General announcements
The first iteration of user documentation for the new block editor is now live, either via https://wordpress.org/support/article/wordpress-editor/ but also from the Support page under the title “Writing Posts” for general discovery.
As some may have noticed recently, we’ve lost a lot of wonderful German contributors. In light of this we’ll be reaching out to the existing moderators there to see if anyone would want to be the liaisons between our global team and their local one, as well as how things are going, and what we can do to help.
If you are a part of the German community and would like to help out there, or have questions, feel free to reach out. This also goes if you’re from another community and would like to get more involved, we’d love to welcome you into our midst!
Another subject in this weeks meeting is burnout, and because @macmanx puts it better than I, here is a quote:
When we say “please take the time you need” (or similar) whenever you mention burn-out or other difficulties contributing to the forums, we mean it sincerely in a “I care about you” fashion, not a “go away” fashion.
When you tell us you need to step away, please don’t expect us to ever push back.
Every contribution you make is valued and appreciated, but we want you to put your needs first. We can guarantee that we’ll do our best to stay on top of things while you’re out, and that the forums will still be here if you want to come back. What we can’t guarantee is your health and happiness, and that’s why we’d rather you always put that first.
If you need to step away, please do so. We want you to take care of yourself, and we’ll look forward to when you’re feeling ready to return.
On a somber note, long time contributor and community member Alex Mills passed away recently. As one of his requests, we would love to help keep his plugins going, someone is taking ownership of maintaining them already, but if you wish to help out in supporting one or more of them, it would be very much appreciated.
WordPress 5.1
We’re seeing an increase in plugin compatibility issues leading to broken media libraries. We’ve been unable to pinpoint the source, as it’s happening with many plugins, so this may be bad caches, hopefully we’ll learn more and have something a bit more solid, but worth noting.
Checking in with international liaisons
Members of the Italian, Swedish, Greek, Spanish, Russian, Dutch and Indian communities were present for this weeks discussions.
The Russian team has some intercommunication troubles they are working out, and we’ve offered to assist in any way we can if they wish it.
Open floor
Reviews with links in them are often frowned upon, as they are at times used for spam, but some users do it without being aware that it’s bad at all.
Based on this, if a review contains a link, we’ll now do the following:
- Remove the link from the review (but leave the review if it’s legitimate)
- Leave a user note of the action
- Post a response letting the reviewer know that links shouldn’t be used in reviews.
This way we educate users, without causing distress or anger. This of course does not apply to obvious spam entries, which get treated like any other spam.
In other news, the WordPress 5.0 retrospective kickoff was posted over at https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2019/03/01/5-0-release-retrospective-kickoff/
Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)
