In reply to Ari Stathopoulos.

Hey Ari, tons of great thoughts here, thanks for sharing.

There are clear guidelines about what themes should do and what they should avoid. There is a clear distinction between plugin and theme territory.

Historically, maybe this has been true, but based on the last few weeks, I don't think this is as clear as it might have once been. When you have the person who wrote many of those guidelines, WordPress leadership, and large swaths of the community rallying to evolve the guidelines (even as an experiment), that says something worth exploring.

As I mentioned in the #themereview Slack, as an experiment, it might be interesting if there was a handful of hand-picked themes that were not just allowed but encouraged to push the bounds to show .org visitors the power of WordPress in its finest form. Maybe they could exist under a "Innovation" or "Experimental" tag. This would create a track for them to exist and set an expectation without disrupting the day to day operations of the theme team.

Just some random thoughts. Surely we're heading towards an evolution of some kind. The users and community seem ready for it.