Review Incentive Trial Program

With the recent changes to the Theme Review infrastructure, we are now much more easily able to track Theme review and approval of new Themes, previously reviewed Themes, and updates to currently approved Themes.  While we have a much higher volume of tickets being closed than we have had in the past, we end up mired in a cycle of Themes being not-approved, re-submitted, and then not-approved again. If we are ever to gain long-term control of the review queue, we need to break that cycle – and the only real way to do that is to ensure that, as often as possible, all Themes submitted eventually get through the review process, and approved.

In an effort not only to bring the Theme Review queue under control but also to further our ultimate objective: to ensure Themes are approved and made available in the Theme directory, we are going to try an incentive program of sorts. As a side benefit, this incentive program will partially address another area of frequent discussion: the Featured Themes list.

This Trac Report tracks new and previously reviewed Themes that have been approved and made live in the past 30 days. It will be the basis for our experimental incentive program.

Every month, we will determine the three reviewers with the most tickets in this report. Each of those reviewers will get to select a Theme to be included in the Featured Themes list for the next month.

Details:

  • “Winners” will be selected on the first of the month
  • To count, tickets must be for never-before-approved Themes (i.e. new and previously-reviewed, but not theme-update)
  • To count, tickets must not only be “approved” by the reviewer, but closed and made “live” by an admin
  • Selected Featured Themes must be currently approved in the Theme directory, and must be current
    • (Yes, you can choose one of your own Themes)
  • Final decisions are at the sole discretion of the TRT admins
  • The incentive program is intended to be positive; if it becomes contentious or causes problems, it will be discontinued
  • Additional details/clarification will be added, as needed

Again, the goals of this program are to help bring the review queue under long-term control, to facilitate more Themes completing the review process through approval, and to provide some community input into the Featured Themes list, while providing a bit of incentive to Theme reviewers.

Please discuss in the comments. Let us know what you think of the idea, or if you have any questions.

The first “winners” will be selected on August 1st. Good luck!

#review-queue