As a plugin developer, this kind of stuff scares the hell out of me. The evidence presented is so skimpy and vague, yet the response from WordPress.org so severe. I honestly have never obtained any fake reviews on my plugins, but many of the 5-star reviews I have would meet the same “correlations” mentioned here. Does that mean the WordPress team could swoop down and remove all my reviews at any time? (I fear that it does.)

I rely primarily on my income from WordPress plugins to make a living. The WordPress.org people do not seem to understand how they are directly impacting peoples lives with such draconian measures in the Plugins repository. (Because let’s face it, it’s nearly impossible to make a living from WP Plugins except via the freemium model, which means you must have a plugin on WordPress.org, or you’re out of business.)

I understand and support the need for fairness and enforcement of rules, but in the case of WordPress.org nothing is transparent. They act with a heavy hand, and we’re told to just accept it. It all seems 100% wanton and arbitrary. (And I say this not just based on this one incident, but also on past incidents I could cite as well.)

How do they know these reviews were fake based on such skimpy evidence? They should tell us. The only clue given was a reference to someone checking IP addresses for VPN usage. The problem with that is lots of people use VPNs for legitimate reasons. I myself use a VPN for privacy. That’s not evidence of mal-intent. What else is their basis, then, for basically destroying a plugin’s reputation? And what were the motivations of the person reporting this, who just coincidentally happens to be a competing plugin developer? The whole thing smells fishy to me.

Again, if the reviews really were fraudulent, they should be punished. No question. I just can’t have any faith in the process without a more clear explanation. As it is, there seems to be nothing stopping rival developers from doing the exact same thing to me.