I’m just the Stooge here 
I’m pretty sure calling home is expressly prohibited for plugins in the library Check out the documentation for “how to get in the library”. Pretty sure it says “don’t do that”.
Going all the way back to your initial post - I think many of us developers share your frustration to some degree. I think the scarcity of positive feedback and visibility of plugin use is at least partially what led to Bruce (Squinky) dropping out of the plugin game (at least temporarily).
I also have gotten very few inquiries about usage, and rarely see my modules in the wild. But then there aren’t that many patches posted to the community, and only a few post at least semi-regularly. Patch Storage does have more VCV patch posts, but I haven’t followed it regularly.
Most of my encouragement comes from seeing likes on my announcement posts, plus a few actual responses (they have been pretty rare since my initial release). I have had a handful of people tell me they find the Harmonic Quantizer very useful, yet I don’t think I have actually seen a patch that uses it (besides my own).
The number of active users within the VCV Community pales in comparison to the number of total VCV users. So rightly or wrongly, I am assuming (hoping) that for every person that posts a message, or like, or posts a video/patch with one of my modules, that there are many many more that use my plugin in a non-public way.
I also followed the “popularity” metric. For the first 6 months or so Venom was averaging 1000 subscriptions per month. I was a bit worried that most of that could be people that simply subscribe to just about anything, yet may never use it. But then I also monitored another plugin that was released around the same time, and was encouraged that my subscriptions/month rate was about double. So I know that there was something specific to my plugin that made people at least curious to subscribe and presumably test it out. But I have no idea if any modules get regular use.
I recently checked my subscription rate after 10 months, and it had dropped to an average of 900/month. But then a couple days ago I got to experience my first Omri Cohen video featuring one of my modules! That definitely was special!
It definitely caused a spike in my subscription rate. I have gotten nearly 400 plugin subscriptions within 2 days. It will be interesting to see how long that lasts.
Like most, I would love to see a more accurate measure of usage. But I am not hopeful.
For now there is just enough encouragement, coupled with my own module wish list for my own use, to keep me interested in development. Hopefully I don’t get burned out too soon.
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We discussed “popularity” extensively here:
Oh, and https://library.vcvrack.com/plugins?query=&sort=popularity works 
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Doh 
thanks for that
I put some subconscious thought into this last night as I slept…
My conclusion is that in the absence of community members with the ability/motivation to create/maintain such a project, our next best option would be to subvert some existing tool.
Being a mid-40s curmudgeonly sarcastic British male, I am staunchly anti social media, and only give exceptions to things like this community or YouTube and Reddit because I can keep my interactions strictly synth focused 
and ignore everything else.
However, maybe there lies the answer. I am no expert, but perhaps it would be possible, for example, to create a new subreddit that aims to provide a thread per plugin, and members of this subreddit may then post their reviews/tips/guides/feedback/feature requests to those threads, and even vote the threads up and down. There are perhaps mod tools that could help?
An alternative thought I had was, create a new Discord server, and then build a Bot (the backend could be built on glitch.com perhaps) which can keep track of plugin votes/reviews/comments etc
Obviously a solution such as this would still require some significant time and effort, but at least not a financial burden. And I realise it won’t suit everyone, might take time to get anywhere close to being useful…
Anyway, that was my idea, time for a snooze 
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Hooray! I’m still 125th! Consistency, baby!