[theme-reviewers] theme-reviewers Digest, Vol 38, Issue 85

[Fränk Klein]

> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 22:52:17 -0700
> From: "Philip M. Hofer \(Frumph\)" <philip at frumph.net>
> 
> We also believe that it?s not the theme review team?s responsibility to control that aspect of allowing a theme to have a feature or not, that is up to the core dev?s to make that determination.

It is the mission of the WordPress Theme Review Team to review and approve themes for the official repository. As such determining what features are and aren't acceptable is exactly our responsibility.

Core developers have their turf, and the theme reviewers have theirs. Of course the voice of a core developer will be heard and respected, but the guidelines for reviews are created by a community-driven effort and not by authority figures.

But speaking of authority figures, I dare you to find an expert in theme development that would encourage more "plugin territory" features in themes.

You won't find any, because themes should only handle the presentation of content and nothing else. This is how simply how WordPress works.

As such I really can't see why Google Webmaster identification, analytics code or other similar features should be in a theme. In addition I would be surprised to find a theme that handles a specific feature better than a specialized plugin.

I'm sure that the reviewers are not completely indifferent to the problem faced by authors that have themes in the repo which offer such features. These developers have an existing user base that they need to worry about. But the fact is that these themes shouldn't have passed the review process when they introduced these features.

I consider having your theme hosted on WP.org as a privilege, not an entitlement. So instead of attacking certain people or a set of proven existing guidelines, we should discuss how we can get this situation unstuck and keep the end users, the developers and the reviewers happy.