[theme-reviewers] Meaning of messages

[Bruce Wampler]

Sorry, Otto, I can't help myself here - I'm sure I'm going to piss you 
off, you you
really need an attitude change when it comes to understanding how to write
user interfaces, and to interact with users.

WordPress lives because of the contributions of its user base, including 
both
main line developers, and theme writers. I am a very long time software 
developer.
I may sometimes stick to tried and true methods, but I seldom do it without
consulting current examples of code.

But to dismiss my claims that the interface to Theme Check is confusing is
really insulting, and ignoring the input of someone who has learned a lot
over the years about dealing with users.

First of all, I've been submitting versions of Weaver for over a year. 
Probably
at least 10 versions in that time. Just a year. And I know for a fact, 
that at
least 5 or 6 of those times, the theme requirements have changed in such a
fashion to require me to change the theme to meet them. So don't tell me 
that
the requirements don't change that often. I have personally seen that 
they do.
Well I consider 5 or 6 significant changes in a year a lot.

And don't tell me that tracking the changes at some obscure URL:

http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/theme-check

is a obvious place to find all the new theme requirement changes. That's
obvious. What would constitute obscure?

And maybe the INTENT was to always have WARNING block themes, but
when I submitted the last version, which only in March this year, WARNINGS
did NOT cause a theme to be rejected. March is not that long ago.

And why does red make anything special? In all my years of programming,
a WARNING has never been considered fatal for anything. It is a WARNING, no
matter what the color. It is not obvious at all that it is a fail, even 
if it is red.

And if the Theme Check is the same for the plugin (which I use constantly,
by the way) as the upload site, why does the upload site so clearly use the
word FAIL, and that never appears in the plugin version.

I imagine you are an experience programmer, but I'm afraid you've not 
learned
a very fundamental lesson when dealing with people who use your software:

There are no dumb questions, and when a user gives a sincere and serious
comment about your software's user interface, you don't insult them and
dismiss their comment with "IT WAS RED".


Sorry if I've pissed you off, Otto, but you need to take some of these 
questions
a little more seriously, and stop dismissing them with your so-called
superior knowledge.


-- 
-----------
Bruce Wampler, Ph.D.

Software developer
Creator of first spelling checker for a PC
Creator of Grammatik(tm), first true grammar checker
e-mail: bw at brucewampler.com
blog: brucewampler.wordpress.com