[theme-reviewers] A RE-EXAMINATION OF THEME REQUIREMENTS - AN ESSAY

Tue Jun 28 02:58:30 UTC 2011

Hey everyone, I've been following this ongoing exchange for a few days and although I may be flamed by some of you for this response, I also think that a lot of you will agree with me on these points:

Everyone has the right to his or her opinion. Bruce, Chip, Otto, and everyone else is entitled to voice their thoughts and feelings and I respect everyone for doing so. However, at this point I think we can all agree that this is probably not the best forum for this anymore and that it should really be dealt with privately between the parties involved.

While this has been going on, the Trac Ticket Request Queue (http://make.wordpress.org/themes/about/trac-ticket-request-queue/) has gone completely unmanaged with at least four individuals (myself included) waiting to be assigned a new theme and waiting for their existing reviews to be moderated by a full-fledged member. There is a serious back-log of themes right now, and while I understand everyone is volunteering their time, the fact that there are those of us waiting for the chance to be able to volunteer our time and help out is a bit frustrating.

I simply feel that a lot of the time that has been spent debating issues that are quite frankly pretty clear cut to begin with has not been the best use of everyone's time, and I sincerely hope that we can get back to the business at hand which is reviewing themes.

Regards,

Tyler Cunningham

On Monday, June 27, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Chip Bennett wrote:

> Replies inline.
> 
> On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 9:29 PM, Bruce Wampler <brucewampler at gmail.com (mailto:brucewampler at gmail.com)> wrote:
> >  GRANDFATHERING EXISTING THEMES - NEW POINT
> > 
> >  One more important argument for grandfathering themes, pointed out to me by one of
> >  my thousands of users:
> > 
> >  For the many many thousands of users of existing themes, it is critical to allow them to
> >  be updated. One of the most important things for users is the theme they use. Being
> >  forced to change themes because it is not being updated is one of the most
> >  traumatic experiences a typical WordPress user can face.
> 
> Agreed here. The user experience degrades significantly the longer a Theme goes without being updated, while WordPress continues to evolve. 
> > 
> >  It is beyond doubt that the new, very restrictive submission rules 
> 
> There is nothing new. There is nothing particularly restrictive. Can you provide counter-examples?
> 
> >  will prevent a large
> >  number of existing theme authors from updating their themes. 
> 
> There is nothing *preventing* the developers of current Themes from submitting updates. Can you provide counter-examples? 
> 
> > Thus, strictly from
> >  the end user's stand point, it is unfair, even devastating to prevent
> 
> There is nothing *preventing* the developers of current Themes from submitting updates. Can you provide counter-examples? 
> 
> >  long existing themes
> >  from submitting updates or to be forced into extensive re-writes to meet the newest
> >  requirements. 
> 
> Quite frankly, some Themes *need* extensive re-writes - that is, unless you think that end users remain best-served by using one of the myriad Kubrick-based Themes extant in the Repository - Themes that don't support custom Menus, threaded/paged comments, Widgets, etc.? 
> 
> > And unless I totally misunderstand the point of WordPress coders,
> >  plugin authors, and theme authors, the reason we are all here is to provide a great
> >  free web building tool for people all over the world.
> > 
> >  So, I repeat my suggestion that there be a fairly liberal update policy for previously
> >  approved themes - perhaps requiring only support for the most important new features
> >  of new versions of WP (such as the 3.0 custom menus), or provably severe security
> >  issues (such as nonce). 
> 
> What requirements, specifically, would you *exclude* from such "grandfathered" Themes?
> 
> >  Otherwise, thousands upon thousands of WP users are likely
> >  to be negatively affected as more and more theme authors are unable to modify
> >  their themes to meet the latest requirements of the month. 
> 
> Let's be honest: thousands upon thousands of WP users are *already* negatively impacted, because they are using Themes that have been in the Repository for 2 or 3 years without a single update. The primary problem isn't Themes submitted by developers who attempt to keep their Themes updated, but rather the Themes submitted once and then abandoned. 
> 
> And can you please stop with the "latest requirements of the month" assertions? They are utterly specious, and unproductive. Again, here is the revision history of the Theme Review Guidelines (http://codex.wordpress.org/index.php?title=Theme_Review&action=history) - editorial changes, and all. Does it really look like it's being changed as frequently as you keep asserting? 
> 
> > The fact that many of
> >  the newest requirements have only been enforced since March
> 
> NO. FULLSTOP. 
> 
> Those requirements were enforced BEFORE March, just as they were enforced AFTER March. The only change was that the uploader script started rejecting Themes on ALREADY EXISTING, required issues. 
> 
> Here is the full list of actual changes in March (http://make.wordpress.org/themes/guidelines/changes-wp-3-1/) (one month after release of WordPress 3.1). We established some guidelines for handling of Post Formats (new in WP 3.1), and finalized some other guidelines that had been under "draft" consideration for months. We started requiring the License header tags, required Themes not to use TimThumb (with an allowance for case-by-case consideration), explicitly called out that "Upsell" Themes may be subject to additional scrutiny, and established some guidelines for handling of favicons. 
> 
> Now, as far as I can tell, not a bit of that impacted your Theme.
> 
> >  likely indicates the
> >  fact that I'm having such difficulties updating my previously approved theme is only
> >  the leading edge of a big issue.
> > 
> Again: your experience is atypical. There are not that many Themes doing anything extensive enough to necessitate using file operations such as fopen(). 
> 
> To be sure: we've had our fair share of issues, and caused frustration for developers. But, to my knowledge, *most* of those issues have been addressed and resolved.
> 
> Chip 
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