@Ted Clayton - No apology needed, I had hoped you did not think I was getting at you. It was a long day and I read my reply a few times to make sure it didn't seem ungrateful or written by a troll. The fact is that many plugins do something within wordpress which is unaffected by updates and the plugin continues to work way into the future, but the developer does not update the listing within the repository.

At the end of the day, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. Even if WordPress had notifications for outdated plugins, some users would complain and would create plugins that turned the notifications off.

The users need to accept a level of responsibility when using WordPress. After all, you get out what you put in. Too many times I have seen people run WordPress almost on autopilot and then wonder how or when it got infected when it has never been updated since the day it was installed.

Sometimes plugins seem like the new gifs. Remember when people would get a free account with geocities or tripod and fill it with moving gifs and then wonder why it took so long to load? Heck, even when you're building with lego, you have to pay attention to stability issues so that the thing you are building does not collapse.
Using WordPress, like any software, is a learning process.
Code is poetry, but not everyone can read poetry in a nice, flowing manner. Some websites are not poetry, they are noise.

I still remember the first time I used WordPress and it only had one theme. It seems so long ago looking at WordPress today. Sometimes I wonder if I should print out the first page of coding and frame it.

If WordPress is the place users usually come to after using another system, what other system do they usually use first? Are there any stats on it? I would have thought that users would have used something basic first such as html, a forum or something that is not self-hosted. Many users seem to come to WordPress due to the one click install available within cPanel.

I am getting off topic, but I do think that WordPress is attracting newer users. Do you know if there are any surveys or stats on WordPress users? Was the statement Matt made based on stats? I would be interested to dig through some user stats for WordPress.

I absolutely agree that people may "graduate" to WordPress. I have converted many people from blogspot, blogger, multiply etc. simply because WordPress is (in my opinion) the best option.

Thank you very much for your time and insightful replies. I have immensely enjoyed our comments.