Feedback requested: Resolution process for issues found in live themes

Thank you to everyone who participated in the discussion a few months ago about how this team should address issues that are discovered with themes that are live in the directory!

It’s great when people are willing to share their thoughts about the ideal or preferred way to resolve problems, because it helps the team understand what theme authors expect and prefer — which helps reviewers design a process that is less surprising for theme authors.

The purpose of this post is to gather feedback on a proposal for how this team should address issues found in themes that are already live in the directory.

All feedback is welcome, but in particular, it would be helpful to know:

  1. Are there any parts of this process that might be unclear or confusing?
  2. Does the process seem too strict, too permissive, or just about right?
  3. Should anything be added to this process (keeping in mind that all reviewers are volunteers who have limited time available)?
  4. Does this process fail to address any significant issues or steps needed for resolution?

Resolving low- to moderate-impact issues

Some examples of low-impact or moderate-impact issues are:

  • Screenshot issues
  • Overuse of content creation in customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings.
  • 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 functionality type features
  • Demo content import
  • Failing to meet expectations/guidelines which were added more than 6 months ago
  • Recommending plugins without reason or good integration in the theme

Resolution process: 

When a theme reviewer notices that a live theme does not match the theme guidelines, a theme author should expect the following steps:

  1. The theme author will be emailed with an explanation of the issue(s) and a request to resolve them. The email will include a deadline for the requested changes, which will allow the author at least 7 days to submit changes, and a link to a page with information about the resolution process. 
  2. If the changes are submitted before the deadline, then
    1. they will be reviewed and approved, or 
    2. the author will be informed of additional changes that must be made. 
  3. If changes that resolve the issue are not submitted on time, then the theme may be “delisted” until the issues are resolved. 
  4. Once the theme is delisted, if the theme author does not submit changes that resolve the problem within 3 months, the theme will be suspended until the changes have been resolved. 

Resolving high-impact issues 

Some examples of high-impact issues are:

  • License issues
  • Security issues
  • User tracking-related issues
  • User Consent Issues 
  • Advertising, promoting or otherwise endorsing any real products and/or services on the front (except the theme credit link)
  • PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. Fatal Errors* (If a theme is found to throw fatal errors on activation, it is not compatible with modern (PHP 7+) or they are not compatible with the most recent versions of WP.)

Resolution process: 

*If a theme is found to have PHP errors, it will immediately be suspended until the author uploads fixes. (This is to prevent the theme previewer error logs being cluttered and to prevent new users running into the issue.)

When a theme reviewer notices a high-impact issue in a live theme, a theme author should expect the following steps:

  1. The theme author will be emailed with an explanation of the issue(s) and a request to resolve them. The email will also include:
    1. A deadline for the requested changes, which will allow the author at least 3 days to submit changes. 
    2. An explanation of what will happen if the changes are not submitted in time, or if the changes don’t solve the issue(s).
  2. If the changes are submitted before the deadline, then
    1. they will be reviewed and approved, or 
    2. the author will be informed of additional changes that must be made. 
  3. If changes that resolve the issue are not submitted on time, then the theme will be “delisted” or suspended until the issues are resolved. 
  4. Once the theme is delisted, if the theme author does not submit changes that resolve the problem within 3 months, the theme will be suspended until the changes have been resolved. 

Repeated Issues

In the case of a theme author who demonstrates a pattern of failing to meet theme directory expectations when updating themes  — for example, by breaking a certain guideline repeatedly after correcting it in the past, or by breaking different guidelines repeatedly in a period of 3-12 months, then all of the author’s themes may be suspended from the directory, permanently. The author may appeal this decision with the Executive Director (Josepha Haden Chomphosy) or Project Lead (Matt Mullenweg). 


Exceptions

Sometimes special cases will be discovered, which can’t be resolved by the processes described above. Those should be rare, but might include the following situations: 

  • A theme passed the initial review and was added to the directory but should not have been added because it is a clone, or for other foundational reasons. In this case, the theme will be suspended immediately and the author will be warned that another attempt to submit a cloned theme to the directory will result in a lifetime ban. 

Delisting as mentioned in the post, relies on the delisting option being implemented.


The feedback period will be open until December 7th, to allow the team representatives time to summarize it for the December 8 biweekly meeting.
At that time, the team will adjust the proposed process as seems necessary, and then publish the process in the handbook.

