@Felix -

Out of curiosity, when was the last time you submitted a Theme?

You receive an e-mail saying, “Your theme is FAIL because . TICKET CLOSED. Feel free to comment here or blah blah…” (Um, comment where, on the ticket you just closed in my face? Gee, thanks for the invitation to dialogue.)

First: a ticket closure simply means that the Theme in its current form cannot be approved. We still welcome and encourage dialogue in the ticket comments, to help work through any outstanding issues, to help you get your Theme approved.

Second, unless the Theme has a major issue (such as improper licensing, or a public-facing "sponsored"/spam link), current practice is to keep tickets open for the duration of the review process. When you upload a new revision, it is appended to the open ticket, and the review proceeds in that same ticket.

You change that pathetic little detail and re-submit. A more merciful reviewer re-opens the ticket and asks, “was that the only issue?” The answer: “no, it’s also FAIL because X, Y and Z”. Which on the one hand *they could have told you from the start*...

Theme Reviewers are not quality control; Reviewers are generally happy to help developers work through questions or outstanding issues, but at the end of the day, the developer is responsible for ensuring that the Theme meets all Guidelines before submission.

It's not as much of an issue now, but at one time, we were so inundated with submissions - and submissions that clearly made little effort to conform to the Guidelines - that Reviewers simply didn't have time to find every issue with a given Theme before closing as not-approved.

If that was your previous experience, you should find things much improved now.

...and on the other hand *your previous theme was accepted with the exact same issues*. Did the guidelines change? Are there simply too many guidelines for one reviewer to know them all?

Yes, the Guidelines do change. We are looking for continuous improvements, as well as keeping current with new WordPress core releases.

And Reviewers are humans (and all volunteers, I might add), and can, will, and do make mistakes. Some Reviewers may miss some things that should have been caught, or may flag something that shouldn't be flagged.

The best way to resolve those issues? Comment in the ticket, so that we know there are issues or questions.

...Or are they, you know, *being vengeful*?

I know of very few such occurrences, and if found, the admins would deal appropriately with them.

But you see, the guidelines themselves are hypocritical. A simple “this theme sponsored by…” line at the end of the README means automatic rejection, while entire paragraphs advertising pro versions and various paid services are perfectly fine.

How is that hypocritical? We welcome developers promoting their own commercial work, but per wordpress.org policy, "sponsored" Themes are not accepted. There's simply too much opportunity (and incentive) for abuse if we were to allow "sponsored" Themes/Plugins.

But sure, it must be a lot of work to review themes when countless naive, starry-eyed developers keep submitting to the official directory anyway. My advice? Don’t. Give those people a break. They’re volunteers anyway and don’t owe us anything.

It appears that you last submitted a Theme a year and a half ago. As such, I can understand your frustrations, in part. The Theme Review Team has undergone quite a bit of growing pains over the three-plus years of its existence. The process is now significantly improved, and under much better control.