I originally was half-in the auto-promote camp, but you make a valid argument against it. Perhaps what we really need in a way for super-testers to be able (after community discussion) to push a package from testing to extras after it's been unpromoted by it'd developer for a set time. That would solve both issues: Highly used and stable items can be promoted without the worry that something will be auto-promoted that wasn't ready.

I think the real issue here is that we have several packages that are never leaving testing which are by far ready, but simply don't have an active maintainer.

As a side issue... Maybe giving Council a tool/account that can change an abandoned packages ownership would be a better fix. That would mean to promote a package testers would need to pester Council (so it won't happen without lots of scrutiny), but it's something that can be done without needed to take up the limited resources we have when it comes to maintainer efforts. It would also allow changes in ownership to vital projects when maintainers randomly vanish. which has happened a few times in the past year or so.

Thoughts?