You may have seen the new Plugin Compatibility box on the plugin pages hosted by wordpress.org. The box allows users to select their WordPress release AND the plugin release and choose between a Working or Broken selection for the plugin.
So my question is this… What is really broken? WordPress or the plugin? Does the user really know for sure? Could it be another plugin that is causing the problem? Is it the browser? Does this really give an accurate accounting of a plugin’s compatibility? I honestly don’t think so.
Do I think that if a plugin is working for someone and not working for someone else that the person that the plugin IS working for will even bother to make a special visit the site and click the Working button? – NO, I don’t. It’s like the plugin comment area; if something isn’t working someone will comment. If it is working – they never comment. No one
has ever visited my plugin page hosted on wordpress.org to make a comment that the plugin was working.
To truly reflect an honest and fair compatibility value, every plugin user experience would have to be recorded. I personally don’t think it’s going to happen. As a result, most of the information regarding the compatibility of a plugin with any specific WordPress version will be distorted because more people tend to visit the hosting site looking for solutions than those that don’t need them – for that reason I think more people will click the Broken button than those caring enough to click the Working button. I believe that people will shy away from installing and trying a plugin because of this; I find the entire thing irritating.
Matt and company should stop making changes to WordPress that give people the impression that their plugins will break and their sites will stop working. Arbitrarily adding a Plugin Compatibility box to the hosting site under the guise that it somehow measures Plugin Compatibility with WordPress is a joke.
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