 Hello everyone thank you for sticking around this late in the day I know it's been getting rather warm and we've had food and we've listened to mad and we've listened to Constantine and now We're rather quiet and tired, but I'm gonna start with a cautionary tale This is a true story in 2014 a man violently assaulted a woman who had left a one-star review on his book on Amazon It's not funny. He stalked her. He sorted out her pseudonym He doxxed her found her real name her address her work location took a train three five hundred miles Excuse me to Scotland and hit her in the head with a bottle of wine She lived and he spent only 30 months in jail So every time someone tells me well, I don't take reviews on WordPress that seriously I look back at that guy and I think you know what you may not but We all love WordPress and the work that we do with such a passion that there really isn't a middle ground There is no in between of oh, this guy doesn't like my plug-in and this guy doesn't like my plug-in and you take it Personally and you take it passionately because you put so much of yourself into it And this passion leads to the place where I see the largest amount of confrontation in the WordPress world And it is in the review system Every single one of us is going to get a bad review You might get a bad review on your plug-in your theme You might get a comment on a post that you make that basically says you're terrible and you suck This happens to everyone and you might want to dismiss the idea that you would never be a stalker And you would never be a violent offender, but you know what I've seen it I've seen in the plug-in repository where I've had to take people's plugins away and tell them They're not welcome in the repository because of the way they've turned around with a one-star review and treated people Because they lose their cool because they get angry and while I'm going to tell you something that's very simple to do What I'm about to talk you through is actually incredibly difficult to do yourself and not everyone can do it And that's okay, but please try to remember that what I'm going to tell you sounds easy and is not You have to learn from your reviews. That sounds ridiculously simple. Oh, I have a review. It tells me this is good This is bad. I should learn. Okay. No big deal in reality that is so hard because I'm asking you to put aside your ego and That is the hardest thing a human being can do. We don't do that naturally Especially not now when the majority of people that I know have been raised to think that we can do anything and we can be anything and while This is true. It does not mean we are infallible And we forget that especially because of how much time and effort we've put into our work and to have someone turn around and not Like it hurts us So maybe somebody's gonna give you a review that is a fix to your code And maybe somebody's gonna give you a review and you're gonna go, you know what? Maybe I should document this better because we have to remember that while we are imperfect There is also no 100% intuitive way to use code if there was WordPress wouldn't have a support forms that is overflowing with questions You will never have a perfect plug and you will never have a perfect theme Someone will always have a question and you will always have to learn from these things Okay, remember first of all you had to learn how to use a toilet back in the beginning, right? I hope We're going to learn from our plug-in reviews And it's gonna be probably as messy and as painful as that was too if you don't have children just ask your parents How much fun that was? People like to concentrate on getting a good review. They want the five-star review, right? Wrong. No, you don't Yeah, five-star review is great. Everything's perfect You can't learn anything from a five-star review a five-star review is just an atta boy. It's a plus one It's great to feel but it doesn't teach you where people have a problem with your plug And it doesn't teach you anything about the users The best you can take from a five-star review is to introduce the humanism to your work You can say hey, that's really cool that you like my plug-in. Thanks. If there's anything you think I'm missing Please let me know and now you started a conversation with someone But you're starting from a negative point because you don't have any way to go forward you have to ask them to go forward They haven't given you anything. What you really like is the four-star reviews in my opinion These are the guys that are gonna tell you they mostly like your work, but they see room for improvement Someone has trouble finding information is one of my favorites. They say I couldn't figure out how to do X And you can say well, you know, I put this this note about this in the fact Where would that make more sense for you to read? Don't be afraid to ask that question Don't be afraid to start the conversation with them and say what was it about the cowbell feature that you really didn't like Was it too much cowbell? Engage these people engage them and learn from them based on what they say and how they say it The review we really don't want though is the one where people are really really angry like this guy They're gonna call you names and they're gonna abuse you and You might be able to talk to them and you might You might be able to get some details some information on what's going on But you've started from a very disadvantageous position You have to fight them to get answers because they're just mad at you and if you talk to this person Which I strongly recommend you do be prepared for a lot of snarky replies a lot of snide comments a lot of mean Things and try not to take it personally because sometimes these troublemakers Yeah, okay Sometimes they're just going to complain for the sake of complaining and then you can dismiss But some of them have just felt so strongly and so passionately about what you did that they have a visceral reaction I Had someone tell me that they were so upset with the change I made to a plug-in that they cried And at first I laughed I'm like well, that's ridiculous who would ever do that and then I sat there and I said well Wait a second have I ever had that feeling about something where I had gotten so used to using a product in