Time to stop the spamming of the admin section through the notice function

The current guidelines allow the use of notifications within reason -see https://developer.www.ads-software.com/plugins/wordpress-org/detailed-plugin-guidelines/#11-plugins-should-not-hijack-the-admin-dashboard

One way could be to report the plugins doing so, so they could be banned from

If it is clearly abusive then that might be an approach but then you are putting the work on a small team of currently overloaded volunteers to investigate and then asking them to make subjective decisions on plugin developer lively hoods.

What is perhaps more effective is if you ask the plugin support of the ones that offend you to do something to reduce the notices, especially where you see confusion.

Some people have written plugins to hide admin notices too which may help you.

You might also like to know there is a #features-notification project ongoing to try and get a better solution for core: you can follow that in WP Slack https://app.slack.com/client/T024MFP4J/C2K1C71FE
and see the project https://github.com/WordPress/wp-feature-notifications

In my opinion there is no use in having guidelines and rules, if nobody cares about them, and there’s nobody to ensure they are being followed. But thanks for the link, it can be useful.

As it seems these days there are more and more plugins abusing the notification area for direct marketing etc., what they do has nothing to do with notices related to the use of admin – it’s pure ads and spam.

Asking the users to take the dialog with the plugin devs is a bit backward, and I hardly see that those devs will care if one or two users contacts them, to ask them to follow the guidelines.

Asking the users to install yet another plugin to deal with flaws in WP is just harmful to the project, nor is there any plugins who is able to handle all the various variants of ads and spam added to the notice field (already tested before posting the tread).

asking them to make subjective decisions on plugin developer lively hoods.

Not sure what you’re saying here, I don’t know the term ‘lively hoods’. But we know that Joomla and other projects are able to handle abusive and risky plugins quite nicely, unpublishing the plugins and contacting the devs to force a change.

The WP Feature Notifications project seems anyhow interesting though.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by Rune Rasmussen.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by Rune Rasmussen.

The key points are
1. they are not actually abusive ( may be a language thing ) – they may be taking advantage of weak guidelines that say things like ‘should be avoided’ rather than ‘must not’

Advertising within the WordPress dashboard should be avoided, as it is generally ineffective. Users normally only visit settings pages when they’re trying to solve a problem. Making it harder to use a plugin does not generally encourage a good review, and we recommend limiting any ads placed therein

2. Everything in WP org is done by volunteers and there is limited resources, despite that, the approach taken by the ‘project’ so far is to look for a better solution, rather than to constantly moderate or punish 30,000+ developers and 60,000+ plugins, relying on user feedback and reviews to encourage developers.

3. ‘Livelyhood’ means making living. WordPress has such a large choice of functionality ( plugins ) due to the fact that developers can publish free plugins and upsell to commercial versions. This encourages development due to commercial viability. I don’t know any free platform that doesn’t have adverts of one form or another

Just to be 100% clear, everyone responding here is a volunteer, personally I am nothing special , I just volunteer some of my time, for free, to help answer questions here.

I also develop plugins, some I provide as a volunteer totally free and some of my free ones upsell to commercial versions, which is how I earn my living. They also use the notification system in a controlled way, but I don’t like it either but it is the only choice at the moment.

I eagerly await the feature notification project.

Mean while I just click on the dismiss buttons on irrelevant notices.

It’s obvious we can’t agree on this, sitting on different sides of the table, where you as a plugin developer is defending the use. Thus it could be useful with someone representing WordPress and the users voicing in also.

But …

1. When someone does something to someone or something that they aren’t supposed to, it’s abusive in my world. They are taking advantage of the situation and/or system, in this case it’s a system abuse. But I’m really not here to discuss language understanding, and I think honestly most understand well what I mean when I use this wording.
   
   Anyhow in other settings the guidelines are actually being read as if they read ‘must not’, instead of ‘should not’, and it’s not up for discussion – so it becomes a bit confusing for everyone in the end.
2. Sure it’s volunteers, so is it in other projects, but that doesn’t mean they allow it to be anarchistic, letting plugin developers do whatever they like.
3. ‘Lively hoods’ and ‘Livelyhood’ has quite different meanings, so thanks for clearing up that you meant ‘Livelyhood’.
   
   I can fully understand that some plugin developers maybe want or needs to make a living from plugin development, but if they need to take advantage of weeks guidelines and system abuse to display adds around in the system where they shouldn’t they might have to reconsider a bit.
   
   Honestly I think most serious (GPL) projects doesn’t allow this kind of system abuse to up sell etc., newer seen it being done like this anywhere else. Those projects would probably not allow the listing of such a pluging, and if it’s added later they would most likely unpublish it and notify the developer, requesting them to fix it before republishing. Then if added again later on they might warn and ban for some time, eventually permanent if it happens a lot.
   
