<div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="im">True. Dustups such as these are unfortunate: [free] theme developers spend time and energy to build their themes, the availability of which, IMHO, was a significant factor in the success of WordPress (I remember switching from Nucleus and B2Evolution to WordPress almost entirely for: a) availability of themes, and b) ease of building a new theme; more on (b) in a minute). Theme reviewers, most of whom I assume are volunteers [?], too are going to a fair bit of trouble to not just evaluate themes but also provide valuable feedback to the authors. Given that, there should be a good deal of resonance between these activities.</div>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Indeed. We all have the same objective here: getting great Themes into the hands of end-users. And yes: the Theme Review Team is comprised entirely of unpaid volunteers.</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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A theme is the personal output of a person (or a small group of them). As with any creation there is pride in the work: the design and the code. Awareness of this on the part of the reviewer, and of the fact that all code or design has its good bits and poor bits, and avoiding the appearance of talking-down, would go a long way to assuage any sense of rejection the developer might feel.</blockquote>
<div><br></div><div>Insults, rudeness, and ad hominem will never be tolerated, by any party. That said: Theme developers should try to understand that reviews are intended to be as *objective* as possible. Sometimes, a little bit thicker skin is needed. No review comment is ever *intended* to be a personal affront, regardless of how we, as developers, my infer such comment.</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> I would also advocate less pedantry (one theme reviewer took issue with my using uppercase for all HTML tags in my CSS. Why? It has no impact on security, performance, behaviour, feature compliance, etc). I write all of this with great appreciation for the effort that theme reviewers put in. </blockquote>
<div><br></div><div>That is an example of something to question - and to work out - *in-ticket*. These are the sorts of review inconsistencies that, quite frankly, are to be expected given the makeup of the Theme Review Team - but such inconsistencies absolutely shouldn't be a show-stopper. A little clarification between reviewer and developer should more than suffice to get past such issues.</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Some thick-skin on the theme author side would help as well — after all, having reviewed many themes, the reviewer does indeed have more insight and productive thoughts on WP theme code/design.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Agreed. I've learned a ton through participating with the Theme Review Team. We can all learn from each other, and it would benefit everyone if we all could take the same approach. The reviewers, through sheer volume, see many things that an individual Theme developer may not have seen - and likewise, an individual Theme developer may encounter a use case or something creative that we reviewers have not yet thought of.'</div>
<div><br></div><div>The reviewer-developer relationship can be destructive, or constructive. The choice is ours.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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On a larger note, I wonder if theme development has become a much more difficult affair today, both in terms of the effort (compliance, feature support, etc) and the coding (including knowledge of WordPress internals such as architecture), than it was 5-6 years ago. That’s bound to happen with all software, but a unique strength of WordPress was the power it put at the hands of theme developers at very little cost to them. If I am correct, I wonder what that means for WordPress[.org]… effects could be: lesser number of themes, greater theme ‘decay’, less feature-rich themes (relative to WP core capabilities).<br>
<br></blockquote><div>Honestly, I believe that what we've done with Theme Review will result in overall *better* Themes, and also provides a framework and educational tool for aspiring developers. The WordPress Theme development learning curve is what it is, no matter what we do. WordPress Themes *are* more complex today than they were 5-6 years ago. WordPress core is more complex, has more advanced functionality, more APIs, and more people looking for ways to exploit vulnerabilities.</div>
<div><br></div><div>So, while we have some fairly specific, involved Guidelines, we also provide resources for implementing/conforming to them. We'll keep working to put out more tutorials, and keep pushing for establishing best practices. Also, once 3.4 hits, Child Themes will be allowed in the repository - which will provide yet another low barrier-to-entry for aspiring developers.</div>
</div><br><div>Looking at the state of the Theme repository today, I truly believe that the end result of the past two years is that end users have a wider selection of higher quality Themes that what were available before we started this "experiment." I also think that we have laid the groundwork for a community of Theme developers, who now interact considerably more than we did two years ago. Such a community is yet another resource for aspiring developers, but it also provides a forum for establishing consensus regarding best practices and quality standards. Again, both of these help both developers and end users.</div>
<div><br></div><div>So, I would expect for the Theme Review Team to continue to press on in this regard: in establishing best practices, in providing educational resources for developers, and in attempting to build a community of developers. I would also expect for Themes to continue to become more and more complex, as WordPress core continues to become more and more complex, feature-rich, and popular.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Chip</div>