In reply to Josepha Haden.

To be clear I do not think there is ill intent here. I have no doubt what you are trying to do is coming from a good place.

My concern is the optics and implications that introducing private channels like this could have in the future and lead down a path towards more gatekeeping. I really hate the term slippery slope but this is an example of one.

From a WordPress business standpoint I can see how it can be beneficial. One of the primary reasons we haven’t sponsored someone full time on the project is it isn’t clear what that means nor how to have them be productive and actually contributing vs. simply trying to contribute.

The problem of paying someone to randomly try and contribute and get their foot in the door in whatever it is they would bring to the table vs. paying someone that is getting direction from someone within the project and able to contribute in a beneficial way so that the work they do actually gets used and contributes to the project.

So for that reason if it helps the paid contributors to be more productive and get more direction so that their time is better utilized by the project I understand that problem.

But from an open-source project standpoint typically private backchannels introduce an issue of transparency which isn’t a good thing. There are a lot of people that aren’t paid to work on the project that contribute a ton of their own time and the optics of this are that the paid contributors are getting something they are not despite the fact they are arguably sacrificing more as they aren’t being paid to work on the project.

So it is a tough balance. I don’t envy the decisions you have to make. I hope it accomplishes what you want it to accomplish and you are able to strike a balance between addressing needs and being open and transparent.