   Because it’s after all intrusive and harmful for the project itself, it’s annoying, and it gives the project a bad reputation – not only the plugin and plugin developer itself.
   
   And then again, as I wrote in the first post, they also creates accidents, and then you might have some serious issues created from this system abuse and bad UX:
   > but “recently” some also have started including Install buttons in their ads, which has lead to admins accidentally installing plugins they don’t need.
   
   * Pushing a install button like this might t.ex. happen easily in WP admin because of all the unexpected layout shifts (ref CLS) going on.

Do you have any further questions for the support forum?

To be honest, the “Requests and Feedback” part of the support forum is a limited place to push a project wide agenda, despite its name, we can normally redirect people to the place where they can further make change.

As I pointed out there is a project.

If you want to press your idea of banning plugin developers then the process is to email [email protected], my understanding is they will expect very specific information ( plugin names, screen shots ) and they will investigate in due course and repond to you appropriately.

Okay,

I would like to request someone to look into this increasing issue of intrusive ads in the notification function added by plugin developers.

I would also like to request that someone looks over all the guidelines to make them clear about what’s allowed and not, including when they should read ‘should not’ and ‘must not’ etc.

Lastly I would like to request that it’s made more easy to find out how to contact the right department, and how to easily report any kind of abuse or other things that needs a closer look from the WordPress project itself (maybe ad some links on t.ex. the plugin listings etc, like a ‘Report’ button).

Anyhow I appreciate your feedback, the mail address and instructions. I’ll send a mail about the specific issues.

Thanks,

I would like to request someone to look into this increasing issue of intrusive ads in the notification function added by plugin developers.

The best way to do this is become involved and volunteer your contribution to WP. The project to start with I have already suggested

Contributing to the project

Want to get involved? Join our weekly office hours every Wednesday at 15:00 UTC in the #feature-notifications channel of the Make WordPress Slack.

Please be sure to read our contribution guidelines before getting started.

https://github.com/WordPress/wp-feature-notifications#contributing-to-the-project

The place where the WP project is managed is https://make.www.ads-software.com/chat/ the main channels that would be relevant for you to contribute on would be
#forums – where the management of support forums and particularily reviews happen – https://make.www.ads-software.com/support/
#meta – where the ‘design’ of plgins pages etc ( e.g. your idea of report button happen ) – https://make.www.ads-software.com/meta/
#pluginreview – where review of plugins happens (note it is NOT a good idea to ‘call out’ plugins in plublic places like slack – use teh email for that ) – https://make.www.ads-software.com/plugins/

I hope this information makes it easier for you to undestand how you can contribute to change within the WP project.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by Alan Fuller.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by Alan Fuller.

With all due respect, adding feedback and requests through the forum is also one way to contribute. And with that said, there’s no other way than through feedback and request that I possibly could do anything about this, and then there is this thing about asking People to install and join Slack when there is a forum named ‘Requests and Feedback’ … ??

The current guidelines allow the use of notifications within reason -see https://developer.www.ads-software.com/plugins/wordpress-org/detailed-plugin-guidelines/#11-plugins-should-not-hijack-the-admin-dashboard

I don’t know in what universe asking people for review or advertising pro versions on the dashboard is “within reason.” Do it on your plugin’s setting page. Five plugins do this and you can’t even see the dashboard as everything is moved to the bottom. Not on the dashboard. And if these guidelines are so unenforceable then there is no point in having them. Might as well just allow everything. There are plugins that put entire paragraphs in the dashboard section like its their playground.

What is perhaps more effective is if you ask the plugin support of the ones that offend you to do something to reduce the notices, especially where you see confusion.

I did exactly that. Do you know what happened? The plugin author told me that I am making it a big deal and also suggested that I should not be “cheap” and buy the plugin and “it won’t happen then.” Funnily enough, I did have a license for his plugin and I’ve now abandoned it and actively deter all my client from using it.

Some people have written plugins to hide admin notices too which may help you.

So you’re suggesting that I should install another plugin to fix this? Seriously?

Where review of plugins happens (note it is NOT a good idea to ‘call out’ plugins in plublic places like slack – use teh email for that )

Why? Don’t you see that that is what we are forced to do when contacting the plugin author results in insults? Why is it not a “good idea”, exactly?

We could also just find an alternative, remove the plugin and forget about it. But we take time to post this because we do care about WP and this is our contribution.

Well said @navienavnav – thumbsup!

@syntaxerrorno

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/my-dashboard-isnt-your-playground/

Case in point. The author’s response really ticked me off from “offering contributions” to the ecosystem. Admittedly, my initial post was very confrontational, yes, but I immediately restored the plugin rating and toned down my words as I deemed that much aggression from my end unnecessary. However, my points were still valid. Doubly, if plugin authors think they are giving us ungrateful users charity free plugins, they should just retire the free versions and release paid versions only.

@alanfuller Kindly tell me how your suggestion to contact the plugin author helped me here?