<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div>Reviewing themes is going fine as you stated and I learned a lot in past 2 years.<br></div>But the bottle neck is admin time availability.<br><br></div>You can say its pay to play but you can also look at this at a different way(your own words) : "Find/get more reviewers"(in this case more hours of an admin), Its like hiring Justin for say "x" hrs a month and donating him to the team. I am not doing that to get him to push my specific theme live, He will be doing what he would have been doing in his free time, but now he will be doing more of it. no special treatment for me.<br>
<br></div><div>Possible?<br></div><div><br><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Aug 1, 2014 at 12:08 AM, Otto <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:otto@ottodestruct.com" target="_blank">otto@ottodestruct.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">We're getting into pay-to-play territory here, and we're not really cool with that.<br><br>The review queue is long because there's a lot of themes and not enough reviewers. Obviously. Reviewing is hard. Ideally, I would suggest that if theme authors want to reduce the wait time, then volunteer to review themes too. If there's more reviewing happening, then there's less of a wait. And, as a side bonus, theme authors get exposed to more themes and more practices and hopefully improve their own skills in the process.<br>
<br>If somebody wants to pay somebody like Justin to review their theme, then that's fine, but that's between you two, and it has nothing to do with the theme directory or our review queue. Justin is very good and so you might learn some things certainly, but it won't get your theme through any faster. There is no pay-to-play for anything whatsoever on WordPress.org.<br>
<br>If you want to find ways to improve the speed of reviews in the theme review queue, great. Find more reviewers or find ways we can streamline the process. But "payment" is not going to happen. This is open-source, you pay with your time by helping others, not with financial instruments.<br>
<br>(Note: This is not a knock on Justin's response in any way, he is perfectly free to offer his services and assistance.)<br><br>On a wider note, "people who are actually running a WordPress business the possibility to get faster theme reviews" should consider maybe spending, oh, an hour or two per week reviewing another theme in the queue. See what the competition is up to. Find the best ideas, and steal them (in the totally GPL sense). Help yourself by helping others. Now, many authors are indeed doing that, but I suspect many are not. Worth considering.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
<br>-Otto</font></span><div><div class="h5"><br><br><br><br><br>On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Srikanth Koneru <<a href="mailto:tskk79@gmail.com" target="_blank">tskk79@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>><br>> Awesome Justin, Themeshop's can pool in some cash and donate X hrs of your time a month to push themes live?<br>
> Assuming its affordable and Otto is okay with that?<br>><br>><br>> On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 11:44 PM, Justin Tadlock <<a href="mailto:justin@justintadlock.com" target="_blank">justin@justintadlock.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> I do paid theme reviews, mostly for commercial theme authors. I'll be more than happy to review themes for anyone in this manner and would knock my price down for free themes. It won't get your theme reviewed/live any faster (you still have to go through the normal review process here), but it'll certainly get your code to a point where it should pass the theme review with flying colors.<br>
>><br>>><br>>> On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 12:26 PM, Srikanth Koneru <<a href="mailto:tskk79@gmail.com" target="_blank">tskk79@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>>>><br>>>> But all theme shops can pool some resources, hire a part time reviewer for 2-4 hrs a day and donate him to review team just like bluehost donates a full time employee to core team. (There maybe some conflict of interest issues tough)<br>
>>><br>>>><br>>>> On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 10:47 PM, Emil Uzelac <<a href="mailto:emil@uzelac.me" target="_blank">emil@uzelac.me</a>> wrote:<br>>>>><br>>>>> Michael,<br>
>>>><br>
>>>> No idea is stupid, however this specific one does not make much sense.<br>>>>><br>>>>> We all have jobs, families and hobbies and still find time to contribute. <br>>>>><br>
>>>> The idea is to give back when you can and how much you can and every little counts.<br>>>>><br>>>>> Thanks,<br>>>>> Emil<br>>>>><br>>>>><br>>>>> On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 3:14 AM, Srikanth Koneru <<a href="mailto:tskk79@gmail.com" target="_blank">tskk79@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>>>>><br>>>>>> Seems it was already discussed and rejected.<br>>>>>><br>>>>>><br>>>>>> On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 1:40 PM, Michael Hebenstreit <<a href="mailto:michael@mhthemes.com" target="_blank">michael@mhthemes.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>>>>>><br>>>>>>> Howdy,<br>>>>>>><br>>>>>>> maybe a stupid idea, but why not introducing a payment option for theme reviews?<br>>>>>>><br>
>>>>>> I wouldn’t have a problem with paying theme reviewers for their work and time. Volunteer work is great and very honorable but at the moment we also see the downsides. Most people also have to work for their living, have families, hobbies, etc… and usually that doesn’t leave much time for other stuff. It seems there are very less people who actually want to invest time doing reviews without a benefit or a compensation. <br>
>>>>>><br>>>>>>> To be honest, as much as I love WordPress and would contribute doing reviews, I simply can’t. Why? Because the time is just too valuable and usually people don’t work for free. In that time I could do client work, create new themes, spent time with my family or just relax a bit to recover from daily business. And actually I think that’s the same for most of the people out there. It’s something else when we are talking about contributing by answering some questions in the support forum or other things that are less time consuming, but theme reviews are a responsibility and need time to complete properly, especially when we want to have high quality themes in the directory.<br>
>>>>>><br>>>>>>> A payment option would give people who are actually running a WordPress business the possibility to get faster theme reviews and also the reviewers would benefit from a compensation for their work. I think this could make this whole process a bit more desirable. The payment option could be optional, for example you can select when uploading a theme if you would like to pay or not and paid reviews would get a higher priority in the review queue.<br>
>>>>>><br>>>>>>> What do you think?<br>>>>>>><br>>>>>>> Cheers,<br>>>>>>> Michael<br><br></div></div></div>
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