WordPress 4.5 Beta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 2
WordPress 4.5 Beta 2 is out, and so far we haven’t noticed anything consistent or otherwise worth highlighting in our testing.
Alpha/Beta Forum Moderation
If you find a thread in the Alpha/Beta forum that’s not about 4.5 Beta, please shut it down, move it out, or tag it with “modlook”. If it is about 4.5 Beta, mark it Resolved as soon as a trac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. ticket is opened or it’s resolved by otherwise determining the problem isn’t WordPress, or tag it with “modlook”.
In other words, let’s keep that forum focussed only on current issues with the 4.5 betas and later RCs.
Plugin 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 Directory Changes and Handling Complaints
Some big changes are coming to the Plugin Directory, and an important already-existing rule was clarified this week. The rule clarification has already been mis-reported, leading to lots of complaints sent through various outlets, and it’s entirely possible that the other changes could be as well.
When encountering complaints regarding Plugin Directory policies, please direct them to the correct announcement at Make/Plugins (typically, it will be something recent), recommend that they contact plugins (at) wordpress (dot) org with any further questions, and close the thread, or tag it with “modlook”.
Plugin Reviews as Part of Training Courses
Some concerns came in over suspected sock puppet reviews on Pinkify It. In reality, these are not sock puppet reviews, but reviews posted as part of an official training course. Due to the classroom environment, the reviews trigger a number of our sock puppet warning signs.
After a vote, we have decided that we’re ok with this. The students need somewhere to go as an example, Pinkify It is functional which is much better for the directory than a dummy plugin, it’s developed by the author of this training course, and it’s a very niche plugin which really wouldn’t see any sort of “unfair advantage” from multiple reviews like this.
We aren’t the only ones involved in a decision like this though, so we have sent this decision and summary along to a representative of the Plugins Team.
Global Contributor Drive Winners
Congratulations to Harris Anastasiadis, Ahmad Awais, Takis Bouyouris, Phil Erb, Eric Gunawan, Jackie McBride, Diana Nichols, Kostas Nicolacopoulos, Juhi Saxena, and Sarah Semark, who reached the goal of 20 support threads replied to during our Global Contributor Drive weekend! To everyone who participated, thank you so much for taking the time to help WordPress users!
These results were posted a bit earlier as part of the announcement for the Video Team’s Global Contributor Drive.
Badges Update
We hit a delay in our progress, but we’re still working on this. To avoid any ETA-related mishaps, we’ll just say that badges will be assigned soon. 🙂
Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)
#weekly-chat
