It may be a different topic, but a (voluntary) way to submit a broken report when a plugin is deactivated due to a fatal error would be helpful as well.

In my experience seeing something like "okay, well what was wrong with it" tends to make me ask myself that question (duh) and when I do I often discover that I didn't really know the answer. This begins the process of me trying to figure out exactly what is wrong (otherwise known as testing). The result as often as not is that I figure out what was wrong with my own setup and fix it, come up with a workaround, or pinpoint the problem. By the time I'm ready to fill out the form (currently the 'form' is the comments on the plugin authors blog) I either have a fix ready or enough info to make it fast for the plugin author to fix it.

So: Make sure that the 'it doesn't work' report isn't filed until after the person sees the request for more info, I think that would cause less broken claims to be filed because people would realize they are the problem before submitting the report.

For bonus points it should lead them in the right direction by hinting at testing solutions in the reporting form, something like:

Before we note that its broken please tell us what exactly is broken:

What doesn't work? [textarea]
Did previous versions of the plugin work? [yes/no]
Did the plugin work with previous versions of WP? [yes/no]
How to reproduce the problem? [textarea]

[submit your report]

[I don't want to add details, mark as broken without report]

I think the "forced thread" idea will be a huge problem for stale plugins though.

My idea is: Only do the "forced feedback" for plugins that are marked tested for that version by the author. If the author says the plugin is compatible to 2.8.6 then by all means let anyone spam up the Broken button for version 2.9.1.

I think Westi took it to it's logical conclusion though, which would be to allow (encourage?) users to give this feedback right from the plugins page in WordPress. We'll have to work out a way to make it look nice and function well even though some plugins (ones that aren't in the repository) won't have the UI at all.

Guess why? Because just like me, many folks don't register to give 'positive' feedback. I just now registered to make this point.

If the plugin developers are getting frustrated in zero-to-low quality feedback then perhaps the Compatibility section should be improved as suggested above: a "low" results in an auto-generated feedback form with the User's login auto-filled-in.

Sincere appreciations too all of you plugin developers! We love you all. Sorry for not giving positive feedback or imrpovement suggestions in the past.

My suggestion is to remove the compatibility mode. Go back to star ratings combined with an auto-forum posting for low star clicks. Combine that with a Developer's ability to "manage" their own plugin's feedback and forum postings.

I'm not sure we need to mandate that people provide a reason why they are marking something as not working - you will get a lot of "It doesn't work" spam.

It would be better to make it really easy to report an issue from the plugins page in a way that the plugin author gets to know about and can feedback on.

Maybe we could also have a way of auto-closing threads based on code-checkins like we do with trac.

We should move this into core with the assumption that this will improve the quality of all plugins.

An idea would be to list active plugins on the Dashboard, with "Works" or "Broken" buttons beside each. If broken, a "What's wrong?" box will appear and must be filled in to submit.

Without requiring a WP.org account, the amount of participation will grow exponentially.

Users can not vote without being logged in, so they need WP.org account anyway.

And I guess that is another hurdle that might need to be discussed, as it pretty surely keeps users from voting (because they don't want to register for a site, just to be allow to perform a click).
(I'm aware that the registering requirement keeps users from sending multiple votes though, which is good.)

Regards,
Tobias

As an aside, in the particular case of an anonymous "doesn't work" feedback, it would be nice for the started thread to gather the user's technical profile (sort of a simplified phpinfo + wp infos, anonymized?) that would only be visible to the developer ; giving him a chance to

Thirdly, how about making it possible for devs to gain/regain "does work" status by asking verification to a team of "verified" users? A way to prove they did right, or that a given vote should not be taken into account.