Plugin removed from repository?

Very sad. This was a ‘real plugin’ that did its job very well without making any noise or asking for a five star or begging for donation or pushing adware etc.
Good guys don’t last long

I’d like to know this as well. Wordfence flagged it for me today as an “issue.” But the plugin is still working, and I see the developers still have their website up, so the only issue must be that it’s not in the www.ads-software.com repository. But why isn’t it?

Last month, there was something about a fake plugin – story reported here. I was wondering whether this issue is a Wordfence false positive (or not). But I cannot find WP-Spamshield on WordPress directory. I am relatively new to everything WP. Any suggestions on how to respond to this?

Hi folks,

We have a blog post. Follow that for updates. We’ll provide more info as soon as possible.

As it seems to be impossible to respond on your blog page from a mobile device due to a javascript issue, I’m posting it here.

I don’t know the communication that you have had with the WordPress plugins team. But they must have contacted you to let you know the reason for this removal. I’ve seen it happen to more plugins that were reported for a security issue or something. Most of them came back in a day or so after solving the issue.
When you post blogs like this calling them not professional and even tyrannical, you are going to lose every discussion! Do please keep it calm and try to figure out the reason without calling them names (that’s not professional!).
Please think about the many happy users of your plugin, that need to be able to update the plugin in a normal way.

@josklever

I’m sorry you feel that way. We speak the truth, and we always remain calm and factual. You are welcome to believe or not believe as you see fit. However, if you do not trust that we are honest, then I would advise not using our plugins. We would never recommend using plugins from a developer you do not trust.

Just to set the record straight…we were emailed after the fact. We have always complied with everything in the guidelines, and with every request from the Plugins Team, even if we disagreed. We had received no communication from them in approximately two weeks.

Unfortunately there are some very real issues that are coming to light. This is not a short-term issue. If anything, we’ve kept quiet about these issues for far too long.

Describing an action or behavior is not calling a name, it’s just telling it like it is. We have never called anyone a name, and we do not advocate that.

We won’t be responding further here, so as to prevent online arguments, flame-wars and such. If you need to contact us, please do so through our site.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by rsm-support.

I’m not saying that I don’t trust you or the plugin. It’s actually the plugin I’ve recommended to my clients for quite a while. But I’m trying to understand what’s going on and we (the users) don’t know the facts. You are saying bad things about the WP plugins team (without any specific information) and we can’t check if they are true or not. We haven’t received a statement from the WP plugins team to hear the other site of the story. So these are the facts that we have to form an opinion about the status of your plugin. That’s quite hard! So I’m only asking to give us some facts so we can decide if we want to wait for a solution or have to find an alternative.

You wouldn’t respond like this in your blog post when the WP team didn’t give any reason for this removal, so I hope you can give us a reasonable explanation and what we can expect in the near future.

And as you can read above, I’ve tried to respond through your site, but it wasn’t possible via my smartphone!

@josklever is making a very valid point @rsm-support.

The way you are responding is making you look bad and makes me (another user of your plugin) think that maybe there is something dodgy going on.

The best way to handle that is to basically make sure we (the users) have ALL the information that you have.

Here are the www.ads-software.com rules for plugin developers — https://developer.www.ads-software.com/plugins/wordpress-org/detailed-plugin-guidelines/

Note paragraph #18.

We reserve the right to arbitrarily disable or remove any plugin from the directory for any reason whatsoever, even for reasons not explicitly covered by these guidelines. Our intent is to enforce these guidelines with as much fairness as humanly possible to ensure plugins’ quality and the safety of their users.

Far out @abigailm. That DOES sound a bit “tyrannical” (as @rsm-support put it) to me.

Who nominated the ladies & gents in the plugin repo team to play god?

Presumably the other developers who run things around here. But bottom line, they are in charge.

I don’t have any knowledge as to what actually happened, but I am guessing that the WordPress team made a specific request and got an argument. Possibly in connection with recent incident documented in these locked threads within the past two weeks:

• https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/please-remove-code-that-maliciously-disables-wp-spamshield/
• https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/conflict-with-wp-spamshield-plugin/

In general we don’t disclose the specific reasons why a plugin was removed because it raises the risk of releasing information about security holes before they are fixed.

Due to the nature of this situation, I want to be clear that the plugin was removed for a guideline violation (not #18), and not a security issue.

Please understand the point of #18 (for any reason…) is not to be tyrants but as a CYA for when we need to remove a plugin due to an issue we didn’t foresee. Usually this is a behavioral situation, like harassment. I mean, we’ve had devs follow people home and send pretty disgusting emails, including a threat to someone’s company. It’s also meant to cover things like your email bounces and we can’t get in touch with you, or you were arrested for murder. That last one hasn’t happened yet, but we really want the fail-safe for “Oh wow, we did not see that being an issue!”

It’s pretty standard for most terms of use, by the way. You should read the one your host has. They probably have a similar clause.

(And no, final decisions are not made by Otto. Perhaps shockingly, he’s not the rep for the team at this moment. I am.)

Thank you for the explanation Mika! I understand that 2 parties can have an argument and that’s why I asked Scott for details about the reason of this removal. However he decided to not give them and only accuse the WP plugins team. That doesn’t really open doors for a solution.

Can you tell a little more about the chances this gets resolved? Without information the real victims are all the users of this plugin. Waiting a short period until the plugin is available again is not a problem, but if this takes longer we are forced to search an alternative and that would be a waste of our time.

@ipstenu,

Mika, I have to publicly confront you on that statement. We did not break any rules, and you have not yet provided us an answer to exactly which rule we have broken. Please do not lie publicly about us.

— Scott

@rsm-support Do you have a github link url that we can use for updating your plugin with the GitHub Updater plugin?