So this was a whole shit show that as of now has cost me 2 days of investigation, clean-up, mitigation, will likely cost me more time & also feels extremely crappy all in all.
I'm just glad I didn't base any *really* important decisions on those manipulated numbers, that would have been REALLY bad.
Now I have to live with knowing that most of the growth I saw the past 2 years was likely faked, which feels quite terrible tbh. Feels like not doing a good job after all.
@foosel I know from Ad click fraud and Boaty McBoatface that if you give people an inch they’ll take a mile- but sheesh, pumping a plug-in a few places up the stats page is… just why!?
I guess it’s at least a form of flattery that they found your project important enough to manipulate… 😬
But don’t sweat it too much- growth is a poor substitute to consistently putting out an awesome tool that people love and use! ❤️
@gadgetoid The top ten list was a requested feature by several plugin devs, and I totally get it, it's exciting to watch the movement on that list, especially if you have some skin in the game (and DON'T manipulate the data/have a fanboy manipulate the data... yes, I'm angry still).
But @do3cc just suggested to add some filtering functionality to be able to filter out commercial plugins, and I think that's a great idea that I'll look into implementing.
Gina Häußge
gadgetoid