I honestly think more things should be automated and run by the community instead of a small handful of volunteers. With a proper system in place (some kind of public ratings/reviews) the community can easily determine the good plugins/mods form the malicious ones.
Also, since it is related, I think you should have a look at this thread (especially what I said in post#24): Plugin Annotation MinVersion and Target Fields - Reply #24. Having a system like this would be extremely beneficial to the community, imho.