Problem: JED authorizes conduct that is a crime in standard democratic society

[H13]

Hi, see the rules for JED reviews:

Not allowed:
Commercial disputes
Questions to the Developer or Others
Support Requests
Error Messages
Links
Code or Bug Reports
Questionable Language (including cursing)
Languages other than English
One-line Reviews

There is nowhere written, that you cannot write lies about the extensions, that you cannot ruin the goodwill of the extension developer.

When some of my extensions get reviews which is full of lies and I send exact proofs of that lies a I get this answer from JED moderator:

I have read the review and it does not break any of the JED rules

Of course it doesn't. So if some anonymous user (mostly the user made one or two reviews) without any Joomla! history wants to do a fake review or if some anonymous user - insidious, nasty or ignorant - wants to ruin your goodwill (or he/she will do it because of his/her ignorance), then everything is OK, rules are not broken and of course, some JED moderators behave cynical to this, maybe they cannot do anything, I don't know.

I have:

- made over 100 free extensions for Joomla!
- there are over 50 listed on JED
- made some answers in this forum (over 1000)
- managed over 1000 translation files for Joomla! (Phoca extension language files)
- made over 36000 answers in Phoca forum
- helped many Joomla! users per email
- made some bug reports to Joomla! core, etc.

Ok, we can say, I have some Joomla! history, I have somehow helped the project. But if there is some anonymous (fake, or insidious, nasty or ignorant) user and writes lies about the extension or ruins my goodwill, anonymous gets much more confidence that someone with some history.

When I need help from Joomla! community and I provide proofs about all the lies and untruths, then I am ridiculed and humiliated by this answer from JED moderator:

"I have read the review and it does not break any of the JED rules, therefore I cannot remove it."

I am sorry, but sometimes, I don't feel good in Joomla! community. Mostly, in the morning when I read emails and get the email from JED. My whole day is destroyed. And when I read other reviews by other developers, I see, I am not alone who gets such feelings :-(

Ok, but then we cannot expect better results that these:
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q ... 0wordpress

Will be great if someone can revise the rules.

Thank you.

Jan

[itoctopus]

I have to disagree with you on the title of your post, which mentions that "this is a crime in democratic societies".

The problem is that we have privacy rules on the Internet, where you don't have to reveal your true identity; anyone can pretend to be anyone and then ruin the reputation of anything and/or skew the opinions of the masses.

At the moment, there are no regulations against this in any country (unfortunately), and I think that this issue will not be resoled completely unless privacy on the Internet is abolished, where people must use their own real name if they want to say anything on the Internet.

Having said that, I think the JED should develop a method where the owner can reply to reviews (the same way ebay has a method where the seller can reply to buyer reviews).

[H13]

Having said that, I think the JED should develop a method where the owner can reply to reviews (the same way ebay has a method where the seller can reply to buyer reviews).

Hi, you can reply to the review as owner, but sorry, this does not help you, in time of search engines where you can read only a part of some paragraph, answer does not help you. :-( It exists on internet and it may be taken out of context.

Anyway, not sure where you live, but in my country if I will share some lie or untruth, I am actionable for this and if nobody can prove, it was me who told lies and untruths, then the person who runs the site, where this is written, is responsible for this.

Anyway, this is common situation on JED, not only connected to my extensions, I can find many lies about other extensions too.

It does not affect the developer only, it affects whole Joomla! project.

See Example:

A: "I choose Wordpress for building my site"
B: "Why not Joomla!?
A: "Because I needed to have feature X, and there is no feature X in Joomla!"
B: "Yes, there is, the extension Y does contain it"
A: "But I read in review, the feature X is not included in extension Y"
B: "It is just lie, the extension Y does include the feature X"
A: "Hmm, but why Joomla! community shares lies about its own extension?"
B: "Because it just does not break the rules of Joomla! community site, this is our strange game to put down ourselves"

This really shouldn't be in the interest of Joomla! project.

