Require 100 active installs before new plugins can receive reviews

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.

No files or tests are named. Start by locating the existing active-install counting mechanism and the review submission and UI entry points. Trace how eligibility is checked and how support forums remain available, then verify the 100-install threshold, automatic eligibility, and explanatory review UI against the acceptance criteria.