[wp-meta] [Making WordPress.org] #5287: Disable WP core XML sitemaps

[Making WordPress.org]

#5287: Disable WP core XML sitemaps
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 Reporter:  jonoaldersonwp  |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  defect          |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal          |   Milestone:
Component:  General         |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  seo             |
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Comment (by jonoaldersonwp):

 wordpress.org is the marketing front of WordPress, and the effectiveness
 of its SEO impacts our much-lauded % market share. Running code which
 causes errors and compromises our SEO (on top the myriad other issues we
 have), and directly harms WordPress' users and potential users - ''and''
 occludes the many other issues we have.

 We don't have time for me to spend days listing out wp.org-specific
 sitemap issues. Nor does me doing achieve anything, other than to waste my
 evening, and to reassure you that I'm not making up a problem that doesn't
 exist. Can we skip that stage, and fast-forward to implementing what
 should be a trivial fix, for a serious live issue?

 Yes, JetPack's sitemaps are also far from perfect, and replicate some of
 the same issues (largely because of how borky wp.org is) but, having one
 set of known problems is better than having two sets of problems.

 Anecdotally, the core sitemap behaviour on Rosetta sites is particularly
 broken (e.g., https://fr.wordpress.org/themes/wp-sitemap.xml shouldn't
 exist, and references URLs which trigger a redirect link), and the Rosetta
 sites themselves seriously harm our SEO.

 It's imperative that we plug this leak and ''then'' go about
 testing/improving (in a non-production environment which isn't tied the
 success of the whole project).

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Ticket URL: <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5287#comment:10>
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