Provide a view of the pending review queue, and allow for removal

[dartiss]

At the moment, when submitting a plugin for addition to the directory, you can see how many are in the queue and an approximate wait time.

I recently submitted a ticket and there were hundreds ahead and a wait time of over 60 days. My plugin embeds Threads into a WordPress site - code that I wrote hot after Threads was first released. Right now, it doesn't have an API so there is no oEmbed option. That could change any day.

So, the 60 days wait time may not play in my favour and I might need to withdraw it if things change in the meantime. Also, I suspect I'm not the only person with this idea and, for all I know, there are a dozen other plugins in that queue that do the same thing.

For me, it would make sense for developers to be able to see what is in the queue to give us a better idea of whether we want to proceed. When something new comes out which WordPress can integrate with in some way, there is often a rush of developers wanting to develop for it and you end up with half a dozen plugins all doing the same thing (although I suspect many of these would end up being rejected for just this reason). My plugin was developed for a WordPress VIP customer, so it not being in the directory wasn't a concern for me - if I'd been able to see the queue and knew other such plugins were in it, I wouldn't have submitted it.

So, the ask is two-fold, based on the above...

1. Provide a list of what is in the queue, for any developers thinking of submitting theirs
2. If the developer in question has something in the list, show a button alongside it, allowing them to withdraw their plugin from it

The latter is for any that have a change-of-heart about the submission or want to make some further changes before submitting again - it may just save the plugin team some time, rather than having to do this all via email conversations (which, I'm assuming, is how that this happens now).

[Otto42]

Provide a list of what is in the queue, for any developers thinking of submitting theirs

We have discussed this specific idea before, and the general consensus is that plugin authors may have a reason to not prematurely reveal the names of their plugins before they're in the directory.

[dd32]

As the queue is becoming shorter due to more reviewers getting up to speed, I don't think this request is really relevant anymore.

At the current time the review queue is down to 19 days/284 plugins, a third of what it was at the time of this ticket creation.

So, the 60 days wait time may not play in my favour and I might need to withdraw it if things change in the meantime.

Developers can email plugins@wordpress by replying to the initial submission email to withdraw the plugin from consideration. This has happened a few times.

if I'd been able to see the queue and knew other such plugins were in it, I wouldn't have submitted it.

This is an interesting one, but one that ultimately I don't think warrants making the waiting-for-review list public. Multiple plugins can approach the same task in different ways, just because there's a plugin in review to Replace Comments with ACME Inc Discussions it doesn't mean it's going to work the same way that others would.

I'm going to close this as maybelater for now, there may become a time where this is reconsidered, where the plugins review happens more in the open, but I don't think that's where the priority is right now.