Part of the issue that creates the problem is that there is no good way to do pull requests with SVN - or, at least, with the specific SVN repository for Plugins. There is simply no good way to vet such unsolicited requests for contribution. They could be legit, or they could be scurrilous. It's easy to say "you can just donate code" - but where and how do you do that? If I find an abandoned Plugin, and want to contribute code to bring that Plugin up-to-date, there is no standardized way to do that.

And while forking is certainly a viable approach from a developer perspective, it is less-than-ideal from a user perspective (no way to update directly from an obsolete original to an up-to-date fork; proliferation of Plugins for the same functionality makes finding the right/best one more difficult, etc.).

I think that's why more and more developers are moving to GitHub for their development environment. With GitHub, anyone can submit a pull request, that can then be easily incorporated by the original developer.

My advice to bestweblayout: if you're legit, establish some credibility by finding GitHub-hosted Plugins, and make pull requests to them. And for obsolete Plugins that don't have a GitHub repository, create a fork of your own, and then email the original developers with links to your forked updates on GitHub.