In reply to Lauren.

If something like that would happen, would we want to do the same thing to plugins?

I find it interesting how plugins and themes are treated so differently in the directory.

I’ve heard numerous complaints from clients and people I work with, and it seems like it just causes problems more than anything.

These complaints exist because of the current structure of the popular list.

It promotes themes that have poor reviews and poor support simply because they're new.

There are amazing, successful theme authors on WordPress.org that put a lot of love into their themes. They exist, and they exist because they provide an amazing service to users and in turn are able to make a living doing it.

Successful theme authors can't release a free theme with barely any features in hopes of people upgrading to premium - users aren't stupid and they will leave poor reviews. The successful theme authors have awesome free themes, and users upgrade because they're impressed and want to support the author/make the theme even more powerful.