Block ability to add links in reviews

[sterndata]

Forum policy prohibits links in reviews, whether a directly typed on or one added via the "link" icon on the editor toolbar. Currently, moderators either remove the links or archive the review. This tends to generate discussion that is usually unproductive.

Suggestion: Modify the editor such that it detects that it's being used in a review and detects & rejects links.

[carike]

Instead of preventing them entirely, consider only displaying these links to logged-in users.
This will remove the incentive to spam, since they won't get SEO juice to power the spam engines, but still leave some leeway for user experience.

That having been said, it is highly sensible to implement a pro-active solution. Plugin authors work really hard for each five-star review. While the reviewer is free to leave a new review, the simple reality is that most won't. So, steering them to the desired behaviour, rather than being reactive, is highly desirable.

[jdembowski]

I like Carike's suggestion but the plugin and theme developers may loathe the idea. 😈 Some use the reviews to monetize the pro versions of their plugin or themes.

Hiding reviews from search engines would make me happy but I am sure there are some who could point out how that is not good for users in the forums.

Suggestion: Modify the editor such that it detects that it's being used in a review and detects & rejects links.

I don't think that will work. ☕

We occasionally get comments like

Let's see if the fascist mods detect mylink[dot]com, visit my site to see what I mean about this problem

in a review. Yes, that's happened and happily it's an exception.

A "no links in reviews" detector will just encourage that sort of behavior.

I routinely scan 1,500 reviews and often catch one or two with links. Except for modifying the review editor to hide the "link" part I don't believe a link detector is useful exactly.

https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5748
For the time being, since we already hide the context search from editor link modal with CSS, I think we can simply hide the link quick tag with CSS.

[dd32]

In 11319:

Support: Hide the 'Link' button in the Reviews editor.

Props bedas for the initial patch.
Closes ​https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress.org/pull/38.
See #5748.

[dd32]

If someone wants to put a link in a review, they're going to do it regardless.

I don't think removing the link icon is going to help much, but at least hiding it matches the guidelines.

Moderators: Please let me know if you think there should be something more done here.

My ideas are that if either of the following is included in the review, throw it into the moderation queue:

• ​https:// or ​http://
• obfuscated url like something[dot]something

[dd32]

In 11383:

Support Forums: Block links in reviews, force the reviewer to remove the links, and ultimately send the review to the moderation queue anyway.

If it turns out that reviewers seem to behave themselves, and remove the links (instead of evading the check), we can remove the moderation queue check.

Fixes #5748.

[dd32]

I don't think this will catch edits to topics.. so.. I should probably also add a similar check blocking links in edits to reviews.

There's also the author replying to the review with a followup with the links in it, which seems less of a problem, but probably shouldn't be allowed either? But if a plugin/theme author asks for follow up information and effectively turns the review into a support thread... don't really want to penalise the review author for that..

[dd32]

In 11385:

Support Forums: When sending reviews to the moderation queue, add a postmeta value so we can review them at a later date.

Follow up to [11383].
See #5748.

[mrfoxtalbot]

I am adding a comment to highlight the fact that we now have blocks in the forums, including reviews. Do blocks offer any alternative way to handle this ticket?