Tammie Lister 6:10 pm on October 29, 2014

I’ll keep this short Yesterday at the community…

I’ll keep this short. Yesterday at the community summit, our team decided to take full advantage of the new communication tools we have and archive this list. Combined with our make/themes site, SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. gives us the ability to talk more frequently, easily, and effectively than before. Searchable archives and the ability to easily communicate on any device makes life much better. So, this is the right time to archive the mailing list.

Those involved in the discussions included Edward Caissie, Emil Uzelac, myself, as well as Jose Cataneda, Ian Stewart, Lance Willett, Michelle Langston, Alexandra Laczek, Sakin Shrestha, Ashley Shaw, and Shinichi Nishikawa, and other community members.

As of now, the mailing list is now closed. You can find more information about WordPress and Slack here: https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. I look forward to seeing your gravatars there soon!

Ryan Cowles 6:18 pm on October 29, 2014

I think this is a good move. Thanks for the heads up!
Amy Hendrix (sabreuse) 6:30 pm on October 29, 2014

Woo-hoo! Bye-bye mailing list!
Aubrey Portwood 7:27 pm on October 29, 2014

No more email. Great news!
designsimply 8:25 pm on October 29, 2014

Love this move.
Justin Tadlock 8:44 pm on October 29, 2014

Yeah, this sucks. Now we have to learn to use a whole new tool and wade through a lot of discussions just to find topics of interest?

SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. is awesome for chat. It’s something we should definitely use, but it in no way can handle the things that email is good at. If there was a way to create sub-discussions on #themereview, yeah, that might work. Right now, everything is flat, so you have to scroll through and read stuff of no interest.

An official forum always sounded like the best thing to me, but a mailing list is always a good second choice.
- Philip Newcomer 9:54 pm on October 29, 2014
  
  I agree. Use the right tool for the job. Big thumbs-down on this move.
- Zulfikar Nore 12:59 am on October 30, 2014
  
  +1
- tskk 3:25 am on October 30, 2014
  
  Agree with Justin, SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. needs threaded discussion feature first to make it primary tool.
  
  Most important issue is :
  Opinions of people who did not attend WCSF doesn’t matter?
- nitkr 5:15 am on October 30, 2014
  
  Agree with Justin, lets say the IRC part being asynchronous is useful but why can’t the mailing list be simple, rather than joining another cloud system?
  
  Now it seems like the only form of communication will happen through slackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. and nothing more, doesn’t sound right.
- Stanko Metodiev 10:16 pm on November 1, 2014
  
  +1
- Mario Peshev 10:48 am on November 3, 2014
  
  Absolutely. Email is not dead, otherwise you’ll get your PayPal notifications, invoices, online tickets and much more in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., which you probably aren’t (hopefully).
PeterNealAndrews 9:49 pm on October 29, 2014

This is awful. Now, how am I going to keep up-to-date with what’s going on with Make WordPress Themes? I’ve had the Make WordPress Themes blog subscribed in my RSS reader. Are you telling me now I need to weed through a bunch of chat logs in order to find any updates? This sucks big-time!!!!!!
wpCMSdev 9:59 pm on October 29, 2014

I can’t believe you’re now making us sift through a flat chat transcript to find the stuff we’re looking for. This is awful, just awful.
Zulfikar Nore 1:01 am on October 30, 2014

Was this proposal put up for discussion by all members before taking the final decision?

I’ll echo Justin’s views – SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. is in no way ready to replace the mailing list!
- Danielx64 1:34 am on October 30, 2014
  
  Yeah I like the fact that email keep everything tidy, even if there been heated convo that goes over 100+ emails.
  
  And I would like to know the same as Zulfikar asked as well. +1 for a proper forum as well.
- Justin Tadlock 5:13 am on October 30, 2014
  
  No, it wasn’t put up for discussion to the theme reviewer community. It wasn’t even mentioned that a discussion would happen, even among all of the admins. This seems to be something that happened during a discussion between a few folks at WCSF (I’m assuming the community summit was a part of the WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. over the weekend).
Emil Uzelac 3:48 am on October 30, 2014

Can we continue this on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. please: https://make.wordpress.org/chat/
- Justin Tadlock 3:02 pm on October 30, 2014
  
  Your comment kind of illustrates a major aspect of the problem. Important discussions like this that involve the entire TRT community need input from various people throughout various parts of the day. Let’s say I jump on there now, but someone else doesn’t get on until later tonight. They’ll have to wade through other discussions just to find this one. Then, there’s the problem of notifying people who were involved in the first discussion on the topic. Would we need to periodically go back and check if someone else has something new to say?
  
