MarkR is on the front lines of keeping bad stuff out of the plugin directory, probably 10k+ over the years. As with any high-volume moderation endeavor his strategy is dynamic and, yes, mistakes are sometimes made.
Please do not take single line one-offs in IRC as edicts from on high or canon and reinterpret your entire worldview of WordPress.org around them. Not everything is written in stone, sometimes things will be ambiguous either because we’re still figuring them out, or because the situation is dynamic.
It’s only worth stressing out over if it’s hindering us in a major way. There are many hundreds of new plugins added to the directory every week, more than anyone could use in a lifetime, so while I’m sorry one guy had a bad experience I’m not going to lose sleep over it. It’s not OMG-PLUGINS-DIR-IS-BROKEN.
Given 10 minutes to discuss the directory in a meetup, it’s sad we would focus on trivia over things that are actually broken and hindering us, like: changeset notification, email subscription to plugin updates, better tagging of forum threads, allowing plugin authors to moderate forum threads under their tag, discussion lists, bug trackers.
That is how empires crumble. Focus on tactics over strategy, administrivia over users, bikesheds. As with mailing lists, the people with the most time to argue their case seldom overlap with the people with the most to add to the discussion, and eventually it becomes 100% noise. Please don’t pollute the weekly meetups, they’re one of our last bastions of signal.
Chip Bennett 8:19 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
For the record, I’ve done nothing but praise MarkR in his effort to moderate the plugin repository.
With all due respect, Matt, the only noise on this matter has been contributed by you and Viper007Bond, by responding to something for which you’ve not taken the time to understand the context.
Take a look at the agenda item to which you’re responding. It has nothing to do with any of the “noise” you’ve just brought up. It was merely a request by Westi to discuss adding “License” and “LicenseURI” slugs to the plugin header. It was a legitimate question regarding the addition of two meaningful slugs to the plugin header – a suggestion that would go a long way in helping MarkR moderate the repository.
MarkR’s statement that I quoted is a de facto edict, because he is the one performing the moderation activities, and he is enforcing it. It is not my fault that he was not given proper clarification on the matter – nor is it the fault of any plugin authors who may have had their plugins removed due to a lack of license disclosure.
How can you not have gotten the plugin repository guidelines “figured out” by now? The plugin repository has been around for years, and has thousands of plugins. Surely there isn’t that much that hasn’t been seen yet.
Further, please drop the hyperbole:
1) Nobody is basing their “entire worldview of WordPress.org” around single-line one-offs in IRC.
2) Nobody is suggesting that the entire dev chat be dominated by the discussion of plugin header slugs. Without the distraction to which you yourself have contributed, that discussion would probably take no more than a couple of minutes.
3) The WordPress “empire” is not going to crumble because of two minutes in a dev chat meeting spent deciding to add two slugs to the plugin header.
And if you’re “not going to lose sleep” over a community member having an unnecessarily bad experience, then perhaps it is time that you appoint as contributor-community overseer someone who actually cares enough *to* lose sleep over it.
We are the community.
We are not “noise”.
Peter Westwood 8:23 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
I don’t think this is what Matt is refering to – it is more that discussion over trying to document to the n-th degree what the inclusion/exclusion criteria are for the plugin repo.
I personally don’t think that a long set of rules with examples help in this area – it is much better to be pragmatic and focus on encouraging people to do the right thing.
If you list a set of “canon” rules you just end up with people complaining because they found a hole in your rules and you still didn’t let them play in the sandpit – this benefits no one.
Chip Bennett 8:28 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
Then go with Jeff Chandler’s suggestion, and incorporate an FAQ to address the various “unwritten” guidelines, and other things that come up regarding the official guidelines.
And if this isn’t the right venue to bring up the question in the first place, then what is?
Andreas Nurbo 8:36 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
westi
Well there has been a lot of strange decisions lately that stems from unwritten rules and anonymous informers. There obviously needs to be more structure.
Removing plugins and refusing to tell the author why is reason alone for more structure.
A “fix” for that is what you and Mark J discussed in the Jan 11 dev chat. I have linked to it twice so you can read up on it again.
Currently we “know” that unsecure plugins are not allowed in directory and neither are those that don’t GPL header, also obfuscating code is not allowed either.
Alex M. 8:47 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
Chip –
You seem to be under the impression that I am speaking for someone other than myself. This is not the case. I am speaking merely as a plugin developer and someone who occasionally submits patches for possible commit — the normal member of the community which I am. My comments should not be taken for anything more than my own personal opinion.
Anyway, this is the last I’ll say on the matter — I seem to be flanning the flames with my comments and that was not my intent. I would hate for this excellent blog to turn into wp-hackers.
– Alex aka Viper007Bond
Chip Bennett 8:51 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
Alex,
Your comments carry weight, because you have earned that respect through your contributions. So, while I know that you’re not speaking for anyone other than yourself, what you say *is* important.
Matt 9:08 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
“We are the community” implies you are speaking on behalf of the 20,000,000+ WP users, not just yourself. I respect your opinion as a personal expression, but from my viewpoint your views are decidedly niche. I try to inform mine by the many thousands of WP users I speak to every year, many of them in person, and by talking to people who contribute in a meaningful way to WP, often through code, fixes, moderation, support, events, and often over the course of years. This blog is more explicitly for developers, particularly people who contribute to WP core.
Chip Bennett 9:34 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
Perhaps you inferred that I was speaking for all 20MM WordPress users, but my implication was only speaking as one to whom your original post was directed.
Many non-core devs participate here. I’ll not be the first one to stop commenting simply because you view us as “noise”. Sometimes we *do* have valid input and good suggestions – as evidenced by the outcome of today’s dev chat.
For the record, I couldn’t care less that you see my views as “decidedly niche”, or that you passive-aggressively dismiss my (or anyone else’s) contributions to WordPress. I will continue to express my views, just as I will continue to find ways in which I might best benefit WordPress and its community.
Matt 9:35 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
For future contributions of that sort, this blog is probably not the best venue. If you want to send me your thoughts directly, my email is m@wordpress.org.
Chip Bennett 9:44 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
You seem to forget (or dismiss) that *my* actual contribution to this whole mess was pointing out an inconsistency, that led to a dev chat agenda item – an agenda item that led to three specific changes.
Had it been left at that, a whole lot of digital ink would have been spared.
Andrew Ozz 8:39 pm on February 12, 2010 Permalink
Chip, was trying to find your profile on wordpress.org but couldn’t. How many of your plugins are hosted in the repository and what are the approximate total downloads?
Chip Bennett 9:02 pm on February 12, 2010 Permalink
This link seems to be working (which I only recently discovered), or this one.
I have 9 plugins, total downloads of less than 6,000.
I’m only just getting my feet wet with plugin development.
Peter Westwood 8:20 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
Indeed.
I really admire the community role that MarkR performs.
It is not an easy task to perform and I wholeheartedly agree that the important things we need to focus on are the technical issues as you suggest.
The plugin directory works very well and to make it work better we need to focus on improving the way in which developers can interact and get involved so that plugins have communities providing the code/support
Chip Bennett 8:34 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
Hear, hear.
I’ve reiterated several times that nothing I’ve said is criticism of MarkR.
Ironically, all suggestions related to this topic (plugin header slugs, revising the guidelines, updating readme.txt standard) are intended to help> MarkR in his very difficult role of moderating the repository.