[theme-reviewers] WordPress Themes Download Statistics Counter

[Chip Bennett]

This is actually an issue entirely outside of our hands. Management of
almost everything on wordpress.org itself is Otto's purview.


On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 8:57 AM, Srikanth Koneru <tskk79 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Don't think admins will care much about 25 to 1000 a day, not worth their
> time. I have seen some themes jumping like that but then those themes
> aren't any good and probably didn't make any money and gave up.
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 6:22 PM, Bryan Hadaway <bhadaway at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Yeah, you'd have to use an IP switcher with iMacros for every single
>> simulated click (which would consist of obvious spam IPs mind you). It
>> would be tedious and difficult to say the least. Besides ethics obviously,
>> would it even be worth it?
>>
>> First, the only people that would use this method are those that aren't
>> able to create themes of much popularity or value in the first place, hence
>> the need of artificial boosting. That, combined with a crummy theme all of
>> a sudden dramatically rising in the ranks would be a huge red flag.
>>
>> The stats would show 25 downloads a day to an abrupt 1000 a day (or
>> whatnot) and the admins would be all over that like rats in a grain
>> factory, banned!
>>
>> The difficultly : outcome ratio (removing ethics from the equation) only
>> equals moron who's going to get their account and theme banned from wporg.
>>
>> So bottom line, sure, it can still be spoofed, but you can't remove the
>> human element so it's just going to backfire on anyone who tries it.
>>
>> All in all, I think the stats are accurate enough to have some value, but
>> like I said, I'd doubt it being anywhere near 100% accurate as there are
>> simply too many flaws and variables that might not be solvable no matter
>> what you did to enhance it.
>>
>> *However*, dun dun dunnn. Someone could use this method to attack other
>> themes in the repo to try and get them banned. That scenario could also be
>> used as plausible deniability, which does create an impossible situation.
>>
>> At the end of the day, we can only hope that most people in our community
>> are good, kind and ethical people. That even if they have monetary motives,
>> which there's nothing wrong with that, so long as they play by the book,
>> respect the GPL and it's protection of their user's freedoms. In other
>> words, having a bottom line is okay, so long as you *also* care about
>> people.
>>
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>>
>
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