Unfortunately “bad” bad reviews happen regularly and this is a good example. By “bad” I mean a reviewer doesn’t provide any details of the problem they’ve faced and doesn’t reply to the plugin author’s response.
EDIT: I just noticed the review was posted just 19 hours ago so hopefully the reviewer will still respond to your comments.
@azaleamollis – like henrywright said – who knows – maybe they will come back and say – I have no idea, but I had an experience with a similar plugin about a year ago – it drove me crazy – kept saying my pw was not strong enough, I had to enter about 10 different (and each time more complex) passwords just to login into my own site – as soon as I was in I deactivated that thing.
In retrospect, I think it would of been less frustration if it said something like “10 Character minimum, at least 3 non alphabet letters” –
I also expect modern web apps to show a graphic that changes with the strength as I type, showing me that what I have typed is acceptable, before I click save (And get some unruly error message and have to start all over)
There are many plugins that will do this for wp these days – so there are many options – and people are tired of being frustrated by technology = especially that tech which is supposed to make them safer – yet in actuality tends to make things less usable.
Random thoughts – may have nothing to do with your plugin (I have not see it), and I have no idea what others may be looking for when decided to rate yours (they could think it’s not asking for strong enough passes! lol who knows if they don’t say)
@azaleamollis
I can understand you being discouraged about a negative review especially when the user didn’t make any effort at making a support request before writing the negative review. Unfortunately there are “Trolls” that do this just like there are “Trolls” on other sites. I had one guy write a negative review on one of my plugins because it was a “Lite” version and he felt entitled to the premium version before he would change his review. It upset me to the point that I removed all three plugins I had from the WP repo because I felt unappreciated. This is a prime example of how one cheapskate troll douche-bag cost everyone else just because he felt entitled and didn’t want to follow the “Proper procedures” when it come to giving reviews and didn’t want to pay for a premium version. More likely than not I probably won’t place anymore plugins in the WP repo because it got a little ugly and no moderator stepped in to help and it left a bad taste in my mouth besides feeling unappreciated. So you can have thin skin like me and feel unappreciated and pull your plugin off the repo, or you can brush that review off as just another annoying “Troll.” Anyway good luck in your endeavors!
Thx for the answers guys, the encouragement is really appreciated.
@henrywright
He won’t be back I bet. He intentionally didn’t use the support forum to share what was his problem, he just wanted to ruin someone else’s work.
@djsteveb
My plugin does everything you mentioned, it has nice error messages that inform users how to choose an acceptable password and uses wordpress’s built-in js password strength checker, zxcvbn so I would be surprised if it failed.
“and people are tired of being frustrated by technology”
I can understand this, I’m also tired of being frustrated by not having a Porsche but I still don’t expect others to provide it for free :). Users should contribute to the development via the support forum first if they want to use open source stuff.
@bp-help
Yes, I know. I also got a feature request from someone who claimed the plugin worked well, but he/she still didn’t bother with leaving a good review. Just the feature request 🙂 I agree with you, it seems WP plugin development is not something that’s worth the time.
How did you remove yours from the WP repo? Just delete the files? But what happens to people who currently use the plugin?
@azaleamollis
Because its not as a straightforward process as it should be these are the the steps I took to remove my plugins from the WP repo.
1.) Send the request to plugins@wordpress.org to remove the plugin using the same email you used when submitting the plugin make sure you state your reason why, be it personal or lack of time to support the plugin etc..
2.) Log into the SVN and delete all of the relevant php in the files between the opening and closing php tags.
3.) As long as you don’t update the readme.txt then current users will continue to be able to use your plugin unless the code is somehow depreciated. If that happens then they will have to figure it out on their own or find another solution. If you don’t want even your current users using your plugin then update the readme.txt as a higher version number with the empty php files which will basically render the plugin completely useless when it is updated.
Dirty trick but it gets the job done! Good luck!
