Populist vs Social Buttons

Head-to-head on the signals that matter, from the public WordPress.org data.

Populist

by johnlawrence

Health D41

Social Buttons

by alexpooley

Health D41

Active-install trajectory

PopulistSocial Buttons

Active installs, each indexed to 100 at the start of the window. A line above 100 is growing its install base, below 100 is shrinking.

Metric	Populist	Social Buttons
Active installs Modeled from the public "N+" band and recent downloads.	10–20	50–60 ✓
Install trend Change in active installs across the charted window.	0%	0%
Overall health	—	—
Maintenance How recently the plugin was updated.	3/100	3/100
Rating quality Volume-adjusted review quality.	—	—
Support Share of forum threads marked resolved.	—	—
Rating (weighted for review count)	—	—
Reviews	0	0
Ranking optimization How well the listing is tuned to rank on wp.org.	35/100	35/100
Removal risk Maintenance signals that precede a wp.org closure. Not an official status.	High	High
Last updated	17.6y ago ✓	18.5y ago
Downloads · 30d	39	184 ✓
Install conversion Active installs over lifetime downloads. Downloads include every update, so older and more frequently released plugins read lower.	0.3%	0.5% ✓
Category	Uncategorized	Social

✓ marks the stronger plugin on each row. Rows where they're level show no marker.

Release activity

PopulistSocial Buttons

7-day average daily downloads. Downloads spike for about a week after each release as the install base re-downloads, so read this as release cadence, not growth.