong to announce your extensions to public with an email campaign with links to JED and your site?

It is not our advantage to get people in JED but we have included it in there to show our members that the extension is legit in JED also.

If we would have did views like many does believe me I would not mind to be on top however you might also see 5 ratings to extension is there in 2 days as well. Also I can show a very popular discussion in linked in around this extension as well which one of raters came from

No it is nothing to say about if they are your customers or newsletter subscribers.
But if they are "bought" it is an attempt to populate your views with the aim (I guess) to be at new and noteworthy.
If you want to get these people as customers you should lead them on your site and not to JED.
Otherwise ones could interpret it as an attempt to manipulate your views ranking.
Just only my 2 cents that JED will not like this.

_________________
Google says: Don't be evil!
Just imagine: Darth Vader used to be once Anakin Skywalker!
http://www.mooj.org

Yesterday on opening date it got around 3000 views and got in new and noteworthy we were so friggin happy to see it there then in morning it was off the page Ok no problems but till my day ends around 3-hours ago it got back there with 4600 views in total it was great to see again but then we got that email and suddenly (i dont know how all the ones in front got views more than 5000) some got 1000 views in like 5 minutes I am happy not to be on new and noteworthy and do not make it an issue to be there or not. If it was an issue I would to the same they did on front page. it seems that our extension got 280+ visits in last 3 hours again so what should I do? tell people not to look at my extension otherwise i will get banned or some super genius will give me a poor rating to drop my reliability?

Also read the TOS again there's nothing about view manipulation it is an ethical issue as stated it is upto your ethical values....

And again I dont care about being in front page I just care about being blackmailed for being there for short periods of time in day ...

personal view:
buying traffic is "shady" and may breach http://extensions.joomla.org/tos D2.10 &E
your signature itself may being violation of the forum rules.

_________________
HU2HY- Poor questions = Poor answer
Un requested Help PM's will be added to the foe list and possibly just deleted
{Community.Connect Administrator }{ Showcase & Security Moderator}

ugh that account is pretty old and signature was too and i was not active in forums for a loooong time. Fixed it sorry for that.

On the TOS
It says reviews and votes not views we did not manipulate any reviews if we did we would do it for 5 stars

If I am going to be banned for being honest in JED then I am ok however then I also would like to see many share the same destiny as I cannot believe an extension with 5000+views having no reviews at all.

I already suggested being a volunteer for coding a better system on votes and reviews also I am being a volunteer to code the JED in a way to make it fake traffic proof as well

How interesting to see special policy on JED!
IF JED editors are using the friend name "JEDIs" this email must have sent for the dark side of the force! may form Lord Vader himself!

_________________
Online translation for Joomla core and extensions: https://sites.google.com/site/transjoomla
- JED Editor / pt-PT Translation Team / Portuguese Joomla Community

I guess this was the trigger for the email of your "firends".
It is very odd if someone gets 3000 views at the publishing day.


Some might ask themselves how you got that many views.


As I could read nobody threatened you to down vote your rating.
Because...

... doesn't say that. It is your interpretation.

It was late yesterday as I wrote my stuff.
This morning, when I can clearly think, the "puzzle" comes together:

- Someone viewed the JED home page and saw you there. Clicked on your extension and saw that 3000 views.
- he/she/they became angry because he/she/they is convinced that you artifically populating your views.
- he/she/they wrote you an email with a warning
- your views raised to "shady" 4900
- he/she/they warned you a second time

As I can see your votes are still pretty excellent.
There was no down rating. (if you like to deal with real strange guys come to the forms category LOOOOL)

Even the warnings are strange their intention is to keep up fairness at the Joomla Extensions Directory.
I still wonder how 3000 views at the first day and 4900 views in 2 days can be reached?
And then another 5 reviews with 5 star votings at the first day (for a commercial extensions)?
Please tell me and I will do the same for my next new extension

To finish that; a last quote of horus:

As an old star wars fan (and I guess you too horus ) you will certainly know that the good in Anakin Skywalker never got lost.
The proof is in "Return of the Jedi" as Vader throws Darth Sidious down into the depp.

_________________
Google says: Don't be evil!
Just imagine: Darth Vader used to be once Anakin Skywalker!
http://www.mooj.org

Here is what I did.

I have published one extension on a very high visible rate (Image slideshow) and before that I had one suspended extension (due to broken URL) which is pretty old but made the site gain members and visibility

My 1st one was approved on 1st of March meanwhile I was ready to publish 2nd one and on 6th it was ready we sent out some beta copies and submitted it on 8th if you check the extension on 15th before it got approved it got a new version and while dealing with all clients one by one (we don't have too many paid clients at the moment around 200) we always asked them to rate our services and extensions on JED so that they came and voted.

As you might see we also published this on twitter, linkedin and facebook way before it was approved here and Chilie group liked JoomDalf very much they started to support it directly then the rest came easy.

I think our success on JoomDalf was to have something unique which was not done before. Also we own a successful WordPress framework where we use same abilities of JoomDalf as shortcode generator and a good mailing list there too.

I never wanted to annoy or piss anyone but the reality is that I have something unique and it took attention.

And for last point I am coming to Forms category soon

Hope for you that some guys from "forms" didn't read that
"Forms" is no bed of roses!
And the users of forms are very hard if something is not perfect.
Will see ya
But please don't cry

_________________
Google says: Don't be evil!
Just imagine: Darth Vader used to be once Anakin Skywalker!
http://www.mooj.org

Don't worry crying is not my attitude I like to stand up and fight

@xenous: you can forward those emails to me if you would like and I'll investigate. If someone is pretending to be a JED member and they aren't, they would be suspended.

However, that said, there are some major issues with view manipulation currently happening and, it is covered in the Terms of Service (Item C.2)


From what you've said above, you haven't bought traffic to your JED listing, you've sent out a mail campaign. That's not against the TOS, but will throw up a red flag and have your listings investigated if a disproportionate amount of traffic is received to the listing.

In the future, all users may see the "popular" tag go away due to this issue as it's become very time consuming to police. I'll post more in a blog about that soon after a decision is made.

For now, I don't think you have an issue if what you say is true. But, if you are buying traffic to your listing then fair warning, you risk loosing your privilege to list in the JED. That would be sad to see for an extension that just got some nice US press:

_________________
~Matt Lipscomb
http://www.USAFreelancers.org
Professional Joomla! Services and Web Development based in the USA

@matt,

I have nothing to worry as I know the truth and thanks for the heads up on press. We were so busy making users happy since release and did not see those.

This is a "sponsored" blog post

_________________
Google says: Don't be evil!
Just imagine: Darth Vader used to be once Anakin Skywalker!
http://www.mooj.org

Well for sure I am not one of the sponsors and glad to see my extension there

Hi Matt!
The "major issues with view manipulation" are not "currently" happening, they are happing for half a year now. And the JED team knows this for at the least 4 month. So, what are you - by your own definition "Responsible for the oversight of the Joomla! Extensions Directory site and team." - doing to stop this?

Best regards
Andreas

_________________
bretteleben.de

I think the views should be ignored and ratings should be taken under consideration. Also fake reviews need solution as well.

I pointed that will happen to me here and it happened.