Plugin/Plugin Team Stats
We don’t track our progress as a project very well. We have relatively few stats that we look at over time to see how we’re growing/changing, and those we do have are largely cobbled together with various combinations of manual labor and scripting. One of the things I want to do this year is get us going in the direction of collecting stats on our work and participation levels, and to make as much of it as possible an automated process. I recognize that this stuff is non-trivial. That said, I can’t create an overall wishlist for Otto to shoot down until we figure out what stats would be good to have.
What stats would be useful/helpful/just plain cool to know around your team? This is brainstorming… don’t think about APIs or if/how it could be collected, just throw out ideas in the comments of what information you think it would great to start seeing, say on a monthly basis. List any and all ideas, including stats you are already collecting. I’ll collate all the teams’ ideas and see what the Meta team says we can do.
@coffee2code: As team rep, can you try to rally your group to make suggestions over the coming week? Thanks!
David Lingren, 
Jane Wells 11:40 am on December 28, 2012 Permalink |
I’ll start off by listing stats similar to the ones suggested for themes:
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 3:41 pm on December 28, 2012 Permalink |
Length of time from plugin submission to approval is averaging just around 48 hours, for a complete, fully working, plugin with a readme and no guideline violations (which is what ‘directory rules’ are). Once we get into people whom we push back, it’s as much up to their ability to reply to emails within 7 days as our ability to sort through the email
(holidays and weekends and ZOMG! busy! change that, ut we’re pretty good).
We’d need a way better way to track why a plugin was closed for the last four. Right now we have to document manually.
Jane Wells 4:44 pm on December 28, 2012 Permalink |
“This is brainstorming… don’t think about APIs or if/how it could be collected, just throw out ideas in the comments of what information you think it would great to start seeing”
In other words, don’t worry about how it could or couldn’t be done, that’s a different conversation.
Marcus 1:57 pm on December 28, 2012 Permalink |
Number of plugins “compatible” with latest version(s) of WP
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 3:42 pm on December 28, 2012 Permalink |
Marcus – the problem there is we don’t test them after submission, so it’s up to the developer to remember to update their readmes. And the lack of an update doesn’t mean the plugin isn’t compatible. That distinctions way too wibbly-wobbley to rely on.
Jane Wells 4:44 pm on December 28, 2012 Permalink |
I think Marcus’s suggestion is a good one. At the very least, gathering the stats on which ones say they’re compatible to which version will be useful.
Marcus 1:12 pm on December 29, 2012 Permalink |
True, but that’s why I used quotes when saying “compatible”
Agreed it’s not perfect, in my case for example I do have some plugins that aren’t marked as compatible for the latest version (haven’t had time to update readmes), yet they are.
I think it’d still be nice to know because it is still somewhat of an indicator of what plugins are getting updated for latest WP updates.
I’d say another bit of data that could be use is the Works/Doesn’t work, but then this info isn’t that reliable either I’ve found.
Charleston Software Associates 3:37 pm on December 28, 2012 Permalink |
Plugin aging report = number of plugins in these groups: updated 0-30 days ago, 30-90 days, 90-180, 180-365, 1y+. Provides a general “age” of the plugin repository at several strata.
Is the plan to publish this for the general public somewhere near the plugins home page? Some of these metrics would be nice to know for site developers & plugin authors.
Jane Wells 4:46 pm on December 28, 2012 Permalink |
There’s no plan yet, since none of these stats are being collected yet. Eventually I’d like to be able to post nice monthly stats reports on the wordpress.org blog, and team-specific stats could also live in the team site and the public sections of wordpress.org. First we need to decide what information is worth having, then figure out how/if we can gather it, THEN decide where it gets published.
Pippin (mordauk) 11:32 pm on December 28, 2012 Permalink |
Number of abandoned plugins (ones without updates for 2 years).
Number of plugins with over xxx downloads.
TCR 1:01 pm on January 22, 2013 Permalink |
Agree with these. would be useful to have a filter on the plugin searches to exclude plugins that haven’t been updated for 2 years. etc.
jquindlen 5:35 am on April 12, 2013 Permalink |
I love this idea, it would save me so much time, and I think many other users would agree.