  Are we not even going to communicate on the Make Blog anymore? Is the next step disabling comments?
  
  What made things great before is that we had multiple avenues of communication. We had IRC, the mailing list, and this blog. It’s great that we replaced IRC with SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. This is much better and easier to use to me. I’ll actually use Slack now, whereas I hated IRC. But, that doesn’t mean that we need to replace email with chat.
  
  Not to mention, Slack isn’t even pulling up on Chrome + Windows right now. The iOSiOS The operating system used on iPhones and iPads. app pulls up fine, but I’m on my laptop.
  - Emil Uzelac 3:25 am on October 31, 2014
    
    Apologies Justin, that was not what I meant to do. We had few folks available in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. and I was also free in my hotel room and at that time it made sense for me to clarify thing or two live versus going back and forth here.
    
    Anyways, may I continue by saying that you are correct, mailing list is gone and P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. (this blog) will be the place where discussions are made. Not Slack. We can move to Slack if we need to go over whatever needs to be done in real-time, similarly to what I tried yesterday.
    
    P2 will be improved and available for folks to start discussions where they need to.
    
    Blog stays, mailing list and IRC are gone 🙂
Devin Price 2:58 pm on October 30, 2014

I like the idea of using SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. for discussion/chat, but there will also be a lot more noise to signal if you’re trying to catch up on what has been discussed the previous week. Hopefully important discussions can be re-capped and moved to this make blog as an alternate.
Tammie 3:50 pm on October 30, 2014

I wanted to respond to all of your comments in a little while, but I feel it’s apt I do now before I get on a plane.

First up, every decision that was made at the summit and then team days was always done with the intention of transparency, positivity and progress. The entire idea is not to make communication worse or not listen to the community. Infact, what has happened is an action towards fixing both.

If everyone is honest, the mailing list was not an effective communication tool most of the time. Yes, it had threading, yes it was something we were used to – but, it was often a place the spiralled in communication towards negativity. That’s a bad thing to have around on that one ground. From a psychological point of view the power of closing the mailing list is also important to the team. Whether you know it, admit it or like it, the mailing list has caused people to leave our community and also not even join in. This is alone a good reason to remove the tool.

This decision was not made just by myself. It was made as we all looked to how we can have more effective communication and tools. As promised before we went to the summit, those of us there are going to post everything up here. We are not doing anything to harm or not listen to the entire community.

Now, nobody is saying to remove something that worked for some people and not replace it. The idea is we replace it with SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. and this blog. Like other teams, we should be using both. The make blog has threading. We are currently working on roles so we can open up this blog more. This solve that method.

Another great communication tool is weekly meetings. We are now holding two of those.

If you want me to explain anything further one on one I am happy to. Just message me on Slack and I am happy to talk to anyone at any time.
- tskk 3:55 pm on October 30, 2014
  
  Sorry but if you had “transparency” in mind, you would have notified that a discussion will be taking place and everyone should be allowed to express their opinions.
  
  In fact you did that opposite, no notice, limited the discussion to few that were present at wcsf.
- Justin Tadlock 4:55 pm on October 30, 2014
  
  First up, every decision that was made at the summit and then team days was always done with the intention of transparency, positivity and progress.
  
  Transparency is not having an unknown meeting about an unknown topic behind closed doors and then springing the decision of that meeting onto everyone else involved in the TRT community.
  
  If everyone is honest, the mailing list was not an effective communication tool most of the time.
  
  Being completely honest, I disagree. Plus, several years of effective communication says otherwise.
  
  Yes, it had threading, yes it was something we were used to – but, it was often a place the spiralled in communication towards negativity. That’s a bad thing to have around on that one ground.
  
  Negativity can happen anywhere. The mailing list, SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., this blog, anywhere.
  
