[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #47046: Site Health: Remove grading

[WordPress Trac]

#47046: Site Health: Remove grading
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 Reporter:  Cybr         |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Shortcodes   |     Version:  trunk
 Severity:  normal       |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  site-health  |     Focuses:  ui, administration
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Comment (by Cybr):

 @swissspidy Because I don't want my production network to run beta
 software I don't control, I went out of my way to rip Site Health out of
 Core. From that rip, I created a plugin for WP<5.2. For those interested,
 you can inspect that here: https://github.com/sybrew/wp-site-health-rip
 As always, this code isn't endorsed by w.org, nor is it checked for
 security. Use at your own risk.

 In this image, you can see the results: https://i.imgur.com/iEzQgjN.png
 I expected a larger penalty. But 60/100 for one of the
 [https://i.imgur.com/e1tcSjA.png fastest] and manually-audited WordPress
 sites is still not what we were aiming for.

 Invalid complaints, like that we're using PHP 7.2.17, which is the latest
 version of the PHP 7.2 branch—and is stapled as active and secure, may
 require some tweaking.
 I also found some other complaints that I believe are invalid, like
 bcmath, exif, fileinfo, and imagick module requirements; WordPress doesn't
 use most of these or has (better) alternatives.

 I'd (loosely) assume >98% of the users don't know what some of these
 issues mean—mind you, they are the target audience of this feature—and
 they'll panic and complain to their hosting provider or developer as they
 want to win the numbers game. Then again, I'm exhilarated that the Core
 Team finally added this. A big push is what hosting providers needed, and
 they're finally getting it thanks to these checks—albeit accurate or not.

 On the other hand, the problem lies in that the health check can (and
 will) be expanded by plugin authors with trivial recommendations which may
 hurt their site. For example, if you look at some SEO and security
 plugins, they're already using their own version of this to scare users
 and upsell their software. In those cases, you'll only be able to get a
 perfect score if you pay.

 So, I still believe that the users will succumb to the fallacies/issues
 mentioned in the ticket. The detailed explanations are important and may
 require a more human touch (who to inform, how-to's, implications, etc.),
 but this is really all they need. The numbers, however, although minutiae,
 are not.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/47046#comment:3>
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