[theme-reviewers] Webmaster Tools IDs - plugin territory?

[Philip M. Hofer (Frumph)]

Do you have any facts supporting the claim of end users having a difficult 
time when switching themes?

Most users who switch themes often do it within the first week of having a 
blog, to find one they really like, in my opinion - and haven't necessarily 
gotten into too much with their themes to even care.

So, yeah .. back up what you're saying with facts please.

A link to a post of some user anywhere that has had trouble switching themes 
from one to another that couldn't move over data.



-----Original Message----- 
From: Dane Morgan
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 6:43 AM
To: theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
Subject: Re: [theme-reviewers] Webmaster Tools IDs - plugin territory?

On 2013-07-16 00:22, Fränk Klein wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Jul 2013 23:54:33 -0500, Emil Uzelac <emil at uzelac.me> wrote:
>
>> Authors that offer this as an optional feature via Theme Options
>> should not be allowed to include them with their Themes! Why?
>>
>> I really don't see the reason to ban this from Themes. Recommend,
>> sure, let's do that, but to say no, you cannot, is just wrong :)
>>
>> Excluding this from Themes (*in case that author does not fork*
>> *into a plugin*) will "break" the Theme and that user experience we
>> talked about will be a terrible one. Not to mention the author.
>>
>> So in this case it's fine to do that because that's the guideline
>> but it is not if the same user decides to switch the Theme and
>> loses their features. Sorry I don't buy that.
You keep saying that removing these features from a theme will result in
a terrible user experience, but you deny that the removal that occurs
when users switch themes will be a terrible user experience. You can't
have it both ways.

If the loss is traumatic, it's traumatic and we must mitigate it by
making sure no more users are subjected to it by prohibiting the practice.

If it is not traumatic, then good sense and best practices demands the
separation of content and presentation and we need to nail that down.

But I wonder why, given that this is actually *already in* the
guidelines (
http://make.wordpress.org/themes/guidelines/guidelines-plugin-territory/
) as *must not* for all of the items on your proposed list, does this
conversation seem to take place as though this were a new proposal and
not already the requirement?
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