In reply to Rick.

Dashboard notifications are useless. The issue is a very large number of users simply never use the Dashboard. These aren't bloggers. These are people who setup a WordPress site and then just expect it to work. The type of people that these issues typically impact will not be reached effectively by nagging them in the WordPress Dashboard.

I keep seeing tech savvy users and developers point out that sites will break because a bad plugin update will cause issues. They certainly will. But longterm the plugin developers who can't get things together and release reliable updates will be weeded out and their plugins will be discarded by users and possibly even removed from the WordPress.org repository if it's a pattern.

What would you rather have happen...

- Your site encounters an issue with a background automatic update and you may or may not catch it quickly. But ultimately the issue is easily resolved (ex. PHP memory issue, another update released, etc.) and once resolved the site is back up and chugging along.

- Your site is completely exploited by a vulnerable plugin that you didn't keep updated and is completely wrecked. You'll have to spend hours, possibly days, working on it to fix the issue. You may not even realize there is an issue for months and months. Because you aren't tech savvy you probably won't even be able to fix it by yourself and have to scrap the web site entirely or hire a developer or security company to clean it up for you.

I know which one i'd rather happen. It's the lesser of the two evils. By far.