The Ability To Anonymously Complain About WordPress May Soon Disappear

Kvetch is a Yiddish word defined as a nagging complaint. Introduced to WordPress.org in 2007, the kvetch form provided users an opportunity to anonymously tell developers what it was about WordPress that ticked them off. Each time the page is refreshed, a new entry is displayed. If you read several of the submissions, it becomes clear that the complaints are from a by-gone era of WordPress history.

The Kvetch Submission Screen

It’s funny to read some of the responses and know that the current version of WordPress has many of the features users griped about not having a few years ago, such as auto updates. Take these entries for example:

“Must have auto-save!”

“Matt can just delete things from core without debating it on the mailing list for no clear reason, whereas it takes a lot of time and effort to get anything into core, even with a clear and needed reason.”

“Updates are too hard to install. I get scared that I will delete everything or something will go wrong. So I don’t bother. Then I feel guilty. Then I get scared someone will break through the vulnerability in my old edition and delete everything. So I get scared. Either way I’m scared. Make me less scared. Make updates easier to install/ auto install and have a back-up wizzy-hoop feature.”

Eleven months ago, Drew Jaynes submitted a ticket to Meta trac suggesting context be added to kvetch entries. The context would consist of the WordPress version number being complained about and the date of submission. Samuel Sidler responded to the ticket with information provided by Scott Reilly.

According to Reilly, only 147 entries were approved to be displayed on the site. The entries were from January 9th, 2007 to January 11th, 2007. Meanwhile, the queue contained 31k entries not approved, 4k of which were from the last six months. After sharing the data, Sidler recommended that the ability to kvetch be retired.

I Still Think It’s A Good Idea

Being able to anonymously gripe about WordPress is a great idea. I understand the desire to possibly remove kvetch from WordPress.org but I think it would have provided some interesting data had it been maintained over the years. It was an easy way to discover pain points users were experiencing with WordPress. Sure, there are ways that data can be discovered now thanks to Twitter, forums, and blog posts but it’s not the same. Then again, there was no guarantee that submissions would be read and addressed anyways.

What Do You Think?

Is it time to remove kvetching from WordPress.org? Have you ever submitted a complaint through the form? Can you remember what it was about WordPress that upset you so much? Tell us about the one thing in WordPress that ticks you off, using the comments below, but keep it clean!