one way That when it changed and I wasn't prepared for it that I just broke down I didn't know what to do anymore, and then I realized yeah, yeah, I did We all did maybe it was something as simple as they canceled your favorite television show It was an unexpected change that you weren't prepared to deal with and humanity tends to pop out in weird ways when we have things We weren't set up to understand we react very strongly and those people when they come and they are angry at you And they are mean at you. They're not doing it because they're bad people They're doing it because they don't understand what just happened and they can't communicate clearly They are in fact an angry toddler in the back of the car who doesn't understand why you're not pulling over for ice cream And it's not their fault you forgive the toddler because the toddler doesn't understand what's going on And you should forgive the other human being too even though they're an adult and should be able to have words sometimes we lose them Sometimes though there really is no salvaging the relationship and you'll have to tell someone you're sorry See the trick of all of this is understanding that a review is someone's experience, but it's not yours a Review is not a I liked this plug-in a review is not a review on how a plug-in worked It's not about how someone feels or excuse me. It is about how someone feels when they are looking at and using your product a Review is their experience with you, and it didn't start with them using your code It started with them looking at what was presented to them. This might be your read me This might be the very first interface screen of your plug-in Whatever it is you've made them feel something and that's actually your goal, isn't it you want someone to feel? Positively about your code about your product so that they come back and continue to use it You have to understand why they feel this way in order to understand and handle their review Their experience began with how they were introduced to your product if that happens to be an email marketing campaign Or a website where you perhaps have a lowercase p in a certain word This impacts their experience and this impacts their review You're gonna get angry. I said that what I talked about is ridiculously simple ridiculously basic it's not easy to do because I Get mad too a lot of times when I see the horrible things that people say to me doing plug-in reviews Doing reviews of my plug-ins and people say some pretty nasty stuff I get very angry my face will turn red my hands will shake and I will look at them and I will walk away from my computer Because if I can't respond coherently and calmly I have no business Responding to someone in a public venue. That's a really important thing. Remember all of your comments are being made in a public venue And this is important, especially if you're running a business If you're running a business and you mouth off to someone and you tell them exactly what you think of them That's going to impact how everyone else in the WordPress community and beyond Seize you Google will find your comments and they will happily hang on to them forever in their search If you can't reply politely in public Don't reply at all my grandmother would say if you can't reply politely in public come sit next to me honey and talk Find a friend to vent to I do I have sometimes I'll Subtweet on Twitter some of the things I feel but the deepest part of me the part that is really angry Nobody sees except my very close friends because it's not nice But it's also not productive and it doesn't help anything. It doesn't actually even make me feel better I'm still mad at the end of it if I'm calm though. I can process these hateful comments so what kind of Bad reviews are we really talking about when we talk about terrible reviews? Well, you guys all know this one This is the review that should have been a support request You know that you get that one-star review and somebody could have just solved it themselves if they'd read the fact But they didn't and you can't make them do the right thing We don't have an ability to tell someone this really should have been a Support question. I wish you'd asked for this first before leaving me a one-star review Here's how you fix the problem You know, you can change your review by the way, it would be nice if you could give me more than one star This happens to everyone this happens on Amazon comm this happens on Apple this happens on Google Play If you really want to have fun go to Google and check out the reviews that Apple got for their migrate from Android to Apple app Oh boy Those are some pretty interesting things that people really hate it about a product and Apple didn't do anything about it They just sat there and they said well Yes, but the people who need this are going to use it and hopefully they're going to be intelligent enough to go Well, these people seem like they're just very angry fanboys who hate Apple and that's okay. I Recommend on WordPress that when you get these You offered a fix the issue just like you would any other support ticket, but you don't give it any more Precedents than you would a regular support ticket because we want to avoid being the blackmail review The blackmail review is that one star you get because your plug-in doesn't do something that they wanted I find that one terribly unfair because you're being judged on something you didn't do You're being judged on something that your plug-in doesn't do I have a plug-in where I've made it very clear that I will not do a certain thing. It's even in the fact It says could you do this? I said nope. Don't want to I don't want to support it I don't want to maintain it. I think it's too much work, but here's how you might do it and People still occasionally leave one-star reviews and say well this sucks. She doesn't do this. Well, I'm sorry You have to have the ability within yourself to say no and Walk away and accept the fact that you're not going to be able to please everyone That sounds ridiculously simple. You know that you grew up knowing the fact that you can't please all the people all of the Time and yet we feel that we have to just to get all those five-star reviews The way you reply to a review though that one star that says well, I'm