After six months of deep analysis inside the WordPress contribution ecosystem and for 3 months of intensive data collection (more specifically from the 6.8 release), a new light has been drawn over the current state of quality practices in the WP CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. project.

WordPress Test team has existed for ages, but for longer, it has always been perceived just as a group of people that simply performed some simple tests on tickets and patches just to triage and separate the wheat from the chaff.

From the start of 2025, as we have grown into a massive test team with more than 50 members, there is a firm decision to prioritize switching from bare testing to a more holistic approach on Quality Assurance, trying to observe all areas that might require attention and trying to find a way to fix them. This is the main reason of why this analysis report has been done.

Commits Data & Classification

Doing a completely manually curated analysis, checking each commit done individually from the release of 6.8 the 15th April until 6.8.2 the 15th of July here we have been able to classify Commits into some categories:

1. Improvement Commits, which include Bug fixes, Enhancements, Regressions, and New Features (no New Features though), fall into the same group. This is what we call improvement commits, and they need a more detailed analysis than the rest.
2. Chores, which are any type of task that doesn’t require a lot of in in-depth review, like Docs updates, Code Standards or any sort of automated issue discovery (like phpstan-based commits), Minor Unit Tests updates, version changes and all the other tasks that are mostly designed to maintain the project overall. Also, anything that relates to backporting

Special note about Bundled Themes component, for the whole analysis we have decided to exclude Themes because although it can have some testing, it’s very difficult to add any kind of automated testing so by default it will have a lesser Quality Score which could render results a little unfair compared to the rest of the areas. Maybe another quality specialized report specific for Bundled Themes could be done in the future.

With all this information in mind, here some facts and here is the data.

• The commits done in this period sum a total of 217 units.
• Total commits done by 17 unique committers.
• Improvement commits were made by 14 unique committers.
• From those 217 units, only 52 were Improvement Commits.
• The total of Tests taken into those Improvements were only 29.

Quality Score Calculation Formula

The Quality Score is calculated based on the presence of automated tests, code reviews, and the amount of manual testing submitted before merging a commit. Each commit has assigned points for these three quality elements, and the total score reflects the overall quality assurance applied:

• One point, up to two, per code review.
• One point up to two, per manual test.
• One extra point if it includes automated tests.

The maximum Quality Score per commit is a total of 5 points. This allowed an affordable classification and at the same time a way to compare results with activities that the Test Team are actually driving. Only commits from the improvements’ categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. were taken into analysis.

Classification for each commit is shown in the report as follows:

• 5 points: Outstanding
• 4 points: Excellent
• 3 points: Good
• 2 points: Needs Improvement
• 1 point: Poor
• 0 points: Unacceptable

Quality Score Facts

1. There were no commits with unacceptable level
2. Unfortunately, there were no commits with outstanding level.
3. The Average Quality Score for all Improvements is 2.47 out of 5.

Components by Commits

Only components with more than 3 commits show the average Quality Score, to have a minimal sample into account.

1. Media with 7 commits (3.29 Quality Score).
2. Build/Test Tools with 5 commits (2.4 Quality Score).
3. Editor with 4 commits (2.75 Quality Score).
4. Users with 4 commits (2 Quality Score).
5. Options/MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. APIs with 3 commits (2.67 Quality Score).
6. Login and Registration with 3 commits (2.33 Quality Score).
7. Networks and Sites with 2 commits.
8. Administration with 2 commits.
9. Posts/Post Types with 2 commits.
10. Embeds with 2 commits.

And the rest, Query, Rest APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/, Toolbar, Bootstrap/Load, Site Health, Customize, RevisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision., Upgrade/Install, Role/Capabilities, TaxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies., Application Passwords, Comments, and Database, with only 1 commit

The other top-level components that did not receive a single commit were: Cache APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways., Cron API, Date/Time, Export, External Libraries, Feeds, Filesystem API, Formatting, General, Help/About, HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. API, HTTPHTTP HTTP is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web and this protocol defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. API, I18N, Import, Interactivity API, Mail, Permalinks, Plugins, Privacy, Script Loader, Security, Sitemaps, Themes, and XML-RPC.

Test Team Data

Using an LLM for data classification and with some additional double-checking, we have been able to retrieve a list of all the Test Reports performed by the Test Team from the release of 6.8 to the release of 6.8.2. This sum a total of 366 reports made by a total of 58 unique testing contributors. Here is the data.

Test Contributors with 5+ reports

• @abcd95 with 5 reports.
• @avinashbhosale with 13 reports.
• @callumbw95 with 6 reports.
• @dhruvang21 with 5 reports.
• @dilipbheda with 7 reports.
• @nikunj8866 with 9 reports.
• @pmbaldha with 8 reports.
• @ravigadhiyawp with 9 reports.
• @rishabhwp with 9 reports.
• @rollybueno with 13 reports.
• @sainathpoojary with 13 reports.
• @sandeepdahiya with 18 reports.
• @sirlouen with 166 reports.
• @yashjawale with 6 reports.

!!! If I have missed someone in the list, please pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” me and I will update it asap.

Data Analysis

The data suggests there’s a massive chasm between the efforts of the Test team and the extent to which those efforts are being utilised by the Core team. Only around 8% of the test reports appear to be reflected in commits, and nearly 60% of reports seem to be merged without any accompanying manual testing.

This gap highlights a significant underutilization of the Test team’s efforts, and this is what intuitively brought the attention of the Test Team for several months until it was decided to generate such a report with real data to confirm the concerns.

Finally, we can see, that only 8 committers out of 87 committers currently in this list, did more than 3 commits in a 3-month period, showing that barely the 9% of the committer base is active in Core nowadays. Despite the fact that some of them are very active in the GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ 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. repository, we are only analysing the status of Core in this report.

Future Directions

This report calls for prompt attention to bridge the communication gap and better integrate testing efforts into the development workflow, given the extremely low resources that we count in Core nowadays.

Test team, on the opposite, has demonstrated to have enough capacity to provide results and, at the same time, but without some sort of guidance it seems that all efforts are being misdirected and, unfortunately, are providing minimal to no value. A poor communication line exists between Core and Test teams, and this translates to this disconnection we have found in the present analysis.

We recommend staying tuned to this blog because new projects will arise soon trying to help target the right aspects to improve the overall quality of the project, but at the same time, the Test Team will need to discover a simple way to open a communication channel with Core and find out which are the exact priorities that should be undertaken in every moment.

Here is where, if any Core Team member is reading this, please write your thoughts in the comments, and we will be grateful to read through them and work on consolidating all ideas.

Props to @oglekler, @gautam23, @pmbaldha, and @krupajnanda helping review this article and offering feedback.

#core-test, #quality-score, #reports