I'm honestly surprised this conversation is still going. I thought it would be instantly overthrown by the admins as a simple case of the reviewers being a wee bit overzealous, especially with listing things as implied requirements.<br>
<br>Which is still a serious issue that most reviewers are not differentiating in there reviews. There needs to be two distinct sections to every review:<br><br><b>1. Required.</b><br><br><b>2. Recommended.</b><br><br>This is no here and there issue either. The majority of reviewers simply list their findings with no indication that certain items are recommended only, this has been an ongoing issue since the beginning. Since a lot of theme authors don't know any better they assume all issues are required and take much longer to get their themes approved, possibly blocking it from even being approved if theme authors can't meet these <i>requirements</i> that they're unaware are actually ONLY <i>recommendations</i>.<br>
<br>Anyways, I completely agree, if there's no precedence for this and one is now going to be dictated it has to apply to everyone or no one, no exceptions.<br><br>Also, I thought this was already covered when we discussed screenshot guidelines. I thought we all agreed that branding/logos are fine to a certain extent as demo content as long as the general point is clear and it doesn't contain any promotional wording or URLs etc?<br>
<br>For example (and I hate to keep using PageLines as an example - but they are the most popular theme on .org as far as full-featured bells and whistles themes go, so it's good for examples - could even be seen as a compliment):<br>
<br><a href="http://wp-themes.com/wp-content/themes/pagelines/screenshot.png">http://wp-themes.com/wp-content/themes/pagelines/screenshot.png</a><br><br>Furthermore, the same is already true of the actual demo content Trent pointed out:<br>
<br><a href="http://wp-themes.com/pagelines/?TB_iframe=true&width=1315&height=670">http://wp-themes.com/pagelines/?TB_iframe=true&width=1315&height=670</a><br><br>We already discussed all this before and decided it was fine, deja vu anyone?<br>
<br>Again, as Trent has also reiterated, there's nothing wrong with what PageLines is doing, it looks great, relevant and appropriately demos with theme features without being spammy.<br><br>However, if we're now creating a new rule where this is now not accepted we as a community must demand that this same rule apply to all other themes upon their next update/review.<br>
<br>Just seems like a bad rule and a waste of effort time however. Either way, we do need an official ruling on this. Which I'm sure we'll get when Otto comes on.<br>