[theme-reviewers] The Next Step?

[Chip Bennett]

So, now that we have established a good set of review criteria for submitted 
Themes, and have corralled the submission queue (thanks, Philip!), are any in 
the Theme Review team interested in taking another step - one toward cleaning 
up the existing Theme repository?

I have noticed that several Theme developers have expressed frustration that 
an updated revision to an already approved Theme is getting rejected due to 
failure to meet the revised review standard. Such frustration is justified, of 
course, but it is a necessary inconvenience as we move toward the goal of 
raising the standard of quality for repository-hosted Themes.

To that end, I would like to pursue the idea of cleaning up the repository.

I'm thinking something along these lines:

1) Any Theme not updated within the previous X WordPress release cycles is 
automatically suspended. 

(I think 2 release cycles is reasonable. WordPress 3.0 was released in June 
2010. WordPress 2.8 was released in June 2009. The release history shows that 
releases average about one every 5-6 months. If a Theme isn't updated in 10 
months to a year, it is more likely to have obsolete/deprecated functionality 
and less likely not to support current WordPress functionality.)

Note: if implemented, this change would suspend almost *half* (38/82 pages) of 
the Themes in the repository.

Note 2: if the cutoff were 1 release cycle instead of two, almost *3/4* (59/82 
pages) of Themes in the repository would be suspended.

2) The next step, of course, would be to begin auditing all Themes that fall 
within the release-cycle cutoff, and either suspending, or requesting the 
Theme developer to update the Theme.

3) After a release cycle (or two), tighten the cutoff period, such that Theme 
developers have one release cycle (approximately 6 months) to update their 
Themes.

Anyone else think any of this is a good idea? Way off base? Good idea, but bad 
implementation?

What are your thoughts?

-- 
Chip Bennett
chip at chipbennett.net
www.chipbennett.net
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://lists.wordpress.org/pipermail/theme-reviewers/attachments/20100814/1edb1ec9/attachment.pgp>