Reviews and Votes removed for SmoothGallery Mambot

[turokthemighty]

Hello Moderators,

A few days ago, I had 113 Votes for my extension as well as 61 Reviews.

Earlier today, I had 103 Votes and 61 Reviews.

Now, I have 100 Votes and 59 Reviews.

My extension dropped from 1st in Gallery Category to 8th.

I would just like to find out, what's up.

Please, help me get to the bottom of this and I would like to get my reviews and votes back.

Thank you,
Taras

[ot2sen]

Hello turokthemighty,

Simple explanation: We spent the last hours removing users with multiple accounts and their false votes.

[turokthemighty]

Hello,

it's 96 votes now

Do you mind if I ask you how you conclude that one user has more then 1 account?

I had 1 review removed that was 1/5, which I'm happy about. I also had 17 votes removed which is kinda surprising.

Thank you,
Taras

[Vimes]

Please remember, developers are not allowed to vote for their own extensions.

[turokthemighty]

Hey,
I play by the rules. I make good apps so I don't need to vote on my own extensions.
Thanks,
Taras

[LorenzoG]

It could have been someone related to you, or someone else that we found out that wasn't any valid user.

Edit: In this case - I see it's quite many votes we are talking about. Please take a look at our rules regarding voting:
http://extensions.joomla.org/content/view/12/36/

[turokthemighty]

Hello,
Thank you for your response.

The thing is that I do not disagree with the reasons for doing it, but I'm curious how you come to conclude that certain users, votes, ratings should be removed.

What mechanism do you use?

That's what interests me,
thank you,
Taras

[mehdi]

Hi turokthemighty,
I got today exactely the same problem.
This morning for my coppermine's bridge , I got 42 votes.
Now it is just 32 votes.
And I wonder like you, what criterias are used to decide which votes are invalid.
I guess, that the voting system of the joomla's extension directory is becoming unreliable, because of the increasing number of "fake" votes. But it's not too surprising when you think about it: competion between free / commercial products.

Let me make also a remark: I'm currently learning to use Drupal, and I can tell you that at drupal's official website  the modules (a module for drupal is equivalent to an extension for joomla )  are not rated nor reviewed. I was missing the ratings and reviews from the joomla's extension website . But after reading some forum's thread at official drupal website , I've seen some people arguing that adding a rating system to the module' s section is a bad thing. Their arguments:  First: It gives a feeling of competition  between each members, and that's percieved as a bad thing for the drupal's community.  And second:  badly rated modules, are never tried or even improved by new users.

Now , I'm a bit disappointed to pass from 42 votes to 32    , but I think I can live with this  (especially if it is justified) 

EDIT: but my ranking and average rating was improved, so at the end it's a good news.

[Vimes]

I will not go into specific details as that would be giving people ideas of ways to get around the system, but in general:

A lot of criteria are looked at when deciding if votes are valid or not. Sometimes you can see that somebody has created a bunch of users "user1", "user2". Those are the easy ones.

Other times you need to look at the pattern of votes, eg there's a lot for one particular extension, and all of the competing extensions get voted down. Other times just one extension is voted up and random other extensions are voted down. Also we have ways of establishing relationships between users on the system. It's all very technical and I don't pretend to understand the magic, I'm just glad that we've got it.

We can see all of this happening and act against the perpetrators. Sometimes it's just a case of deleting the offending votes, but other times the individuals will find that persistent abuse results in a permanent ban (that has happened a few times, we might not always mention it, but it does).

I would say that most people will notice that while the number of votes they get drop down, their average rating is probably improved. Only the real offenders will discover that their rating has dropped.

In my experience on JED the actual rating doesn't really matter, what matters is the NUMBER of votes (both good and bad). Most people don't bother to vote on an extension that doesn't work for them, but they will usually vote for something that they've found a use for, regardless of how well it fit their requirements. So: the greater number the votes, the more suitable an extension is likely to be, regardless of the rating of that extension. Most of the extensions that I consider really good are actually only rated at 3 out of 5 on average, but that's because they've received many many votes.

[mehdi]

Hi Vimes

A lot of criteria are looked at when deciding if votes are valid or not.

I guess, that some "secrets" have to remain in other to preserve efficiency of such protections.
As soon as spammers know the tricks, they bypass them ...

In my experience on JED the actual rating doesn't really matter, what matters is the NUMBER of votes (both good and bad).