Jan

[sozzled]

As much as I can sympathise with people being rightly aggrieved when other post unwarranted, unfounded or deliberately-intended negative reviews, it's a "free society" where people are (unfortunately) able to do these kinds of things.

The JED team is empowered to police the reviews and they sometimes do take action when the extension owner complains. It sometimes depends on the person who is moderating the JED as how much sympathy they have with the extension owner or towards the reviewer. It's a tough call to make. Just like in a sporting match, the referee makes a call that people won't agree with but, at the end of the game, it's the referee's call.

In one respect the fact that your extensions are being reviewed (albeit negatively) is good. Most of the extensions on the JED never receive any reviews at all. There's an old saying "If someone says something bad about you it probably means you've done something good."

For what it's worth, you have my sympathy but I'm not sure if that's much consolation.

[H13]

Hi,

In one respect the fact that your extensions are being reviewed (albeit negatively) is good. Most of the extensions on the JED never receive any reviews at all. There's an old saying "If someone says something bad about you it probably means you've done something good."

thank you for your optimistic expression. Yes, of course, sometimes you are in situation when you appreciate any reaction, even negative. I know such situations so I fully understand what you mean. :-) Even negative reaction means, you still alive :-)

The problem for me (really large problem inside me) is, when someone - anonymous - can share lies and untruths and there is someone who can stop this but he/she behaves cynical.

The JED team is empowered to police the reviews and they sometimes do take action when the extension owner complains. It sometimes depends on the person who is moderating the JED as how much sympathy they have with the extension owner or towards the reviewer. It's a tough call to make. Just like in a sporting match, the referee makes a call that people won't agree with but, at the end of the game, it's the referee's call.

Well said (in this case written). Unfortunately, for me, I think, I get no much sympathy from some* moderators, because I often write about these problems and of course, writing such posts in forum - this is really not what we all want to solve.

But as written above, will be great if someone can revise the rules for the reviews.

Anyway thank you for your words.

* This is really important word, because I often get friendly attitude and help from JED moderators.

[deleted user]

Anyway, not sure where you live, but in my country if I will share some lie or untruth, I am actionable for this and if nobody can prove, it was me who told lies and untruths, then the person who runs the site, where this is written, is responsible for this.

Can't speak for the laws of other nations, but there are defamation laws on the books in the United States and it is something I've seen lawsuits won over. So in that regard, there are ways to "punish" those who are purposefully trying to talk down on the character of someone, either as an individual or another legal entity. Again though, as pointed out, it does require getting past some of the anonymity that the Internet provides and depending on what's happening taking the appropriate action, so it's not necessarily the easiest thing to combat either. Since you can pretty much put anything on the internet, truthful or otherwise, it's really hard to regulate how people talk about someone or something beyond any legal measures that already exist or building a strong enough résumé to counter any slanderous claims.

[sozzled]

May I offer another observation about the topic subject. Rather than making this an accusation—JED authorizes conduct that is a crime in standard democratic society—I would reword it as "JED team does not always disapprove of conduct that stretches or distorts the truth."

[H13]

May I offer another observation about the topic subject. Rather than making this an accusation—JED authorizes conduct that is a crime in standard democratic society—I would reword it as "JED team does not always disapprove of conduct that stretches or distorts the truth."

Because I cannot edit my previous posts here (or better said, I cannot find any edit button to do this), this is maybe an advice for forum moderators.

But in fact, they cannot do this. Because if they do, based on your thoughts that the subject I wrote, was not correct, then they will remove something which didn't break the forum rules.

So if some moderators don't remove lies and untruths (in case I have proofs for this), other moderators cannot remove not correct subject (in case this is ambiguous).

In such case, my first post will be more value.

But now seriously, of course they can do, if someone here will feel, my post is incorrect and will somehow remove it or edit it, I cannot do anything, this forum is managed by someone and he/she makes the decision of which posts will be displayed here.

Anyway, instead of thinking about the topic, about the thoughts of topic, the discussion goes to the form of the first post not to the real problem.

