[theme-reviewers] Public Redress of Theme Reviewers

[Otto]

On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 10:29 AM, Chip Bennett <chip at chipbennett.net> wrote:
> Otto (and anyone else in a similar capacity who has made rather public
> statements critical of the Theme Review process, guidelines, and team),
> I find it completely unacceptable for anyone in any official (or
> quasi-official) capacity to publicly redress *volunteers* who are making a
> good-faith effort to perform the task of reviewing Themes.
> Frumph's review of Matala was a good-faith effort, in line with the
> Guidelines as they currently exist. To call his "behavior" (a characteristic
> that plays no part in reviews; perhaps you mean "performance"?)
> "unacceptable" is itself unacceptable, and flat-out wrong.

I'm finding the theme review process itself unacceptable at this
point. While it's true that theme reviews are necessary, I'm seeing
themes get rejected for little, piddly, nonsensical things. And those
theme authors will likely never come back, and we've lost people to
our community more or less forever.

This is acceptable to you? You want the process to turn people away
from our site?

> Feedback and criticism is ALWAYS welcome. We're trying to do our best.
> Please be respectful to our time and effort (and good faith) as volunteers.

Theme authors aren't going to always be that way.

> Bring criticism first to the team (ideally, using this mail list), rather
> than making team members look bad publicly, as well as publicly undercutting
> our efforts here.

Well then you tell me? How can I change things? I thought we'd had
this discussion a week ago and that the problem wouldn't recur. But
now both you and Phil have essentially done the same thing, and I'm
wondering if there is some kind of underlying problem with the process
itself here.

Are you guys only applying some list of guidelines rigidly? Or are you
simply not wanting to help theme authors at all, and close down and
reject all discussion based on that?

You tell me, man. I'm frustrated and annoyed here, and yet also
saddened because I can see what this sort of thing can do to a
community.

I don't know how to solve the problem. So help me.

> We understand that you have criticism - much of which is valid, and that we
> are (again) doing our best to address. But you acting like a bully with
> respect to your criticism isn't going to help anyone. Quite honestly, it
> comes across like mortar fire, and I can't imagine any of us being all that
> amenable to such friendly fire.

These are just words here, expressing my opinions. Relax. I'm
frustrated, I'm annoyed, and I'm exasperated with trying to
communicate the problems I'm seeing here. If I use strong language,
then that's because I feel strongly about it.

-Otto