In reply to Justin Tadlock.

Maybe calling it a "low hanging fruit" was a bit misleading. Of course there is more work involved than simply adding another demo link. But considering that even a single digit increase in theme downloads already results in a few thousand downloads more a day, the work involved can easily and quickly pay off, especially in the long run.

Of course anyone in the WordPress eco system that already knows about the demo data issue, will download the theme anyway, and start populating it with his/her own content. But a first-time WP user will simply be disappointed about the themes and move on the Squarespace, Wix, you name it.

I was about to address the other concerns you raised, but on a first thought your idea about a multisite sounds quite promising, as it allows authors a greater deal of flexibility when it comes to displaying their themes, and wordpress.org hopefully not too much aditionally concerns in terms of security, inactive demo sites etc.

Is their a survey & poll about this issue, or you usually improve issues like this with a ticket, such as https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/30 ?