So how it ends?
- this topic will be removed or edited
- nothing changes in JED (even the easiest change - remove reviews which obviously tell untruths or lies, for example: if someone writes, there is no documentation for Phoca Gallery, and the following links go to Phoca Gallery documentation:
http://www.phoca.cz/documentation/categ ... ca-gallery, http://www.reisefotografien.eu/phoca-be ... ca-gallery then you don't need to be know-all to know what is true and what not)
- one developer will be disappointed

Ok, we have a direction:
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q ... 0wordpress

why to care about people who participate on the project, "anonymous liars" are more worth for us.

Thank you for your thoughts and your "mediator" view on this case.

Jan

[Vimes]

Jan,

You should already be adapting to Wordpress ( and maybe Drupal too ) as everybody's aware of the decline of Joomla.

[H13]

Hi,
regarding the decline of Joomla I commented the situation here

http://magazine.joomla.org/issues/issue ... ment=14816
http://magazine.joomla.org/issues/issue ... ment=14880


Regarding Joomla! CMS - the product: just look at the following statements, you only need those two statements that you understand what is wrong in Joomla! CMS

Louis Landry
There are great lessons to be learned for any software developers here. I'm looking at you +Joomla! and all of your crazy parameters everywhere!
https://plus.google.com/+LouisLandry/posts/NBXZckMwWdr


Michael Babker
New idea. No more features in Joomla until the existing API is actually implemented consistently. Finding too many inconsistencies in core.
https://twitter.com/mbabker/status/744970913855078400


Regarding adapting my extensions for Wordpress. Unfortunately, I don't like duplicity, my extensions are made for Joomla! and they use all the functions from Joomla! framework. Overwriting them for another CMS to get the same functionality and in fact make duplicity, this is not possible for me. I am not commercial extensions developer, so fortunately, I don't need to follow the market. But I can imagine, if I will do some new extension in future, this can be done directly for Wordpress.

Regarding Joomla! community - as the popularity of Joomla! grew, more and more people with bad intentions fought for the leading positions to use Joomla! for their own benefit. Maybe with the decline of Joomla! such people will move to another project.

[funny]Just see the Wordpress trend, it even goes down, maybe such people moved to Wordpress, so the future of Wordpress is not good[/funny] :-)

[Vimes]

Some good comments on those links, many of which I agree with.

Community didn't listen to premium developers when they commented really difficult situation regarding JED (commercial extensions not welcome, problems with promoting commercial extensions on JED or Joomla! forum, publishing extension on JED over half year - because of bureaucratic problems, no listening of developers when there was some problem with reviews, etc.

I couldn't agree more. I actually sat and wrote my own "Bitching about the JED" article yesterday, but haven't published it because it needs a lot of work and removal of venting.

Unfortunately, I don't like duplicity, my extensions are made for Joomla! and they use all the functions from Joomla! framework.

I understand that, and if I were in a different position, I might have made the same decision. Fortunately for me, my software has been coded to be CMS agnostic, with just a few points of connection between the software and the CMS, so making the same system work in Wordpress has been ( relatively ) painless. I don't envy people who thought that following the Joomla Way was a good idea at the time.

[funny]Just see the Wordpress trend, it even goes down, maybe such people moved to Wordpress, so the future of Wordpress is not good[/funny] :-)

Or everybody who does/wants to build websites already knows about WP

[H13]

I understand that, and if I were in a different position, I might have made the same decision. Fortunately for me, my software has been coded to be CMS agnostic, with just a few points of connection between the software and the CMS, so making the same system work in Wordpress has been ( relatively ) painless. I don't envy people who thought that following the Joomla Way was a good idea at the time

:-) I have selected the opposite way - to fully integrate it into Joomla! and yes, every new release of Joomla! like every new email from JED, this causes horror experiences for me :-)

But on the other hand, I must say, Joomla! is well written inside and I like the methods used in Joomla!. This is why I use them.

