In September, the WP Tavern covered a backlog for those submitting new WordPress plugins to the WordPress Plugin Directory this way:

WordPress’ Plugin Review Team continues to dig out from under a massive backlog that has grown to 1,260 plugins awaiting review. Developers submitting new plugins can expect to wait at least 91 days, according to the notice on the queue today.

“Currently there are 1,241 plugins awaiting review,” Automattic-sponsored Plugin Review team member Alvaro Gómez said earlier this week.

It’s worth noting that the quoted person isn’t actually listed as a member of the team running the WordPress Plugin Directory and until December, the team was claiming there were no Automattic employees involved in the team. The quoted person did say things were about to turn:

“During the last six months, the Plugin review team has worked on documenting its processes, training new members, and improving its tools,” he said. “Now, thanks to your patience and support, the tide is about to turn.”

According to recent stats, the tide is turning, but slowly. Here is the total size of the queue of plugins and those that haven’t been processed or replied to yet over the last two months:

As of the last update of December, there are submissions for 787 plugins that haven’t been processed or replied to yet. That is down considerably from September, but still very large. Over that period, an average of 101 new plugins were being submitted, meaning there is about two months of delay that currently exists.

The head of the theme directory team was recently offering help, which didn’t seem exactly well received.

With the team still behind there, things are not going well elsewhere. With serious violations of Plugin Directory guidelines existing and not being spotted by the team in 1+ million install plugins from the sponsor of one of the team’s team reps. They also are not handling security issues well.