[wp-hackers] Putting the P in WordPress

[Matt Mullenweg]

On 7/7/2010 9:11 AM, Stephen Rider wrote:
> I laughed when Matt said we were approaching Godwin's Law. :-)  Some of the rhetoric is getting a bit overwrought, but for the most part I think it's remained pretty civil.

We are -- someone is comparing the capitalization of the letter P with 
removing the sacred freedoms every WordPress user is given by the GPL. 
If you're someone who is frequently personally attacked, lied about, 
having cartoons drawn about you, etc for trying to protect that freedom 
it pushes it too far. There is a huge magnitude of difference.

The rest of your message is a bit long to respond to individually, but 
in summary:

Core development is a meritocracy. People pay their dues by working on 
*hard* issues that matter to end-users, like widgets, upgrades, speed 
and performance, and then they're then trusted with increasing rights 
and responsibilities.

The more attention paid to a trivial issue by a new contributor, hence 
the more distraction from the core people on the things that matter, 
that new contributor is spending their default community currency on 
something that is generating no returns.

If you want to map the decline of this mailing list, to the point it 
might as well be shut down, look at the number of words generated by 
people who don't contribute to core over time, or over "bikeshed" issues 
that don't really matter. ( http://bikeshed.com/ ) (And also the 
atrocious email etiquette and quoting style that's taken over here.)

Eventually, the good people unsubscribe entirely, or go silent for 
months/years at a time. Why? Because they didn't get involved with 
WordPress because they love arguing on mailing lists. I'm involved 
because I love making it easy for people to build beautiful dynamic 
websites. I'm involved because I think the more people publishing, the 
better place the world will be. I'm involved because I love figuring out 
elegant code or architecture solutions to tricky problems or UI challenges.

So you withdraw. This thread would have been much much shorter, and 
probably better for everyone's perception, if I hadn't participated at all.

If you're lucky, the people that withdraw from forums and mailing lists 
just focus on code. If you're unlucky they find another pursuit that's 
more fun and has less politics.

-- 
Matt Mullenweg
http://ma.tt | http://wordpress.org | http://automattic.com