[wp-hackers] Future of wp-hackers

[Matt Mullenweg]

 > But all the people
 > participating in this discussion were not aware that this was already
 > implemented.

http://photomatt.net/2007/08/13/standard-argument/

"Discussions are dominated chiefly by people who have time to dominate 
discussions, which over time includes fewer and fewer of the people who 
actually should."

July and August, two months which had heightened activity on wp-hackers 
had the lowest participation from any core developers, including myself.

Arguments over floating boxes and whether to use radio buttons or 
checkboxes go on for twenty posts between people who don't realize that 
the feature was implemented in core weeks before.[1]

http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2007-September/014723.html

People talking past each other about PHP5 (AFTER a decision had been 
made) generates hundreds of posts, yet Alex's post about unit tests, 
which has the potential to have a real impact on the quality of WP in 
the future, thuds with nary a response.

http://blue.bikeshed.com/

Unreasonable arguments, personal attacks, flame wars... the things that 
have been generating most of the discussion on this list have little to 
do with the success (or failure) of WordPress, unfortunately that means 
the people who work the hardest day to day in the trenches will avoid or 
batch their time here.

Perhaps a new mailing list with moderated membership, or that was only 
open to those who had made substantive contributions to the codebase 
would be a good middle ground between private discussions, IRC, and 
wp-hackers. I honestly don't know.

 > Unfortunately nobody aware of this already being
 > implemented posted a comment.

I posted to the thread, though, on 9-15-2007:

[1] Which I pointed out:
http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-Automatic-feedback-from-users-p12696664.html

I'm not directing this at anyone personally, which is why I've started a 
new thread even though I'm quoting a previous one, but I think everyone 
should take a step back and examine what exactly we're doing when we 
press the button that sends a message to the 940 members of this list.

-- 
Matt Mullenweg
  http://photomatt.net | http://wordpress.org
http://automattic.com | http://akismet.com