  From a psychological point of view the power of closing the mailing list is also important to the team. Whether you know it, admit it or like it, the mailing list has caused people to leave our community and also not even join in. This is alone a good reason to remove the tool.
  
  No, it’s not a good enough reason. If you and others felt like the tool needed to removed, the TRT community could’ve discussed viable alternatives. Slack is not an alternative to email. It’s an alternative to IRC.
  
  Now, nobody is saying to remove something that worked for some people and not replace it. The idea is we replace it with Slack and this blog. Like other teams, we should be using both. The make blog has threading. We are currently working on roles so we can open up this blog more. This solve that method.
  
  Slack in no way can handle what email is good at, particularly threading and off-line reading.
  
  As for this blog, are we going to allow anyone with a WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ username to create a new post here? If so, I can work with that. If anyone wants to post a topic of discussion, they should be able to do so.
  
  Another great communication tool is weekly meetings. We are now holding two of those.
  
  Weekly meetings that are impossible for everyone to attend. Yes, it is a great communication tool. I love it that we’re having those. However, it is irrelevant to this discussion. We’re talking about the removal of the mailing list.
  
  If you want me to explain anything further one on one I am happy to. Just message me on Slack and I am happy to talk to anyone at any time.
  
  This discussion needs to happen in public. We’ve always had open and honest discussion on TRT. The last thing we need to do is start having private, one-on-one conversations.
  - Tammie 4:58 pm on October 30, 2014
    
    Nobody is having private conversations, we are actually and have been talking in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. right now. You are welcome to join the conversation there.
    - Doug 5:05 pm on October 30, 2014
      
      “right now”.
      
      There, in a nutshell, is the problem with replacing email with SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
    - Justin Tadlock 5:12 pm on October 30, 2014
      
      Yes, you did have a private conversation. You said as much in the post that we’re commenting on.
      
      Plus, I cannot join SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. If you read my reply earlier, you would’ve seen that I cannot access the site via my laptop. I’m using a Windows machine and have tried several browsers to no avail. I simply get a “This webpage is not available” screen.
      - Tammie 5:16 pm on October 30, 2014
        
        Hi Justin. I just spoke to Sam to try and work out your SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. issues. Could you Skype him at samuelsidler so he can help you get onto Slack?
      - Justin Tadlock 5:20 pm on October 30, 2014
        
        I don’t have Skype. Email always works though.
      - Tammie 5:23 pm on October 30, 2014
        
        Justin, when you can could you email sam@wordpress.org and once he’s off the plane he can work through the issues you are having using SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. Thanks.
  - Samuel Wood (Otto) 8:59 pm on October 30, 2014
    
    As for this blog, are we going to allow anyone with a WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ username to create a new post here? If so, I can work with that. If anyone wants to post a topic of discussion, they should be able to do so.
    
    No, the plan is to expand the list to a much wider scope at first. All current reviewers will be able to post. Lists have to be made, roles have to be setup, etc.
Zulfikar Nore 6:07 pm on October 30, 2014

Can we all agree that SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. is not the alternative for the mailing list and look for a better solution?

Slack is too noisy and cluttered with multiple convo in one stream its virtualy imposible to keep track of any one topic!
- Jason 6:58 pm on October 30, 2014
  
  I agree that SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. is not the alternative for the mailing list. I really can’t see why we need an alternative, IMO the mailing list has worked great.
- Samuel Wood (Otto) 9:01 pm on October 30, 2014
  
  SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. is not the alternative to the mailing list. This blog is. Or will be. You’re commenting on the long-form site.
  
  Slack is for short form communication. It replaces Skype very well, and IRC to some extent. For long form posts, email is just bad for some people. Especially new users. Yes, I have been using email for 20 years and it doesn’t bother me at all, but it does some, and that matters.
  
  More later. I have to get on a plane now. 🙂
wpweaver 5:14 pm on November 5, 2014

Since this blog + SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. is supposed to replace the list, and I think I understand you plan to allow some way for the “rest of us” to start posts eventually, could one of you at least start a general post so list members who don’t have posting privileges here could make “posts” via comments?

And another nice little tweak would be to make the Discussion widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. show more than 5 posts.

But still, I think using a blog + comments + Slack is a sorry excuse of what should be a forum. BBPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. is pretty nice.

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