I would like to assume that ELPA is a somewhat curated
collection of packages. Perhaps not as rigorously tested
and maintained as Emacs itself, but more so than some
package on github that has not seen an update in 5 years.
That's not really the case, no :-(
I do make sure the packages compile, and try occasionally to clean up
the worst warnings, and when I make changes in Emacs I try to keep an
eye on GNU ELPA packages to update them correspondingly, but I think I'm
an exception in this regard.
If the only virtue of being on ELPA is that I can install via
package.el then that seems like rather thin gruel.
The other is that there's a plan to include some of those packages into
the standard Emacs tarball.
Perhaps the bar for admission to ELPA is too low.
The main bar is for the package to be useful, harmless, and to have
copyright. I don't see a strong reason to make it much higher.
Could we require automated tests that can be run regularly to confirm
package health?
That would be great. But before requiring them, we need to setup a way
to run the already existing tests. Any help in this regard would be
most welcome.