[wp-hackers] Reviews for Plugins

[Jeremy Felt]

On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 13:41, Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 3:20 PM, Eric Mann <eric at eam.me> wrote:
> > The biggest stumbling block here is integration with the repository.
> >
> > So to anyone in-the-know about WordPress.org ... is there an API
> available
> > for this so we could put together a patch?  Just thinking things through,
> > we'd probably need some kind of authentication hook (OAuth?) so that
> people
> > only vote once.  Besides that, just knowing *how* to submit the vote and
> > get rating information back from the system would be valuable.
> >
> > Unless such an API already exists or could be built ... we aren't going
> to
> > get much further than screenshots and mockups.
>
> No API or way to do this exists at this time.
>
> The problem with the stars is that the user clicking them would have
> to have a WordPress.org account. This isn't doable unless you figure
> out some way to work around that.
>
> Also, I don't necessarily like the idea of the stars being visible
> right in the admin. Kinda cluttery, and relying too much on .org
> connectivity. Maybe an alternate approach entirely should be
> considered first.


At the risk of restating the obvious, a restrictive issue here is identity
management.

1) Plugins are installed without identity confirmation. That's good.
 2) Plugins can only be rated on WordPress.org with strict identity
confirmation. Avoids cheating, but makes it harder to rate.

It seems that the issue is made more restrictive by the fact that
WordPress.org doesn't exactly scream "create an account" during the plugin
process unless you're a developer.

Is it feasible to tie in Gravatar as identity management for plugin
ratings, seeing as it's already baked into core as an identity service of
sorts? Of course, WordPress.org would still need some kind of API for
anything like this.

- Jeremy