WordPress Openness (was Re: [wp-hackers] UI development for 1.6)

[David House]

On 6/22/05, Mike Little <journalized at gmail.com> wrote:
> Similarly, there has been a interesting, constructive discussion on
> this list about
> overhauling the user permissions system [1] over the last week or so.
> There has been no contribution from you Matt, yet you have been
> *committing changes to the user system*. Are these changes related?
> Have you taken any of the ideas raised on board? Could you at least
> contribute to the thread? "Hey guys, I've already started implementing
> your great ideas" or should it be "Don't bother discussing it, I've
> decided what I'm doing."?

This is a good point. Too many threads like this just slip off the top
active threads in the list and get ignored. I think the reason for
this is a cross between the limitations of the mailing list medium and
the fact that no-one is going in to make an authoratitive decision. I
think we'd _really_ benefit from a 'WordPress panel', a group of
people that are familiar with the WP codebase, with some experience in
software development and who know what's a good idea and what isn't.
They'd wander into threads like this and say, 'Yes, this needs to be
done', email Ryan and Matt and then things would get done. Or, they'd
read through a thread and say 'I don't think this would pay off', and
no-one's time would be wasted.

To be honest, I think we'd benefit from having more developers, too.
I'd like to see a group of people developing WP, not just two. We
could set up a hierachy where all changes made by this group have to
be accepted by Ryan or Matt first. This is a bit more long-term,
though. I'd like to see the 'WordPress panel' group set up soon.
 
> I didn't see any discussion about removing the textile and markdown
> plugins, but they are gone. You claimed "Far too few people use these
> for them to be included by default. To possibly be replaced by more
> useful plugins after a survey."

Do you actually disagree with this decision, or are you just bringing
it up? I think if you really did disagree, you'd have sent an email to
the list and discussion would have ensued.

> But when I see major decisions made with no visible discussion,

Fahim's points are all valid. Someone really does need to make the
decisons. Not everything can be discussed.

My main worry is that threads which have a lot of great input are just
slipping everyone's attention. I really think this could solved by
having a group of decision makers.

-- 
-David House, dmhouse at gmail.com, http://xmouse.ithium.net