Tammie Lister 4:40 pm on November 10, 2025
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This week in Core Program #8

Each start of the week, there will be a summary post for this team sharing what happened last week and setting out some plans for the week ahead.

If you don’t see anything mentioned here you would like called out please mention in comments.

#this-week

Tammie Lister 2:45 pm on November 7, 2025  

Proposal: Q4 focuses for the Core Program team

This post comes from a discussion post initially posted in the GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ for the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Program team. In order to focus energy and be efficient, one focus is proposed. Additional opportunities for collaboration were identified and those are worth listing to continue supporting. Anything not being focused on this quarter will be documented to review in Q1 2026.

Main focus: Roadmaps

This will be initially a discovery task that ends with recommendations, leading to documentation of a proposed format someone can follow looking to make one. Potentially the tasks could be to:

  • Gather and document all existing roadmaps across teams.
  • Look at how they are built, maintained and communicated.
  • Suggest a lightweight process for teams that lack one.
  • Find a central place for a combined roadmap. Initially considering roadmap/ page as the location with potential iterations. This should not distract or get in way of each team maintaining their own roadmaps, but also provide a way for contributors to see what needs working on.

There might be other tasks form during this. An initial GitHub issue has been made to enter discovery for Roadmaps.

Collaborations

During the initial collection of ideas for goals and focuses there were a few opportunities for the Core Program team to collaborate. Whilst not a direct goal, these will be continuous areas and those linked are done so as people identified to connect with and find out how the Core Program team can continue to support.

  • WP Credits: this team needs feedback but also programming support as it grows and @peiraisotta has supported this connection. One particular idea to work on in future is even a list of opportunities to contribute.
  • Five-for-the-future: @gusa raised on several occasions where opportunities might arise for programming to support this area.
  • Tooling for WordCamps: this is in discovery right now. @harmonyromo is championing this work as what direction it will take is being worked out.
  • Improving recognition of invisible contributions: @estelaris is working on this by starting within the documentation team. @felipevelzani also continues to do work around non-dev contributions.

Next steps and get involved

Now there is a proposed goal to focus on, the next step is to get feedback and then start working on this together. This post is that opportunity. Is there anything you would like to add? Are you interested in collaborating or getting involved in any particular area?

Props to everyone that contributed to the discussions for Q4, release and future, helping form this focus and also those that reviewed this post: @annezazu, @4thhubbard, @peiraisotta, @jeffpaul.

Tammie Lister 11:44 am on November 3, 2025
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This week in Core Program #7

Each start of the week, there will be a summary post for this team sharing what happened last week and setting out some plans for the week ahead.

If you don’t see anything mentioned here you would like called out please mention in comments.

#this-week

Tammie Lister 9:20 am on October 27, 2025
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This week in Core Program #6

Each start of the week, there will be a summary post for this team sharing what happened last week and setting out some plans for the week ahead.

If you don’t see anything mentioned here you would like called out please mention in comments.

#this-week

Tammie Lister 9:33 am on October 26, 2025
Tags: contribution   

Recognising contributors work: discussion notes and potential opportunities

This post is a summary of a Slack discussion about how contributors are being recognized in the project, in general. While it’s important for the program team to consider many topics, directly addressing this one is out of scope for the team. This came up in a conversation between contributors who primarily contribute to the docs and coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. teams. As a result, the docs team will explore how to better recognize its contributors. Because this topic is relevant for every team throughout the project, it’s being summarized here for visibility.

Thank you to everyone who joined in that discussion. Here is a summary of the ideas and resources shared and a look at how things can move forward, with a few opportunities.

Notes

During this discussion a number of challenges to contributors and teams which everyone agreed on were identified, these ranged from:

  • Identifying what is a valued contribution.
  • Some teams work on standardized release cycles and others do not.
  • There are multiple types of contributions.
  • It’s not always easy to catch a contribution when it happens
  • Finding paths in contribution: how can someone know where and when they are going to follow a particular path within a team?