Thanks for your time, and for sharing your themes on WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/!

#feedback, #themes-team

Meeting Notes for November 24

Our agenda for this meeting can be found here: https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2020/11/23/themes-team-meeting-agenda-for-november-24/

Weekly updates:

  • 221 tickets were opened
  • 223 tickets were closed:
  • 213 tickets were made live.
  • 16 new Themes were made live.
  • 197 Theme updates were made live.
  • 2 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
  • 10 tickets were not-approved.
  • 0 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded.

This week we held a very short meeting with four attendees. We confirmed, as announced, that our last team meeting this year will be on December 8.

We posted reminders to add your comments to the posts below:

#meeting-notes

X-post: WordPress and PHP 8.0

X-comment from +make.wordpress.org/core: Comment on WordPress and PHP 8.0

Themes Team Meeting Agenda for November 24

The themes team conducts a meeting on the second and fourth Tuesday of the month.

Along with the fixed agendas, we have an open floor at the end where you can ask or share anything related to themes.

We encourage all members and anyone interested to attend.

Channel: #themereview | Time: Tuesday, November 24th 2020, 15:00 UTC

Meeting Agenda

  1. Weekly Updates
  2. Theme previews in the time of blocks
  3. Meeting holiday break
  4. Open floor

Weekly Updates

Current statistics can be found on: https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ 

Themes TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. ticket graph: https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticketgraph

Theme previews in the time of blocks

A reminder to read and reply to the post about starter content and previews.

Meeting holiday break

The last meeting of the year will be on December 8. During this meeting we plan to discuss the resolution process outlined here: https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2020/11/19/feedback-requested-resolution-process-for-issues-found-in-live-themes/

If we need to hold extra meetings before the new year, they will be announced on the blog.


Please comment in the comment box below if you have anything to bring up during the open floor.

#agenda, #meeting, #themes-team

Gutenberg + Themes: Week of Nov 16, 2020

Hello! This is the 28th weekly roundup of theme-related discussions, fixes, and developments in 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/

Please weigh in on the tickets below — your voice and feedback are welcome! 

Issues / Discussions:

  • Blocks: Fix the text color for links in the Navigation blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.. 26698 
  • Blocks: Allow paragraphs to use CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. columns. 27118
  • Blocks: Modify hover/focus/active states for blocks. 27075
  • Blocks: Navigation Block: Dynamic version 27130
  • Blocks: Navigation Block: Hide more than N items. 27131
  • Blocks: Navigation Block: Add space between items. 27132
  • Blocks: Social Links Block: Modify default placeholder. 26953
  • FSEFSE Short for Full Site Editing, a project for the Gutenberg plugin and the editor where a full page layout is created using only blocks.: Provide a CSS reset. 27116
  • FSE: Template parts are not always loading in the site editor. 27072
  • FSE: Allow themes to enqueue stylesheets in theme.jsonJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. 26902
  • FSE: Allow all Gutenberg theme support options to be defined in theme.json 26901
  • FSE: Provide alignment styles for the front end. 26633
  • FSE: Allow responsive styles in theme.json. 27107
  • FSE: Add preset line height variables in theme.json. 27100
  • FSE Blocks: Add text decoration control to Site Title. 27114
  • FSE Blocks: Allow post 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. blocks to be appear inline. 26899
  • FSE Bocks: Post comments and comment form blocks should include a placeholder and default styles. 26864 26865 26999
  • Discussion/approved for 5.6: System font for unstyled editor. 26822
  • Discussion: add_editor_style doesn’t support @import stylesheets. 26963
  • Possible Bug: editor-font-sizes slugs aren’t always as expected. 26940

Merged:

  • FSE: Fix custom spacing support. 27045
  • FSE Blocks: Add grid view to Query block. 27067

Overview Issues:

  • Full Site Editing Milestones. 24551
  • Template Tags in Full Site Editing. 22724 
  • Tracking and consolidating style attributes for blocks. 22700 
  • Missing query block functionality. 24934
  • Query and LoopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. block tracking: 24762

General Resources:

Thanks to @joen and @scruffian for help pulling this post together. Please let us know if it was helpful in the comments!

#gutenberg-themes-roundup