only giving this one star because she doesn't have a unicorn icon You're laughing. That's actually a comment that was made on someone's review And we all sat there and we looked at it and the developer said can you delete that and we said well? It's a valid review. It's just kind of stupid, but yeah, no We're gonna leave it alone They were upset because it ruined their perfect five-star rating I personally would be upset because it's a ridiculous review But at the same time that's that person's experience. They loved everything. They didn't like the not unicorn Which was a very random thing to say Okay, if you as a customer read through and we're looking at the reviews going off There's a one-star review and it's that someone didn't like the icon How weird and you would discount it and move on or You would be someone that maybe you don't want as a customer if someone takes that review seriously You kind of have to wonder Speaking about reviewing the wrong things though You know this commercial reviews you get where somebody downloads a plug-in and uses it and there's an upsell And they use the premium version and they have a terrible experience and they come back and review and you sit there and go Wait a second. Hang on. I've been told the reviews on wordpress.org Should only be for the free product. I'm offering on wordpress.org. I want you to delete this review for my premium version Are you upselling your product? Do you have links from your read me? Do you have links from inside the admin dashboard that say hey This is the free version you can upgrade to premium I'm afraid to tell you that you've opened the door and told them that part of their experience with your product involves this upgrade path and if the upgrade path is miserable for them Then their experience of your free plug-in is yeah, the free plug-in is great, but when you try to go premium, it's terrible That's a fair review. It's a terrible review It's it feels wrong and yet that's their experience. That's what happened to them using one thing and going to the next You can't ask people to upgrade things and give you money and then turn around and not expect them to have an opinion about What just happened a kismet gets it all the time to they have the free version and the premium version You have a lot of people coming back and saying well, I don't like the premium version I don't understand what I'm paying for They're the kind of one-star review with I don't know what he has in that little squirt gun But his brother was not happy and like all the other pictures. I found of this that kid is crying his face off. I'm like Brothers my brother is much younger than I am and I'm quite grateful for that This is the review that I kind of consider Insane You'll know this one. It's filled with language that is so foul and so horrible that you wouldn't even say it at your Drunkest to your absolute closest friends My grandmother was known for being quite a foul mouth though lady She would say what was on her mind and there were some words that she would never say and I was showing her Some of the things that people do before she died and she looked at that and she said some people were just raised wrong These are the people that are internet trolls These are the people that turn around and say exactly what they're thinking without a care or thought in the world for the Human being that was behind the code Don't reply to that person There's nothing you can do to that person that is going to make them behave There's nothing you can do to make them a positively contributing member of society. It's not worth your stress It's not worth your mental health to engage with these people if you have to say something just to have them recognize that you've seen it I Recommend saying I'm sorry you feel this way and nothing more Generally, I just don't even reply if it's terrible enough I will tag the post if you go into WordPress forums You'll notice that on the right hand side if you're English and left hand side if you have another language that happens to right that way It has a little field for tags and if you use the tag mod look m-o-d L-o-o-k and you type that in a moderator will come around and review the plug-in review and say That language is pretty bad and they'll delete all the swear words Which means that basically you'll see a post that says I redacted redacted redacted redacted There's a fellow by the name of Jan Dombowski whom I absolutely adore and he actually looks at every single review that comes through WordPress themes and plugins and he likes to just delete all those and put in redacted it amuses him I don't know why he finds that fun, but he does My favorite review my favorite bad review I should say is the mistake review and the mistake review was the one that oops I actually meant to post this about Jumbalaya SEO not Yoast SEO, but they both started with the J Well, no Yoast starts with a Y actually in English Sorry Yoast, but I posted on the wrong plug-in. Sorry about that again. You don't have to worry about this one It's great. You just look it in say. Oh, okay I understand I'm gonna tag this with the plug-in tag for the other plug-in so they know to come take a look The plug-in you can't move reviews They're stuck right now if you were in the previous talk Constantine was talking about how we're on BB press one We are not on that version of BB press for the review forums But the way that they're set up the systems are not easily Moveable if you ever try to move comments from one post to another in WordPress. It's about that much fun And because of that, we just don't do it So if you do get a plug-in review that is not for your plug-in and you've made sure oh, yeah, that's not my plug-in I'm really sorry. You're having this problem. You should go post over here use that mod look tag again and a plug-in moderate will come in and say Okay, let me delete that for you because that that's just completely wrong and The point of all this the biggest takeaway if you're gonna want to distill my entire talk into a tweet It's going to be this Don't post angry don't attack anyone remember all of us are humans Really this should be that simple for everyone in everything. We are humanity at work. We can be nice We can be respectful in the face of adversity and