Forum Policy on Mentioning Other Plugins

[dshafer]

I just had an unpleasant encounter with one of the volunteer moderators here. He chastised me publicly for disagreeing with the apparent policy of not allowing the mention of other plugins in reviews of any other plugin.

In my apparently offending comment, I simply disagreed with that decision on behalf of another user in a situation that I thought justified an exception to that rule. I generally agree with that rule. I was precluded from responding to the moderator because he shut down the topic immediately after criticizing me because the topic had gone off the rails in his view.

I suggest WP.org managers review this policy. In some cases — and I submit this was one of those — when a plugin has become unusable or unstable for more than a couple of users, allowing us to post a solution that involves switching to another plugin seems to me entirely appropriate. I understand that this plugin developer is offering a free plugin and, as the moderator pointedly and unnecessarily reminded me, doesn’t owe me or anyone else a thing. But I’d think that pride of workmanship would lead to a quick and quiet resolution of the problem. In this case, the upgrade provided by the developer has now cost me almost 14 hours of tedious and detailed work and the problem may not yet be solved.

“Use another plugin” is the standard response but in this case (file download management), the plugin in question has made apparently serious infrastructure mods that would require users like me to essentially start from scratch on uploading for download in my case over 200 files. Particularly when we aren’t allowed to share which other plugin might work, this advice is decidedly unhelpful.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

There is no such rule that states you can’t mention another plugin in your review. It’s not always NICE, but that’s a different matter.

I completely disagree with the idiotic rule that we shouldn’t mention competitive products in all reviews.

That’s what you said. Which wasn’t very nice. That’s beside the point here.

Mentioning another plugin in a review CAN be okay. The problem Jan was touching on was that a lot of really annoying people love to spam the forums with “This plugin sucks, use this other one!” and turn out to be the author of the second plugin, using a fake account.

We hate that :/ You should too. Sometimes we overreact when we see what the plugin author did: a brand new account that posted a negative review that looked like a promo for the other. It’s on the edge.

CAN you mention other plugins? Sure! But just like with all things, be respectful. If your post becomes nothing but a promo for the other plugin, that’s not very helpful. Instead, make a second review for that other plugin, singing it’s praises.

[dshafer]

I completely agree with that statement of the policy. It was my impression that the alleged offending post fell into the OK category but I can’t tell now for sure.

It’s nice to know the policy is sane and that it’s so easy to get quick responses to such concerns.

Thank you.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Quick is relative ?? It HAPPENED someone saw it and asked me if I could help out explain ??

Thanks for being understanding! Have a great holiday (if you celebrate, if not, I’m marathoning Top Gear)