AutoReply Sucks

Did you know we have no auto-replies at all sent from WordPress plugins?

Every single email, even the predefined ones, are written and picked and sent by hand. Even the one that goes out to all 22,573 user accounts with commit access to a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party.

But you know what happens when we send out that nice reminder to test on WordPress 4.4?

We get a few hundred auto-replies from support systems.

THIS IS A GLOBAL REMINDER

Please change the address on your 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/ forums account to one that does not go to an automated support system. We need to be able to communicate directly with plugin authors, and having automated responses don’t help us much.

THIS IS A REQUIREMENT. If we continue to receive automated responses from your support system, we will have to shut down your plugin and remove it from the WordPress.org directory.

We require that we have the ability to contact you about updates on a regular basis. If we also get automated responses, then this eats up our time, and is a problem for us.

Please do whatever is necessary to STOP these automated responses. We would prefer that you use an email address on the forums that goes to actual people, not into a support system. Our forums send emails for all sorts of reasons, and automated responses eat up our bandwidth needlessly, since they don’t go anywhere.

Basically it’s this: If we can’t get in touch with you, we can’t host your plugin.

Please whitelist pluginsATwordpress.org and please exclude us from your auto-replies.

(A quick note – A personal autoreply, like “I’m at a wedding and won’t be back until December 3rd” is not the same thing. Those are fine!)

#email, #repository