Hi TheEdge,
We certainly would prefer not to have a backlog.
But opening up for autoapproval is not the solution when it comes to reviews.
There are several reason for reviews being delayed:
1. We are short of man hours, and are hoping to introduce 1 or 2 new editors soon.
2. Its true that most reviews are constructive - but sadly we do have a lot of incoming non-reviews.
These non-reviews are the reason we need manual approval/rejecting. We sadly see quite a few bug report, comments, non-english reviews, spam, rants and so on that dont qualify of being a review.
3. We see same problem in incoming submissions of new "extensions". Again lots of these donĀ“t meet the simple terms of being listed as an installable/uninstallable extension. Some are just ads for external scripts or websites, others are hacks that need manual installation, others are valid extensions but required info is missing. In each case we need to spend lot of time checking URLs and validity of download, and often need to send one or more emails.
4. And finally and most saddening we spend way too much time fighting abusers of the voting/review system.
Some users and developers still try to manipulate the voting system by creating clone accounts and placing false votes.
So in short: If users and developers actually did follow the simple guidelines for submitting reviews/votes/extensions, then we probably wouldnt have a backlog at all.