Well , I have a different point of view :
1 ) I usually take a look at the most reviewed extensions (avoiding commercial ones)
2) then I see if the average rating is not too bad (3 or more), and if the extension has the features I  wish.
3) then I read directly bad reviews, trying to see why some people are complaining. Then I see if they are not contradicted by some good reviews, or "owner's reply". This way, I can conclude  if there's no discouraging bug, or stuff that are not acceptable for my taste.
4) then I test myself on local , by taking a carefull look at what are "the negative aspects" of the  extension, especially those revealed by the reviews. If they are "acceptable" in regard to what the extension offer, I  install it on the live server.

So, the number of reviews remain the most decisive factor for me, especially the bad ones 

[neo_fox]

That was really a great work.
We, and not only we, informed the admins of JED in the past, that many, many votes in JED are false. And most of these false votes are bad votes to take a component out of the Top-10-list. 

So now the admins of JED tried to do some kind of order and removed more than 70 votes from SOBI2. Of course just the good votes. 
All the bad votes from people who didn't like, that SOBI2 or some other of our components were in the top list (and these are more than 20 votes for SOBI2) are still there. 
Now it seems, that SOBI2 is the worst directory component at all!

I don't know which criteria the admins of JED used to find out which vote is false and which not. But I can assert that we NEVER, EVER voted our own extension and it is hard for me to believe that Phil Taylor, Alex Kempkens, Soeren Eberhardt or Mosets did something like that, and they also lost votes.

I cannot believe that more than 70 votes in SOBI2 were false. And I cannot believe that the Joomla! users think so bad about SOBI2. The reviews for SOBI2 and the feed back we have got in our forum, say something else.

Regards
Neo

EDIT: BTW could someone explain me why my account (Radek Suski) has been deleted?

[Alejo]

I also alerted the JED moderators about some suspicious voting on jReviews and about 20 votes were removed from it. I dropped out of the top 10 rated, but I don't mind. I would rather have only votes accompanied by reviews than many many votes and no reviews. The vote alone provides incomplete added value to the end user and if someone is taking the time to vote an extension a 5 it seems strange they would not want to share all the praises with other users, the same goes for the 1 votes.

[active_innovation]

I would like to make a suggestion;

Prior to a registered user committing to a rate, review or vote a terms of condition should be displayed or checklisted that they adhere to it, in the same way a developer should also adhere to something similar.

For example;

If I have affiliation to either a commercial or non-commericial extension, am I exempted from the voting process i.e., If it is identified that I have an affiliation with a extension then my vote will be discarded.  I do not know whether it is or not, and although you may be able to clarifiy it here; others may not know.

This type of deterent we would hope would encourage genuine voting/rating and reaffirm to all parties that they need to abide by the code of ethics.

[neo_fox]

In the last few hours we have got minimum 2 new votes.
Could someone explain me why there are removed again ?? !!
Do You really think that we need to vote our component ourselves ??

[Tonie]

@neo-fox.

Can you please have the decency to wait for a few days before asking people to massively vote for your component again, and causing a ruckus? We're still working on removing votes and if extensions get a massive number of new votes in a few days is not something which is really working. We also have a round of recalculating votes to do, as some do not seem perfect.

[neo_fox]

Yes of course we can.
But it would be nice if someone could explain me how it is possible that SOBI2 moved from one of the best directory component to the worst. And how it is possible that SOBI2 should had more than 70 !! false votes. Please think a little bit about that. It is a free component. After spending several hours daily to develop and support something for free, why should we spend also a few hours to fake the votes for SOBI2?
If someone would talk to us. 
We disabled the post at the moment.

Regards,
Neo

[sheva77]

Hi All,

I have a suggestion, not sure if its good though but it may help, for every +3 votes/reviews removed from an extension which are not strictly 100% sure that they are fake, a poor or very poor vote/review is removed too!!!

This will give extensions authors more feeling of safety and may help tolerate any mistakes done while removing good votes and keeping bad votes!!

also sometimes I see a very generic very poor votes like "Its just doesn't fit me"!!!!!#@$@#$@!# , those must be removed please!!

Thank you!

Max

[Tonie]

Were not working with a precedent here, and are not only looking at 'all positive votes' here. Just as much 'low' votes are being removed.

[turokthemighty]

Hello,

It sounds like appropriate thing to do in this case would be to notify the Extension Developers of recalculations that were going to be taking place. Also, providing a time line as to when the adjustments would be completed would be useful as well.

