[theme-reviewers] Grayscale Theme

[Bryan Hadaway]

Well, besides the fact that Grayscale *is* the name of my theme and
perfectly suited for its design as in very purposefully and methodically
applied, it is also a great name marketing/SEO/psychology wise.

Not offended by your responses, I think your candidness is refreshing
(saves time). While I'm not offended by your responses, I don't find them
relevant, correct or credible to this point.

As far as I know you're primarily a programmer, yes (correct me if I'm
wrong?). I'm a web designer, SEO and marketer for about 7 years now and
have worked with thousands of people in the capacity of branding,
marketing, SEO etc. If it's one thing I understand fluently in all that
time, it's users and customers.

No, of course I won't be dominating Google with a broad word like
"grayscale". Without even looking, I'll bet the top results are a
definition for the word, a Wiki entry, probably a few images showing
grayscale etc. Now, in practice what will happen is Grayscale with become a
common theme name that users will relate to, in search what will happen is
people will search "grayscale theme", "gray scale theme", "greyscale
theme", "grayscale wp theme", "grayscale wordpress theme", etc which is
relevant and targeted and will direct people to the theme.

I'm definitely not in any shortage of creativity, but in this case
"creativity" is a bad word. Being "creative" in web design is less
important than keeping things simple and user-friendly.

*Full stop. All of the above is irrelevant - we're merely having a
subjective conversation out of interest.*

Now, here is the real relevant discussion at hand regardless of the actual
theme name:

*1.* I want to contribute a theme to the repo that will benefit thousands
of users (as will any submitted theme of course).

*2.* The name is available in the sense that it has never been published.

*3.* A user that is apparently MIA tried submitting the theme about 3 years
ago and clearly abandoned the theme after not being able to get it
approved, now blocking that theme name from anyone else.

This has nothing to do with Sam, Bryan, Grayscale or creativity. I'm posing
an issue to you as a paid WP employee/admin and asking you to set a
precedent for this situation (subjective thoughts aside).

There are two options as I see it for this unique issue:

*1.* If someone uploads a theme to the review process whether they ever
actually finish the theme and get the theme approved or not, that name is
now gone forever.

*2.* If someone submits a theme and then simply stops trying to get it
approved for an extended period of time (to be determined) than that name
will be freed up again.

*...*

Back to discussion, it kind of seems like you're overworked sometimes, are
there not others in your same position helping out? I know you've expressed
before on several other occasions that things are broken, not ideal and
that you don't have enough time to fix or improve them. Why is Chip still
working for free? I thought he would have been officially hired on 10 times
over by now, Emil as well, others admins? If you need more help perhaps
that's something to discuss with the higher-ups.

Thanks, Bryan
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