This repository is the product of a group of Rails developers who want to see the infrastructure around Rails Plugins given the love that it deserves.
The current solution (a wiki) isn't sustainable, and breaks both for end users, and plugin developers.

For plugin consumers

Installing and updating plugins will become more reliable. With clear and consistent information about each plugins, along with tagging, user-submitted comments and ratings, it's never been easier to find out which plugins are going to help out in your current project.

For plugin developers

Now you can develop your plugins whilst taking advantage of all the benefits of Subversion. Manage versions of your plugins in a sensible way without breaking plugin installation for users. Have the repository automatically download and update information about your plugin from the <%= link_to 'about.yml', '/help/' %> file.

All in all, it's just better.