I wrote up three stories about my (ow) 14 or so years as a plug-in reviewer.
They are scheduled for Wednesdays in the summer (after I’m retired). They are all sanitized and escaped (no naming and shaming).
The trend I’ve noticed is nothing new. But I actually was able to identify the exact turning point, where angry devs became vile and threatening… so that was fun. And yes, that is the first tale.
The second story is about why I hate pretty much all security plugins. That one mentions Jetpack by name (which I do not hate but I recognize it’s flaws), and it also brings up what was a rather public fiasco (WP-Spamshield even had a whole post on WPTavern).
The third is about a guy who stole a plugin he bought and honestly it’s the first time I heard a lawyer say “double down on dumbassery” when I’d asked them for advice afterwards.
I’m going over my notes about other events. Some are really hard to explain anonymously!
I don’t know if the one about the guy who misread everything on the plug-in page would help (he panicked and was mad we closed his plug-in because the page now allows you to close your own…)
Many are things like someone would report every single bad review to the plugins team and somehow it turned into me being a Leninist.