There are also implementation issues:

  • The credits page itself is only visible when a user clicks the ‘upgrade’ button on auto updates.
  • The difference between props vs team recognition.
  • Badges not being the entire solution.

There is also a lot of prior art:

Out of scope for the program team

A point to be clear about is the paths on each team are up to the teams themselves, as is managing their contributions. One thing the core program might do is look at where patterns of this exist and suggest things to work on.

It’s worth also noting a few other five-for-the-future discussions spiralled out of this one root discussion. Whilst not an issue to discuss, it’s worth focusing on distinct ways forward and not veering into other teams, or owned areas. There is already a 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/. space for this discussion and to not duplicate this work it is important to continue that there in #five-for-the-future.  The program team has a focus and keeping to that is important.

Opportunities

How does the team move forward with all this conversation and start some potential work? Out of the discussion there are some things that could be done and on purpose these are reduced to the easier things to focus on and build up.

  • Document all the ways contribution is recognized: this way each can be surfaced, and any team can know what could pick from to suit their purpose. 
  • Explore iterations to the noteworthy contributors section and credits. If time, doing this for 6.9 would be ideal.
  • Look at what other projects do and consider what could bring in. This is a longer term idea but looking outside is great for us to learn from and GitHub Community Discussions area has an interesting recognition system which was raised in discussion.

These are just to start with, but as it’s good to get started on things, finding distinct tasks is a good next step in such a long discussion, along with documenting and bringing to this make site.

Feedback is welcome on these opportunities as they have been proposed as next steps.

Props @desrosj, @jorbin, @estelaris for reviewing and contributing to this post.

#contribution

Tammie Lister 3:46 pm on October 20, 2025
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This week in Core Program #5

Each start of the week, there will be a summary post for this team sharing what happened last week and setting out some plans for the week ahead.

This is a new briefer format to get the week started:

If you don’t see anything mentioned here you would like called out please mention in comments.

#this-week

Tammie Lister 10:29 am on October 13, 2025
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This week in Core Program #4

Each start of the week, there will be a summary post for this team sharing what happened last week and setting out some plans for the week ahead.

This is a new briefer format to get the week started:

If you don’t see anything mentioned here you would like called out please mention in comments.

#this-week

Tammie Lister 9:18 am on October 6, 2025
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This week in Core Program #3

Each start of the week, there will be a summary post for this team sharing what happened last week and setting out some plans for the week ahead.

As with any process on this team, please give feedback for anything you would like to see improved, iterated or adjusted. This team is made better with each piece of feedback.

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/. happenings

These are focused on the #core-program team Slack itself as a summary, wider work is called out in the next section.

  • Check-ins saw people focusing across AI and other areas this week. #

If you don’t see anything mentioned here you would like called out please mention in comments.

Work done

  • Handbook page collating the community summit topics that fall under this team and have been brought up so far.
  • Initial work on post summarising thoughts about recognising contribution. Props @estelaris for supporting there.

Did you do something this week from this team? That’s awesome, please raise it up in the comments of this post.

Get involved

Things are just getting started but already there are some things you can help with:

  • No feedback is being looked for right now, but posts coming out this week on make from Slack discussions last week.
  • The team itself can be joined at #core-program on Slack.

Plans this week

These are the ones known about. As the team grows we can surface more people’s work within these teams.

If you have any plans of things you are going to do please share them as a comment.

#this-week

Tammie Lister 9:33 am on September 29, 2025
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This week in Core Program #2

Welcome to the second edition of this update. Each start of the week, there will be a summary post for this team sharing what happened last week and setting out some plans for the week ahead.

As with any process on this team, please give feedback for anything you would like to see improved, iterated or adjusted. This team is made better with each piece of feedback.

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/. happenings

These are focused on the #core-program team Slack itself as a summary, wider work is called out in the next section.

