[theme-reviewers] Guidelines and theme markets

[Mario Peshev]

Hello Reviewers,

Since we are discussing the guidelines and some possible changes out there,
I would like to comment something interesting (at least in my opinion) about
the toolkit of reviewers here and in other markets. My team has submitted a
theme framework for sale on Envato's theme market last week after an
unsuccessful submission half a year ago. During the first review in April
there was no specific technical review - it was mostly stability and design
uniqueness and function richness, but after the approval last week we
actually commented out with their reviewers that they have started to
actively use the Theme-Check plugin.

Since their overall concept is different, I was surprised that they actually
insist on different things such as styling the .sticky class or using some
file operations. Due to the market specifics some required options are
considered recommended only, but still they consider using it closely for
their reviewing process.

Also, since the recent huge attack of timthumb, most of the authors in the
market actually got interested in the 'best practices' and what comes 'in
the box' of WordPress. I've been researching the market since January and
themes are implementing post-thumbnails instead of timthumb nowadays
(probably Justin's "Get the Image"
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/get-the-image/ and user comments have
helped). The point is that there are other 'secret' teams that also respect
these guidelines and tools and I believe that we could probably contact them
and discuss some changes or best practices (even share and exchange
reviewing ideas). By popularizing that relation some theme sellers could
join and contribute to the WPORG repository (we plan revamping the framework
as a free version as Pagelines did) or take part as reviewers.

So does it make any sense or we are kinda 'closed' to other reviewing
groups?

Mario Peshev
Training and Consulting Services @ DevriX
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mpeshev
http://peshev.net/blog
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