things would be better all around if we could but You know what now that I've said it out loud. I think that's actually the wrong takeaway So let me say this differently Your business is not code. It's you Read that again. Your business is not your code It's not your product. It's not your output your business every single business on this planet distills down to this It's people if you're replying to reviews You're the face of your company and your product and if you're here I'm assuming you care about how people view you in the world if you don't Please go ahead review reply to reviews. However you want, but I'm not going to delete them nor will I recommend you get them deleted One or five people ten or ten hundred your company is the face It's the face of the people who show up who reply to comments who handle the support tickets Oh, yeah, your support team whoever they are They're the face of your company if you were to ask most people who they interact with more with the company It's always going to be the support text Treat them nicely pay them well and remember to have them be respectful because their behavior reflects on you So much more than you can possibly imagine if your technicians if your support tech if your review people Reply back and they are mean you look mean or at least you look like the person who thinks that being mean is a totally cool Way to be with people That's going to impact your business and your future far more than a one-star review This is a true story There was a plugin who had a user who bought the premium version User was disappointed. They didn't like the premium version Nothing worked right. They couldn't get their images to upload properly They pinged the developer and they said hey, I've just bought this upload. Nothing's working right Can you help me out? It's under your support contract that I just signed by buying your product developer said, yeah, sure No problem. Let's take a look they went back and forth and back and forth But they weren't able to fix all of the issues it basically came down to a crux of the plug-in versus the theme and The user was unwilling to give up his theme He liked his theme and you can't blame them right if you've got a theme You're really invested in and this plug-in breaks everything in it. I Guess I can't use the plug-in and this was what they this is the decision that they came to they said It's going to have to be the plug-in or the theme and the user said you know Okay, I'm gonna stick with the theme. Can I have a refund? Sounds fairly reasonable, right? Not so terrible and actually refunds were listed as something that was possible So that you have 90 days to get a refund and after that we're very sorry Well, it hadn't been 90 days. It hadn't even been 60. It's been less than a month Developer said yeah, but we also have this clause that says if we have gone to every reasonable extreme We don't have to refund you and we have tried literally to rewrite our plug-in and it still doesn't work with you So we feel that we have done our due diligence and we're not going to refund you Okay That can happen The user said well, all right I'm gonna leave a one-star review Telling everyone that I hate your refund process and your plug-in doesn't work with my theme and The user carried through with this they posted a very scathing one-star review We redacted all of the dirty words left it standing because that was their experience The developer said okay, you know what fine. You're right. This was really dumb of me But if you change your review from one star to four stars, I'll give you your money back This is when the WordPress plug-in repository came in This is when I found out about what was going on and it actually got worse from here because PayPal got involved and credit card companies got involved and Refusal to pay fees got involved and it just became a legal nightmare for people and This is the hardest thing I mentioned it earlier. I said you have to be able to say no to things It's okay to walk away It's okay to accept the loss If you really bank your entire business on getting those five-star reviews and you can't stand a one-star review Perhaps it's in your best interest to refund the money If you don't care if you think you know what I'm really sorry We really did everything we could and they still left a scathing one-star review and you came back and you said you know I'm still really sorry that you feel this way. We went above and beyond we tried to recode everything Everyone in the public we really did try we're sorry that we couldn't meet meet what his needs were But we did everything that we said we would and more and we're sorry You'll actually look pretty good in fact There are a few companies that have done that and it's worked out rather well for them because they've turned around and said look We're people too. We're trying to make a living It's a ten dollar plug-in at the other hand you think it's a ten dollar plug-in for crying out loud Just give him his money back Sometimes though as was the case with this other plug-in. It's a four hundred dollar plug-in and Now you're all trying to figure out what plug-in charges four hundred dollars for a premium version I'm not going to tell you its name As far as I know everything was settled out of court. I was not brought into anything after that I simply said don't bribe people don't blackmail people and don't extort people. That's not cool Because we should try to be the best that we can It's okay to concede defeat The trick is that understanding that defeat understanding that you can't help everyone doesn't mean you've lost Anything it's not going to kill your plug-in. It's not going to kill your theme It's not going to kill your business to get a single one-star review if you start getting 10 or 20 or 30 And they're all about the same thing though Perhaps you should stop and wonder what part of your plug-in needs a little bit more work What part of your plug-in needs a little bit more attention and to be fixed and to be improved so that your users are happier My name is meek Epstein I work for dream host on our managed WordPress product dream press and they graciously allow me to spend company time Reviewing plugins for the wordpress.org repository and I now have time for questions. Thank you