The Reviews feature introduced on WordPress.org a few months ago was definitely a welcome addition to the repository, however I see too many people abusing it lately, especially for those plugins which are very popular. I suspect that some people expect that because the plugin is so famous they only need to install it and press activate, and it will even make a coffee for them.

When using a plugin please take care to read the documentation and even other support requests properly before you leave a bad review. Definitely your first step should be to go into the Support section and ask your question there. Chances are the developer will respond with a solution and you won’t have the problem any more.

There are far too many 1 or 2 star ratings for certain plugins with unhelpful and bombastic titles such as “Incompatible with ANY Theme” or “Doesn’t work”. Then you take a look at the other reviews and find that they are 4 or 5 stars and the users are really happy with the plugin. Something obviously doesn’t add up.

I haven’t personally been effected by this problem of inappropriate comments in my plugins, but the community as a whole needs to be educated about how to leave appropriate reviews.

Pippin Williamson has recently posted an excellent article on how to leave good bad reviews, go check it out, it’s very well written and also includes some bad examples and explanations as to why they are bad and how they could have been made better.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure to subscribe to WP Mayor’s RSS feed.