[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #11651: Welcome Screen concept

[WordPress Trac]

#11651: Welcome Screen concept
----------------------------------------------+--------------------------
 Reporter:  dd32                              |       Owner:  koopersmith
     Type:  task (blessed)                    |      Status:  assigned
 Priority:  normal                            |   Milestone:  3.3
Component:  Administration                    |     Version:
 Severity:  normal                            |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-patch dev-feedback 3.3-early  |
----------------------------------------------+--------------------------

Comment (by nacin):

 Replying to [comment:40 edwardw]:
 > For example, I've tried making patches for open "feature requests" and
 "bug reports", but they either sit stale and ignored like #14960 or closed
 by biased, politically-motivated people like #17048. It really has an
 effect of turning away potential or interested contributors.

 Hi edwardw,

 The biased, politically-motivated person you're referring to is, I
 imagine, me. I'm also a member of the core team. The comment *is indeed
 both political and biased, but that's because my comment is outlining a
 deliberate project decision we have made long ago with regards to
 absolute/relative links. The conversation comes up every once in a while,
 and the entire core team always recommits to their existing decision, due
 to past experiences and expertise in the matter, as well as our
 development opinions. dd32 also weighed in on that thread, and he too is a
 member of the core team.

 I'm sorry that's not what you want to hear. I too have contributed code to
 WordPress and other projects that the core developers (or, even after
 joining the core team, my colleagues) have rejected for reasons other than
 quality of the code or the fix. That's just how it works.

 I've commented to #14960. As it involves an underused feature we've long
 planned to deprecate in some way, it attracted little attention. I attempt
 to read every ticket, comment, and patch, but when I looked it up, that
 ticket was one of the 50 or so currently in my lower priority (and unread)
 queue.

 Contributing to feature development can be tough. Often, the idea exists
 for a long time, but no direction or traction is given. (The case here.)
 When the core team decides to bless a feature, which occurs at the start
 of the cycle in a public scope session, it normally is given vision and
 direction by Jane, Matt, or another member of the core team. Soon
 thereafter, iterations will begin. This development may look nothing like
 what the community has originally proposed, or even what a member of the
 core team initially proposed.

 Something like a welcome screen is really difficult to offer any
 contribution without any direction. The text will be written at the
 direction of the user experience lead (jane), and she will also decide how
 users should be interacting with it. Not all blessed tasks are this UX-
 focused, though many are. While we normally don't want to discourage
 contributions, generally it is more productive to contribute to other
 items while a core group of people (in this case, jane and koopersmith)
 iterate on things quickly and mold it into what the core team wants. After
 that, people are welcome to pounce onto it.

 Don't think your contribution didn't help. By having some activity here,
 other developers were able to revisit the ticket, get an idea for its
 current direction, and figure out where we should probably take it. The
 patch reminded some of us of the Health Check plugin, which never got off
 the ground. The point was made that a lot of this text belonged in a
 plugin, rather than in a simple welcome screen. And thus design iterations
 began.

 At this point, we're far, far outside the bounds of this ticket, so I'll
 leave it at that.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/11651#comment:41>
WordPress Trac <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/>
WordPress blogging software