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

[Matthew Mullenweg]

Mike Little wrote:
> But there is a middle ground. A heads-up before something major is changed. Just
> the chance for someone else to say, "hold on, have you thought about
> X?", or "you
> should take a look at Y, it may be a better starting point."

(I think this is the core of what you're getting at.) This could always 
be more feedback, but I would say it is done more than you give credit 
for. The results are not usually promising. Every week in the IRC 
meetups I've outlined projects outside of core WP that are too much for 
me to handle right now and look for volunteers, every week most are met 
with silence. Even when I contact people directly and get them working 
on something personally, 9 times out of 10 nothing comes of it. (There 
are exceptions, but that is the rule.) Here's a sampling threads I've 
started in the past few months:

* Let's whip WYSIWYG (asking for suggestions)
* New Wiki Tech List (asking for volunteers)
* 3 column theme (asking for suggestions)
* Start of new themes pages ("Ideas? Comments? Suggestions?")
* 1.5.2 or on to 1.6?
* New release ("Any showstoppers?")
* getSelection Workaround (still unanswered)
* Making it better (community feedback on some criticism)
* Pingback block-level awareness (request for code)
* Category project (request for code volunteers)
* XUL Hackers (request for volunteers)
* Importer updates (request for volunteers)

Of the requests about a forth turned into something finished.

I understand people have other committments. However I already spend 
5-10x more time communicating than I do coding, and I feel like things 
have slowed down as a result, which can be frustrating and makes me do 
silly things like write responses after long plane trips and eat $3 
snickers bars in my hotel room. ;)

If people want to help, my philosophy is to get out of the way and let 
them. However I don't think people should propose opening things they're 
not volunteering for, as I can promise that most everything you can 
imagine, from wordpress.org to the source control, has had the keys 
handed over several times before with nothing to show for it. I'll do it 
again because I'm an eternal optimist, but please be serious if you're 
asking for it.

-- 
Matt Mullenweg
  http://photomatt.net | http://wordpress.org
http://pingomatic.com | http://cnet.com