I've been thinking about the votes system and I wanted to ask you to consider removing anonymous votes all together. The reason is that it is very easy to leave a 1/5 score with out even leaving an explanation as to why the extension received such a low score.

What we need instead of Votes is a rating system that allows the user to rate the application in the following categories

1. Ease of Installation
2. Flexibility (variety of configuration options)
3. Easy of Customization
4. Thorough Implementation
5. Level of integration into Joomla Platform

This information would be useful for developers, because they would know what they would need to improve.

What do you guys think?

Taras

[Tonie]

Any changes to the voting system have to be coded, this is not something that can be done overnight. There will already be changes to the voting system in the next update. We do keep a thread with a wish list for updates for newer versions. Once we've dealt with the current situation. we're going to take a look at improvements that are needed.

The plan is indeed to send an email to all extension developers regarding this situation.

[thefactory]

hi,

early in the morning i've noticed that also a couple of our votes were lost.
I will not gonna discuss now the pro and cons of the sistem regarding
who should vote for what, etc....
But not knowing what it's all about, i felt that someone stealed our votes
and placed it on other components.
On the forum is told, that we are not allowed to vote for our extensions.
I guess almost every user understands not to make another account and vote
for.
But regarding the vote from "My Page" were i can see my component......
i want to ask the administrator of the site, if this votes are not allowed, please
remove the voting feature from "My Page"
I still don't know if this kind of vote from "My Page" is allowed or not and
not knowing what was about i voted by mistake, so that's why i propose
to remove this function from "My Page" cause it's very puzzelning.
we put one vote there, then 3 or 4 are dissapearing.....

Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Erik

[Tonie]

Thanks for the input, I'll put your suggestion on the wish list for future updates.

People voting for their own extensions is not the major issue at hand. Clone accounts and voting others people extensions down is by far the biggest problem.

[mehdi]

Clone accounts and voting others people extensions down is by far the biggest problem

Well, I guess that allowing a single vote per Ip, combined with a tracking cookie might limit a bit the problem.
Also there's the possibility to restrict votes to  "trusted users".

[Tonie]

Unfortunately, in some parts of the world it's pretty normal that multiple users are sharing the same IP address (or get a different one with each connection). South Africa is an example of this.

[JoomlaCoach]

Since votes and reviews have a commercial impact on developers, I believe that anonymous voting should be eliminated.

The voting system should be tied to the user account from the forum.

[Tonie]

The system is there for the community, that's both users and developers. In this, we have to find a good way (which is a dynamic process) between the wants/needs of developers and the wants/needs of end users. I think we do more than enough to limit 'commercial impact' by not publishing a lot of reviews about commercial disagreements and obvious flames. We're dealing with developers, any commercial context is out of scope for us.

Voting is a different

[mehdi]

hi,

I think we do more than enough to limit 'commercial impact' by not publishing a lot of reviews about commercial disagreements and obvious flames

Yes, I guess that without your job, the extension directory would be cluttered by spammy/unworthy reviews.
I remember, one times, I've posted a review saying in short "I don't see how such extension could be interesting",
and it was discarded (but if it's true ...  ).

[Vimes]

If memory serves me correctly, I actually agreed with your comment (if it's the one I'm thinking of), but nevertheless had to disregard it because it isn't actually a review of the extension itself.

[turokthemighty]

The system is there for the community, that's both users and developers. In this, we have to find a good way (which is a dynamic process) between the wants/needs of developers and the wants/needs of end users.

With all due respect, I don't really understand the point you're trying to make with that statement. It's of course taken as a given that you have to consider the needs of both the users and the developers, but I would be very curious to find out how the users would be served less by not having the annonymous vote option.

I would be interesting to find out if they even care.

[AmyStephen]

Since votes and reviews have a commercial impact on developers, I believe that anonymous voting should be eliminated.

The voting system should be tied to the user account from the forum.

I'll do my obligatory consumer advocate post and say "commercial impact" should not be a concern of the JED. As a consumer, I believe that the JED should be neutral to commercial interest.

I am not saying that getting rid of anonymous voting is a bad thing - if the JED team thinks removing anonymous voting is in the community's best interest, I support their decision. But, a developer's commercial interest should NOT be impetus behind any changes. The community's best interest should be the reason for the JED - yes, the developers are part of our community.

Thank you very much for the JED - it is an amazing resource for our community and well tended to by ethical, hardworking people who obviously care,
Amy