The WordPress forums is a space where people communicate with each other to request and provide support. If a company or brand use a branded account as the owner of a plugin (or theme), such an account usually gets the support role “Spectator”, which means that this account is NOT allowed to post in the forums.
In February-March 2025 this situation has been emphasized more than recently, after the Plugin Directory started linking the “Plugin owner” field to the WordPress.org Profile of the plugin owner.
In order to post as an official representative of a plugin in our forums, each person must use their individual account. They are welcome to use a pseudonym if they don’t want to show their real name. It’s important that people DON’T SHARE accounts, and that nobody uses more than one account in the forums. This is primarily for security but also accountability. If an account gets suspended for guideline violations, this will only affect the specific individual and not the full team behind a shared account, something that might completely block an organization’s access to provide support in the forums, while at the same time you might not know exactly who violated the rules on behalf of the team.
Under the “Advanced” tab of a plugin, the plugin owner can add individual accounts as “Support representatives”. When these contributors post in the support or review forum of the plugin, their posts will be marked with a special badge. (Currently, March 2025, we still don’t have such functionality for themes.)
More information: