[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #32844: Remove Post Formats and make them an optional plugin like Links

[WordPress Trac]

#32844: Remove Post Formats and make them an optional plugin like Links
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 Reporter:  mor10         |      Owner:
     Type:  enhancement   |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal        |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Post Formats  |    Version:  trunk
 Severity:  normal        |   Keywords:
  Focuses:                |
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 While I appreciate all the work done on this feature and its complicated
 and contentious history, I suggest removing Post Formats from core and
 making it a plugin along the lines of the Links feature which was removed
 a few years back. After the termination of Post Formats UI, it appears the
 feature has largely been left to pasture and implementation across themes
 is at best spotty and inconsistent. One example of this is how different
 Post Formats are treated in the default themes, culminating in the
 minimalist/absent inclusion in Twenty Fifteen.

 Some of the key arguments that come up when discussing the removal of the
 feature include:

 - Feature is poorly explained and understood by end-users leading to low
 adoption and significant confusion. This seems in part related to a lack
 of understanding of the term "Post Formats" itself.
 - Feature support is inconsistent across themes causing users to wonder
 why the panel and options appear and disappear when themes are switched.
 - When implemented, behavior is inconsistent between themes causing a
 perception of arbitrary or broken behavior in the eyes of the user.
 - Specification for what exactly each post format does is vague and
 ambiguous giving theme developers too much room to come up with arbitrary
 and non-standard behaviors that cause user confusion when themes are
 switched.
 - The use case for Post Formats seems to have gone away / been supplanted
 for the larger goal of making modular / Snowfall-like post editing
 available.
 - Post Formats behavior can be mimicked by theme developers through the
 use of Categories or other custom taxonomies.

 If we put the 80/20 rule into play here I would argue Post Formats at this
 point falls squarely in the 20% group (or more likely much lower). I
 believe it would benefit WordPress and its users to move the Post Formats
 feature out of core and into a plugin where it can be further developed or
 abandoned based on user support.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/32844>
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