@Kevinjohn Gallagher - It's really a good point, and I agree to most of it. But I just really don't think that, because something hasn't been done in the past (i.e. discuss about ethics), then it shouldn't be done now. I'm not really interested in the particular discussion about WPTavern being owned by Matt; I'm just pointing out that the fact of an non-existent discussion about some topic doesn't invalidate another discussion in the same area. On the other hand, while I agree that WP is something very global, the present topic is about an action performed by some people in a restricted environment: developers rating their own plugins in the official plugin repository.

But as I said before, I agree with most of your point. I'm sure we've all done something that others can consider unethical while we don't, something that we consider unethical today but not in the past, or unethical in the past but ethical today. Ethics is such a problematic issue to discuss here, and I think that it would be more productive to face this topic as a dicotomy between encouraged and discouraged practices and their respective justifications.