<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Sounds about right, so where is the problem?</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Rewarding to help, allowing multiple people under one username.</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 3:06 PM, Bryan Hadaway <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bhadaway@gmail.com" target="_blank">bhadaway@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>I understand the frustration from all sides, and everyone has made a good point or two, but in my opinion, I think <i>that</i>, in and of itself, is proof that the incentive program is working.<br>
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After all, even if things have gone from friendly competition to more aggressive competition, it's still working. The very point of the incentive program is to drive up the number of reviewers and reviewer participation and ultimately get more themes live, which in turn is what leads to more incentives for WordPress itself making more money and more incentive for the WordPress community, more themes. That's all being accomplished, whether you take issue with the method or not, that's a fact.<br>
<br></div>Half of us on the CyberChimps team were indeed already reviewing themes individually well before the incentive program was introduced, but now that it has been, we've of course pooled our resources together to try and win.<br>
<br></div>"Win" is the key word here, I personally feel like there's no such thing as "fair" in competition. The rules have been set, and we're abiding by them. Both Otto and Chip have already ruled that it's both ethical and allowed for theme shops to compete in the incentive program.<br>
<br></div>Hate to disagree with ya boss (@Trent) :P, but I think overall the incentive program has done more good than harm... even if/when it's retired it will have brought in a lot of interest from theme developers who never reviewed before and some of which I bet will stay and continue to volunteer after there's no incentive anyways, because they enjoy it and it's a great way to stay knowledgeable on theme quality, deprecated code and the like.<br>
<br></div>I've actually encouraged the CyberChimps support team, who are the ones doing reviews under <i>cyberchimpscode</i> to help out in all ticket priorities regardless of whether it's going towards the incentive just to be overall helpful. I've also carefully instructed them not to ever review any of CyberChimps' themes, obvious competitor themes and our own individual themes.<br>
<br></div>No matter what, I think the program drives positive interest and learning in the community overall. As far as review quality, I wholeheartedly agree, but I think that's always been an issue even before the program, only a lot more people are signing up, hence a larger number of beginner reviewers all reviewing at the same time which obviously stands out more.<br>
<br></div>Even I'm to blame for some of those bounced approvals because I hadn't read <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Review" target="_blank">http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Review</a> in a while and it really needs to read top to bottom, not just once, but periodically as things change.<br>
<br></div>I think despite grievances, we're all learning and getting better as we go along. And that's the true spirit of a volunteer-based community like this.<br>
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