In reply to Otto.

Hey Otto, thanks again for the clarification. As I said, I totally understand why you did this (from a technical point of view), so there probably is no need to explain it again as I see that you're explaining it over and over again, which must be frustrating. :-)

However, I think the main issue here is that many people don't agree with the way this has been performed. I also think that it's quite understandable that other theme authors who are waiting for months to get their theme live have been quite surpised by this move, including some members of the TRT.

Probably it would have prevented lots of issues with the community if you would have informed the TRT about the fact that you plan to put the theme live immediately and skip the queue. Even Emil (who performed the review) wasn't aware that the theme will be put live right away, at least that's what I think he stated here.

I think a quick notice (before making it live) that the theme will skip the queue for special reasons would have solved many of the issues and the community would have been involved in this decision and possibly agreed. However, what is done, is done and it doesn't help to point fingers afterwards.

Regarding the review process in general, I totally agree that theme authors shouldn't submit themes that aren't ready and I also think that experienced authors who already have several themes in the directory don't do that, at least not on purpose. I think the main issues are inexperienced authors and spammers who submit low quality themes just to generate some traction for their websites or else. Education isn't always easy and spammers are everywhere, so we probably need to live with that.

I fully agree that the standards are too strict and the strive for perfection of the TRT is part of the issue. There simply are too many restrictions and while this doesn't only lead to a bloated queue, it also restricts creativity of theme authors as there are too many boundaries. Why not simply check the theme for security issues, put the theme live and let users decide if a theme is good or not? It will manage itself on the long run.

Of course that will lead to some badly coded themes in the directory, but these themes will suffer, because users won't rate them well and eventually they will disappear, just like with anything else on a free market. Quality wins and the rest will disappear on the long run. And when theme authors with badly rated themes learn that they have a hard time to compete with authors who actually invest the time to do it properly, they eventually will disappear as well, simply because it's not worth the hassle. In addition the TRT still has a way to suspend a theme if things go south.

So instead of spending lots of time reviewing themes (often twice) based on criteria that probably could be reduced, the TRT could instead actively manage the live themes in the directory and get rid of the bad apples to improve the overall quality in the directory instead of trying to review each theme with a lengthy review process.

However, this just is an idea which of course also is far away from being perfect. But I really think too much regulation always is an issue, for the economy, for society, for states and even for a themes directory. :-)

The TRT is trying hard to work on the issue (at least that's what I see when looking at Slack) and the queue has already been reduced by the one theme / author rule (although this of course is just a cosmetic effect) and maybe automation will solve the issues. But I think to automate this will be very hard because there simply are too many factors that need to be considered. But we'll see how that goes. :-)