Add ability to rate and report compatibility of plugins from wp-admin

[jb510]

For the millions of downloads some plugins get there are way to few ratings on them. I think the ability to rate and report the compatibility of plugs from the backend dashboard page would dramatically increase participation in rating.

This could be accomplished most easily placing a link to the "details" of a plug-in (like the one that appears while searching for a plug-in) after it is installed on plugins.php.

This could be accomplished even more effectively by showing direct link next to each listing on the plugins.php page link stars/compatibility and link text reading "rate now or "report compatibility now"...

For reference I point you to the excellent new to FireFox 4 (beta) add-on compatibility reporting features.

[jane]

Could have sworn we already had a ticket like this, but can't find it, so I guess it never made it from chat/blog to Trac. Yes, reporting on compatibility in the admin would be better, since most people don't bother to go back to the repo on .org to do so. Require a comment that describes the issue if reporting incompatibility.

[strider72]

If this link were added automatically for any plugins that are installed from WP-Extend, it would also serve as a subtle indication of which plugins are NOT managed/version checked by that system.

Just pointing out a small positive side-effect of this idea.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Related: #18821, #19520

[jb510]

Draft mockup of Rating and Compatibility Column on plugin screen

[jb510]

Is there any reference doc / API for interacting with .org? This is really way beyond my skills but I'd still be willing to try to get something started...

FWIW,
A rating URL looks like this:
​http:// wordpress.org/extend/plugins/{plugin-slug}/?rate={1-5}&topic_id={#####}&_wpnonce={##########}

Compatibility URL:
​http:// wordpress.org/extend/plugins/{plugin-slug}/?compatibility[version]={wp_version}1&compatibility[topic_version]={plugin_version}&compatibility[compatible]={0 doesn't or 1 works}

Things to think about:

• In order to rate a plugin, one needs to be logged in to .org. Do we save those login credentials as part of their user profile or require them to login at the time of rating/reporting? Does that authorization get saved somewhere permanently or in a transient? (this is the stuff I have no idea on how to handle)

• When an update is available we should probably display the report compatibility of the update.

• I've never liked having the "Average Star" rating appear next to and separately from "your rating" on .org so I've proposed combining them or not showing average rating. I don't know that we need to show average rating to someone that has already installed the plugin.
• If ratings and capability is show in it's own column we probably need a screen options settings to show/hide the ratings column like the description can be, sites built for professional clients will probably often want to hide this.

I've attached a first draft mockup.

[SergeyBiryukov]

#21896 was marked as a duplicate.

[nacin]

#25437 was marked as a duplicate.

[chriscct7]

UX-feedback: is there really a need for this?
UI-feedback: need a design for it if there's a need.

[SergeyBiryukov]

#36541 was marked as a duplicate.

[boemedia]

We discussed this ticket in design triage today. Since there have been multiple tickets opened on this topic, we acknowledge there's a need for this. However, we understand the problem @nacin mentions in #25437:

"The problem here is we would need to link an individual WordPress user (and potentially the same person using multiple user accounts across multiple installs) against a single WordPress.org user (as in, users on the actual website)."

Therefore, we can't really see a way of moving this away from the actual plugins-page on WordPress.org.

[karmatosed]

Removing the labels as discussed in this week's design triage that for now design feedback isn't needed. This can absolutely be added back in should it be.

[jb510]

Replying to boemedia:

We discussed this ticket in design triage today. Since there have been multiple tickets opened on this topic, we acknowledge there's a need for this. However, we understand the problem @nacin mentions in #25437:

"The problem here is we would need to link an individual WordPress user (and potentially the same person using multiple user accounts across multiple installs) against a single WordPress.org user (as in, users on the actual website)."

Therefore, we can't really see a way of moving this away from the actual plugins-page on WordPress.org.

I'd missed this comment, sorry for the late reply.

I agree that @nacin identified a challenge in completing this in #25437 (the need to link to .org profiles), however is there a trac ticket for that specific portion (something global) of this ticket? Total side rant, but Trac still doesn't seem to have dependencies built into it to clearly indicated when "X is blocked by Y").

It would seem that UX feedback "logging in to .org" from the wp-admin is a good place to start. If a user wants to rate/review a plugin from the dashboard how should that be presented to them so it's clear what's happening. We obviously already have massive user confusion of users logging into their site vs. .com. Now they're going to have "3 wordpresses to log into", how that flows is going to be extremely important.