[theme-reviewers] Why the double standards and why Pagelines gets special treatment?

[Chip Bennett]

Sorry I missed all of this exchange. I have been out of town for the past
week or so.

To answer your questions:

   1. An exception was requested, and granted, for PageLines to use a
   top-level menu. Note that we have no "formal" process for
   requesting/granting such exceptions. *The admins will work on developing
   such a system, to ensure open communication of all such interactions and
   decisions.*
   2. Regarding the rest of the issues: they may or may not be valid. I
   will go back and do a thorough review of the originally approved ticket,
   and will make any related/necessary comments, in-ticket. *I expect all
   further discussion specific to PageLines (or, to any other specific Theme,
   for that matter), to take place likewise in-ticket.*

Having said that, I want to reiterate the following points:

   - Theme reviewers are volunteers, and are humans, and thus subject to
   making mistakes. As such, *Theme reviewers deserve the benefit of the
   doubt in all matters regarding reviews*.
   - As the efforts of the Theme Review Team rely solely on the
   contributions of said volunteers, *the WPTRT admins will not tolerate
   such disrespect directed toward reviewers* as was implied in your
   message. There is no favoritism shown toward or against any Theme or Theme
   developer, period.
   - If anyone has a question, issue, or problem with a given review, the
   appropriate course of action is to post a comment, *in-ticket*. Bringing
   such comments to the mail-list without first attempting to resolve the
   question/issue in-ticket is counter-productive, and will lead to exactly
   what has happened here.
   - If such comment regards a question or clarification about a review
   observation or resolution, fine. But if such comment represents criticism
   toward the review or toward the reviewer, then I fully expect such
   criticism to be predicated by the commenter having performed sufficient
   reviews himself to have to right to levy such criticism. The WPTRT, like
   WordPress itself, is a meritocracy.

Also, regarding the "Featured Themes" list: there are no "formal"
guidelines for inclusion, frequency of change of Themes, or anything else
regarding the list. If you are submitting a Theme with the sole desire of
getting listed in the Featured Themes list, then you're _doing_it_wrong(),
and we probably don't want your Theme contribution anyway. Motivation
matters. Submit your Theme for the purpose of giving back to the WordPress
community, rather than for some sort of personal gain. Personally, I don't
even want to be involved in the Featured Themes list at all, precisely for
the reason that I would rather spend my time reviewing Themes than dealing
with the constant whining regarding which Themes are and are not included
in the list.

As a final note, to put this thread in perspective: in the past week that
I've been gone, this mail-list thread has seen more action than the review
queue, which has grown from around 15 up to 35 tickets awaiting review.

Chip

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 1:40 PM, Satish Gandham <satish.iitg at gmail.com>wrote:

> Pagelines themes always get special treatment, last time when i raised
> this point it was buried saying it was only a human error and there is no
> special treatment or favoritism. This happened again
>
> 1. Theme upload to the repository fails if it doesn't use add_theme_page()
> for adding admin pages. Yet pagelines somehow bypases this restriction,
> escapes the reviews eyes and makes it to the featured list.
>
> 2. For my theme removing the default fav icon was a requirement, but for
> page lines they add their logo as favicon, set their logo for the site logo
> by default. include their logo in the footer with any option to remove it.
>
> 3. They up-sell the page lines theme, their premium version has to be
> fully gpl, yet you find this on their site.
>
> "Can I use PageLines on more than one site?
> If you own the PageLines Professional Edition you can use it on multiple
> sites owned by you or your organization.
> If you own the PageLines Developer Edition you can use it to build an
> unlimited number of sites for yourself or for others."
>
> You don't even care to check these while adding it to featured themes
> list, yet you take special interest in digging into my site to find faults
> with my theme and license.
>
> 4. They are allowed to hotlink images, while other aren't
>
>
> 5. While other themes must save all the theme options in a single array,
> pagelines can have 5 db entries.
> 6. They bundle their store script along with the theme, how can that be a
> part of the theme?
>
> Why this favoritism and why this double standards?
> Why this favoritism and why this double standards?
> Why this favoritism and why this double standards?
>
> *****Points from theme review guidelines*********
> http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Review
>
>    - Themes are *required* to include within the Theme all images,
>    scripts, and other bundled resources. Such resources *must not* be
>    "hotlinked" from a third-party site.
>    - Themes are *recommended not* to implement custom favicon
>    functionality. If implemented, favicon functionality is *required* to
>    be opt-in, and disabled by default.
>    - Themes are *required* to use the *add_theme_page()* function to add
>    the Theme Settings Page to the *Appearance* menu, rather than using *
>    add_menu_page()* to add a top-level menu.
>    - Themes are *required* to save options in a single array, rather than
>    create multiple options for its settings page. Use of set_theme_mod and
>    get_theme_mod handles this for you, as does using the Settings API.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> theme-reviewers mailing list
> theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
>
>
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