  • We had a lot of people join us and say hi, which was great.
  • @estelaris started a discussion around recognising contributions, specifically how and what is a contribution, that is continuing.
  • There was a discussion thread around paper cuts in team setup.
  • Several times Community Summit notes were shared in response to threads. This raised the point that these should be reviewed by this team for the points which could be actioned and learnt from.
  • Core Importers was brought to the team as needing a maintainer, this was taken to coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. to resolve. However, it’s worth noting the discovery here is some areas might not need a maintainer.
  • A roadmap was being sought for AI to help with workshops. This inspired the roadmap page in handbook.

If you don’t see anything mentioned here you would like called out please mention in comments.

Work done

Did you do something this week from this team? That’s awesome, please raise it up in the comments of this post.

Get involved

Things are just getting started but already there are some things you can help with:

Plans this week

These are the ones known about. As the team grows we can surface more people’s work within these teams.

  • Continue the team handbook.
    • Create a handbook page for Community Summit note collecting and sorting: this is specifically in response to how many have been shared so far as relevant to discussions.
    • Create a handbook page for ‘Resources’ that can include talks which might be relevant around this team. Potentially put the Community Summit notes under this also.
    • Look at where Guidelines for repo management should live.
  • Summarise the feedback and take next steps on communication post.
    • Ensure if we do decide on repo it meets the guidelines for management.

If you have any plans of things you are going to do please share them as a comment.

#this-week

Tammie Lister 10:52 am on September 27, 2025
Tags: feedback-wanted   

Proposal: team communication flows

This is a proposal that comes from a Slack discussion and now needs some more consideration here on the make site. To summarise, what is being looked for is feedback around how the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Program team can start having some patterns for communication, including some processes.

1. Async not sync

At least initially the suggestion is to have all communication be asynchronous not sync – for example, meetings. What does this mean in practice?

  • Weekly check-in on Monday asking everyone to share what they are going to work on and any blockers.
  • Post on this site to share at the start of the week what has been going on within the team and the plans for week.

Why is this being proposed? The likelihood is that many who will end up on this team are also contributing across other teams that require meetings. The idea is also this helps others know more what is going no with a regular cadence. The post will summarise things such as 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/. conversations and cross team collaborations.

What are your thoughts on this type of communication being proposed? Anything else you would like to see this team do?

2. Repo/Project board

In order to co-ordinate things a bit more in this team, setting up a project board might be helpful. This is something that needs feedback on. Will this distract people or will it help for example? A suggestion is to have a GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repo and use issues perhaps also including discussions. There are a few things need to be done though if this happens:

  • Any topic put on an issue or discussion that requires feedback and input should also be posted on this make site. Silos of conversations are key to avoid. This make site can along with the weekly check-ins can hopefully also help bring visibility to anything.
  • Any project board also needs logging on this make site. This ensures contributors know where to find things.
  • Documentation around where to put topics and why needs to be made, to ensure people get to the right place with their awesome perspective.
  • One option could be to not have discussions at all on this repo and just stick to issues, boards. This could perhaps avoid having conversations in yet another place.

What do you think? Should this happen or what could be the issue with having a project board and repo? Should discussions be included or not? Is there a better option not considered? If this doesn’t happen how should goals and other discussions be logged, planned and co-ordinated with everyone having easy access to it? Your feedback is important and you might have a different idea could really help empower this.

3. Goals

Setting goals for this team feels important. The current recommendation is the following:

  • Set for each release of WordPress specific goals to get done.
  • Once the year rolls around have yearly goals split out into quarters.

By following this cadence just like the project within core shipping can be a focus. What these goals are yet is not decided, that will be done together and through public channels. To give some ideas, initially the goals will most likely propose to be aligned to what has been shared in the announcement post and perspectives shared over the first few weeks within the Slack channel.

What are your thoughts on this cadence for goals? Do you think this is the right path? What other ideas do you have for how this could work?

Next steps

Once feedback has been gathered here, the handbook can be updated with consensus and the team approach.

#feedback-wanted