Context
Newly approved plugins are sometimes given artificial five-star reviews shortly after publication, often before the plugin has any meaningful adoption. Closing or banning the plugin is not an effective deterrent because the author can create a new account and submit the plugin again.
This proposal was discussed during the Plugins Team meeting.
Proposal
Prevent new plugins from receiving reviews until they reach 100 active installs.
This restriction applies only to reviews. Plugin support forums should remain available from publication so users can ask questions and provide early feedback.
Rationale
The first installs of a new plugin commonly come from the author, friends, family, testing, and other non-user activity. Reviews at that stage do not reliably represent feedback from real users and can be used to manipulate a plugin’s perceived quality and search visibility.
Requiring 100 active installs creates a meaningful cost for abusive authors. It will not prevent every fake review—an author may still attempt to game the system after reaching the threshold—but it should eliminate a large share of these cases and make abuse take more effort than the review team spends addressing it.
The team considered a higher threshold, such as 500 installs, but agreed that 100 is a reasonable starting point: it is sufficiently difficult to reach through trivial abuse without excluding too many legitimate plugins for too long.
Acceptance criteria
- New plugins cannot submit or receive reviews before reaching 100 active installs.
- Review eligibility becomes available automatically once the threshold is met.
- Support forum access remains available regardless of the active-install count.
- The review UI explains that reviews become available after the plugin reaches 100 active installs.
- The implementation uses the existing active-install counting mechanism, including its protections against repeatedly counting installs from the same source.
Disclaimer
This issue was drafted with assistance from Codex (OpenAI). The proposal, rationale, and final decision reflect the Plugins Team discussion.
Context
Newly approved plugins are sometimes given artificial five-star reviews shortly after publication, often before the plugin has any meaningful adoption. Closing or banning the plugin is not an effective deterrent because the author can create a new account and submit the plugin again.
This proposal was discussed during the Plugins Team meeting.
Proposal
Prevent new plugins from receiving reviews until they reach 100 active installs.
This restriction applies only to reviews. Plugin support forums should remain available from publication so users can ask questions and provide early feedback.
Rationale
The first installs of a new plugin commonly come from the author, friends, family, testing, and other non-user activity. Reviews at that stage do not reliably represent feedback from real users and can be used to manipulate a plugin’s perceived quality and search visibility.
Requiring 100 active installs creates a meaningful cost for abusive authors. It will not prevent every fake review—an author may still attempt to game the system after reaching the threshold—but it should eliminate a large share of these cases and make abuse take more effort than the review team spends addressing it.
The team considered a higher threshold, such as 500 installs, but agreed that 100 is a reasonable starting point: it is sufficiently difficult to reach through trivial abuse without excluding too many legitimate plugins for too long.
Acceptance criteria
Disclaimer
This issue was drafted with assistance from Codex (OpenAI). The proposal, rationale, and final decision reflect the Plugins Team discussion.