[theme-reviewers] Latest Featured Themes, seriously?

[Jose Castaneda]

I honestly never even gave it a second glance. The main reason was because
when I saw "Make" I initially thought that it was step in the right
direction. The first theme from a long standing and very much reputable
theme developer makes it to the top? I had to check it out. I saw
"Stargazer" and wasn't too surprised it was a featured theme I mean with
twelve themes and a lot of plugins in the repo I couldn't help but bite, I
just had to take a quick peek at the code. On both themes really.

Part of the reason I feel this way is because featured themes should make
you feel like that is the standard when it comes to theming. I think it is
one of those if you look for a symptom you're bound to find one type of
things.

>From what I can recall it is a randomized list of themes that is being
used. How it's being generated is up to the higher ups. I can only guess
that it is not an easy thing to code which is why I have no intentions on
really asking how or what the requirements are. If I knew I would just as
easily create a theme that would cater to that just to be featured.

As a theme reviewer for going on two years I have to say that things have
changed. I wanted to embrace the incentive but that failed because of the
direction it was headed. Now I can let somebody else deal with it and I can
try my best at making sure that themes won't be breaking sites and meeting
the standards rather than just simply approving themes to get my theme
count up. I mean that is one of the many reasons I chose to review themes;
that and I wanted to improve my coding abilities while gaining some
WordPress knowledge along the way.

I think part of the reason I think this way is that just because it's a
featured theme does not mean it's a great theme. It's like when they say
Windows 8 is the latest, greatest thing. Doesn't make it true. There are
several themes I have seen that are feature worthy or at least notable that
haven't been featured before the incentive, during and currently. A decent
example would be the theme: Hueman; but you know what? It's not up to me.
Will I question it? Of course. Will it change things? Probably not. The
main reason being I'm not in that position of power. If I were though, I
can honestly say it would be tough to be fair and unbiased.

Like I said though: I never even gave it a second glance. I see new themes,
try them out and move on. If I like it I'll say something about it
otherwise it's just a moment in my timeline. :)


On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 6:58 PM, Trent Lapinski <trent at cyberchimps.com>
wrote:

> Is anyone else disappointed to see that the theme review contest was ended
> for a list of commercial theme shops with close ties to Automattic,
> personal friends, and employees of Audrey Capital (Matt Mullenweg’s
> personal investment company)?
>
> The Theme Foundry (one of Automattic’s earliest theme partners), Justin
> Tadlock (a WordPress.org admin), Sarah Gooding (a blogger for Audrey
> Capital), TeslaThemes (
> http://wptavern.com/teslathemes-celebrates-one-year-of-being-in-business),
> and Themeify (a major commercial theme shops first theme on WordPress.org)
> were all just gifted featured themes on WordPress.org.
>
> So what exactly is the criteria for being featured now?
>
> --Trent Lapinski
> =============
> CEO of CyberChimps Inc.
> http://CyberChimps.com
> Twitter @trentlapinski
> Skype: mobiletrent
>
>
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