My plugin appears to be disabled.

Please email [email protected]

Your plugin was closed as it had not been touched in 2 years and had a footer link (which has always been against the rules, but blatantly documented in 2009).

Thank you Ipstenu for reply.

A suggestion for the wordpress admins still remains: to send emails to plugin authors if there are problems.

Cheers.

So I got reply from Mark Riley:

“The plugin removal was permanent.
It cannot be reinstated.”

Let me mention here that I figured out my access to another plugin I wrote under this username is disabled as well, while the plugin is still in repository, although it cannot be accessed through browsing or search. What is going on here?

It is nice to know that such an open platform like WordPress which I have been referring to dozens of friends and clients over the years, and for which I developed several plugins (both personal and for few clients, simple and complex) has an admin who can remove any plugin without any notice whatsoever!

If the issue was plugin was not touched — well there were no objections by users in support forum and was busy with other things (although I always find time to respond to support requests). If the issue was modified guideline about footer links, it could have been mentioned at least in some kind of warning.

I registered an account in 2007. Take a look at the guidelines back then: https://web.archive.org/web/20080624032934/https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/about/.

I am really disappointed with Mark’s action, and don’t think I will contribute with any more plugins (my plugins got between 50 and 100 thousand downloads so far). I don’t understand why people, when their project gets so popular, they get so arrogant and abusive.

If you don’t like the policies of the site, you aren’t required to contribute. And yes, there was an objection by a user. That’s how it was reported as being a violation.

Its your responsibility to keep up with the guidelines. When they’re changed, this is normally posted in the forums on the dev site and on the plugin-dev sites.

I would suggest following these:
https://wpdevel.wordpress.com/tag/plugins-directory/
https://wpdevel.wordpress.com/tag/plugins/
https://wpdevel.wordpress.com/tag/plugin-directory/

Or just the whole blog. it’s very helpful as a plugin dev, since it tells you about the changes that may impact your plugin.

Embedding links in a plugin is not permitted unless you give the blog owner the option to disable the link and that the link is Off.
This has been the case since the first day the plugin directory was opened.
These rules should have been read prior to submitting a plugin.

You are missing the point. I am not against the guidelines, I am against the extreme action taken without any warning. It is hard to keep up with all the guidelines on all the sites where I am a member (and I posted an archive link showing that original guideline did not have ‘external link’ statement). A simple warning would do it. As it happened, I am disabled from accessing one other plugin which has no link whatsoever.

“These rules should have been read prior to submitting a plugin. “

I did read the rules before submitting my first plugin! And no, I did not read them again before submitting my other plugins. Do you really read Terms of Service, and privacy policies, and commenting guidelines, etc. each time you subscribe to something, or comment somewhere?

Well, put it this way – I review the Theme Submission Guidelines each time before I submit a new theme or even just an update. As Ipstenu said, if you don’t like the policies, don’t contribute.

I did read the rules before submitting my first plugin! And no, I did not read them again before submitting my other plugins. Do you really read Terms of Service, and privacy policies, and commenting guidelines, etc. each time you subscribe to something, or comment somewhere?

For intelectual property like code or my writing? Yes I do.

That said, the only ‘error’ in here I can find is that no one mailed you to say ‘hey, this is being yanked for repo vio.’ We’ll work on that one.

O.K.

‘This plugin is no longer maintained.’

Could you change that in plugin readme file as it is misleading. I am still maintaining the plugin and have just published a new version at https://www.inverudio.com/programs/WordPressBlog/NofollowReciprocity.php

Thanks.

You can send that request to [email protected] (which is to say, no forum mod currently has access to edit plugins like that for you).

Replying to your comment left on my blog.

1) Comment form is on the ‘About’ page. Not hidden.

2) Both plugins in https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/plugin-gnu-gpl-copyright-violation are closed. As soon as folks are (correctly) notified they’re closed. However. There’s no GPL violation. You’re allowed to copy them wholesale (it’s not nice, but it’s allowed). The copyright notice you claim was removed is not in your source code that I can see, and anyway, GPL doesn’t force people to keep it in, we just would rather they do.

3) Looping every link in a comment through your PHP like that is inefficient. Also redundant. Those are URLs I’d be blocking, vs no-following.