Transcript
[00:00:19] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.
Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, the future of WordPress plugins, AI, ethics, and new directory standards.
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So on the podcast today we have Luke Carbis. Luke has been immersed in the WordPress world for our round 20 years with experience touching upon many strands of the ecosystem. He started his own businesses, worked in agencies as a developer and product lead, contributed to WordPress Core, helped organise WordCamps, and is now a member of the Plugin Review Team. He also co-hosts the Crossword podcast.
Recently Luke delivered a talk at WordCamp Asia titled, beyond the guidelines, it’s time to evolve our standards for a safer plugin ecosystem. And today he’s here to share some of those ideas with us.
We start by talking about how WordPress.org’s plugin directory is facing a wave of new submissions driven largely by the rise of AI generated plugins. This has made it harder, both for quality plugins to stand out, and for users to find what they need, despite backend improvements and shorter review wait times.
Luke discusses how the current discovery and ranking systems can be games, how active