Contributors in the search query

[bfintal]

Should the list of contributors be in the search query? Won't doing this possibly skew the search results?

https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/browser/sites/trunk/wordpress.org/public_html/wp-content/plugins/plugin-directory/libs/site-search/jetpack-search.php#L840

Take our plugin Page Builder Sandwich for example. We have actual plans to release a few utility plugins in wp.org, which would be closely related to our plugin but for different uses. Since we're thinking of branding, we can release those new plugins under a new user named "pagebuildersandwich" (to put them all under one umbrella name) and add that user also to the contributors of our original plugin. Doing this may skew the search results, and I imagine that isn't an intended behavior of the contributor field in the search query.

[Otto42]

we can release those new plugins under a new user named "pagebuildersandwich"

No, don't do that. Creating users with specific names to intentionally skew the search results will get you super mega banned.

People do sometimes search for author names. This is just a fact. So yes, names need to be in the search. If you attempt to exploit that, in any way, then we will absolutely ban you from WordPress.org.

[bfintal]

@Otto42 Haha! Yes that is exactly what I'm thinking will surely happen.

However, The reason I'm posting it here is that since that's entirely possible for someone to do that, either people do that unintentionally or intentionally to boost their rank. It's not that far-fetched to see for example, a "backup" related plugin having an author also having the word "backup" too. And this would definitely skew the results so I think it should be addressed somehow.