Community didn't listen to premium developers when they commented really difficult situation regarding JED (commercial extensions not welcome, problems with promoting commercial extensions on JED or Joomla! forum, publishing extension on JED over half year - because of bureaucratic problems, no listening of developers when there was some problem with reviews, etc.

Based on my communication with some of commercial extension developers. For example, if they added a post here in the forum (I don't know if this situation is always the same) describing new feature or new extension (mostly template), this was marked as self promotion and rejected. The same with stories about lost records of extensions on JED, infinite approving of extensions on JED, etc.

Joomla community didn't explore many extensions only because of bureaucratic rules. Of course as extension developer I can say, great for me that some of my "competitors" didn't get the chance, but this isn't true. Because this has negative deep impact on Joomla! as whole.

One of the theory of Joomla!'s decline is, Joomla! loses the game because of missing major e-commerce extension.
Developers of VirtueMart lost a lot of time with adapting their extension to new and new and new Joomla! features, so they didn't have time to modernize the extension, to clean it, to properly build it.
E-commerce is flagship of CMS and now, Joomla! does not have the best e-commerce in world of CMSs.

[deleted user]

Michael Babker
New idea. No more features in Joomla until the existing API is actually implemented consistently. Finding too many inconsistencies in core.
https://twitter.com/mbabker/status/744970913855078400

My groan mainly comes from the fact that there are just enough differences in how different extensions implement different features that the little inconsistencies add up to a bunch of major headaches. Take this one example, in the JModelLegacy class tree there is no standard getItem function, even though most single item model classes end up implementing one. In almost every case, this method accepts one parameter, an item ID (and the code falls back to a value from the model state, usually derived from the request data). The preview model in com_contenthistory does NOT have this parameter, instead it only pulls the item ID from the request data. And if I remember right, the actual issue that led to that ranting tweet was this pull request - https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/10878

So ya, just enough small differences to drive you bonkers.

[H13]

At least, JED moderators could remove verifiable lies (untruths) in the reviews and reviews which were made for another extension.



:-(

[stutteringp0et]

I've had good luck with untruths being removed from JED reviews - you just need to ask. From my experience, the JED moderators don't go looking for trouble, you must point them to it.

Love your work by the way, and I have for a long time. I'd write positive reviews for your extensions, but I have many in the same categories and JED rules prevent me from reviewing what they consider to be competing extensions.

[Vimes]

Yep, to be fair to the JED editors, if it's blindingly obvious that it's a crock they're good about taking down the silly ones.

[darb]

Yes its a problem when it doesnt work with the JED bcs its important for many peopld..

Having said that, I think the JED should develop a method where the owner can reply to reviews (the same way ebay has a method where the seller can reply to buyer reviews).

But cant you just make an extra comment about a specific review in the JED?

[arebalus]

@Vimes
@H13

I would like to contact you in private. Is it possible? My email arebalus a gmail. com

[H13]

Unfortunately, almost all reviews made on phoca extensions in last time include lies, like somebody do this purposefully. I sent proofs about the lies to the JED moderators but nothing happens. Even, all extensions are uploaded to JED server and moderators can easily check the lies.

So for now:
- the extensions include bad reviews
- and they include incorrect information on JED site, lies and untruths
- so users get wrong information

I made over 100 Joomla! extensions, over 50 extensions published on JED and provided for free for Joomla! users, I made over 43000 answers in different Joomla! community groups and forums and I am a part of Joomla! since 2006. Many users use Joomla! only because they use Phoca extensions. In last time I just answer many questions, if the extensions will work under Wordpress :-( (which is sad for me as I like Joomla! code)


[redacted]

Yes, supporting of liars and fake reviews and ignoring community members (including extensions developers) caused the fall of Joomla! to the bottom. It is a big tragedy how can be successful project turned into outsider


The blue line, unfortunately is Joomla! - fall caused by ignorance

:-(

[rrmdp]

Unfortunately I agree with you @H13. It's so frustating that I've not even update my extension with in JED any longer and the main component that I develop for already is available for WordPress
What a circus has the JED became