[theme-reviewers] Submitting a One-Page Placeholder Theme

[Chip Bennett]

I think we could start with having developers ping this list for requests
for niche Themes, so long as the signal-to-noise doesn't increase too much.
(I wouldn't expect it to; we don't have that much traffic regarding such
Themes. But, of course, this move could prompt more such traffic.)

The idea for the *Trac keyword* is so that the Reviewers know that the Theme
review needs to be handled differently. I think that's fairly critical.

The idea for the *Tag Filter Tag* was for the benefit of *users* - so that
they would have a way to search for a given special-use case (such as
landing page Themes, which seems to be the most common example). But also,
so that users would have a way to know that a "special use" Theme may not
have all expected functionality, and may work differently from what is
normally expected. I think this would be a good idea, but certainly not a
show-stopper.

If there were a way for REQUIRED notices to print to the generated Trac
ticket, that would be a boon - but since the Theme will be new, one of the
first things a Reviewer will do will be to run Theme Check, so again: nice
to have, but not critical.

As for the Theme documentation requirement: current guidelines require that
any extraordinary setup or functionality is required to be documented; I
think that requirement would be more, rather than less, important for
"niche" Themes.

Aside from that, adherence to remaining Guidelines will largely be on a
case-by-case basis, depending on the nature of the special use for which the
Theme is designed. So, we'll have to maintain some flexibility, and of
course, document all exceptions to the Guidelines in the in-ticket review
comments.

Would love to hear some input from some of the other developers on this
one...

Chip

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Andrew Nacin <wp at andrewnacin.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 3:49 PM, Edward Caissie <edward.caissie at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I agree the next step should be to get buy-in from WordPress.org et al.;
>> the question is now: whom do we take this to directly?
>>
>> ... or, Otto? Do we just flesh out the idea and have you put it into
>> code/action?
>>
>
> Go for it. No one will have an issue with the ability to white-list themes
> to bypass the automated check. Just make sure there are basic standards in
> place. To me, that sounds like the ability to appeal to the head theme
> reviewers to be whitelisted. As an example, I let the initial Quality
> Control bug tracker theme into the directory after the developer appealed to
> me, and I agreed it was a good thing to showcase in the directory.
>
> By basic standards, I'm referring to some sort of statement (from the
> reviewers) that outlines what kind of discretion is used when deciding
> whether a special-case/niche theme has enough mass appeal and/or
> ingenius-ness to be included. I don't think the user needs a special tag, or
> a special readme anything. There's no need to complicate this beyond some
> super-basic contact/appeal procedure. I would think they should email this
> mailing list.
>
> I would suggest that the check still occurs and the results end up on Trac,
> that way a the reviewer can get a good idea about what the theme *does*
> implement. But that just depends on how Otto goes about it.
>
> I don't think any new tags are necessary, for the upload system or for
> users. The name and description of the theme is going to be enough of an
> indication that it's a special-case theme.
>
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>
>
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