WordPress Developer Chats Should Focus On Core

Peter Westwood has published a short document on the WordPress Developers Prologue site that outlines what the focus of the developer chats should be. In recent weeks, issues that are related to WordPress but not to the core code have been added to the meeting agenda providing less time to talk about core development of the software. This is the one hour during the week when all developers get together to talk about the core software, how to implement something, etc so it is imperative that the 60 minutes are put to the best use possible.

However, there is a reason why non core related subjects were added to the agenda for discussion. There is no single page that lists which items should be discussed where. Just like Automattic, the WordPress.org project is like liquid with barely any hierarchy allowing people to fulfill multiple roles. How to get in touch with the people that fulfill those roles is one of the core problems that I hope the WordPress.org website redesign solves. Until then, I highly encourage you to participate in an ongoing project I have started called the WordPress Whitepages Project. The goal is to round up all of the contact information for various aspects of the project and put it together in one big list, bringing order to chaos. The list will also include links to places where ideas and feedback can be discussed.

Once this list is complete, I’ll add it to a Codex page and then ping someone who is in control of WordPress.org and have them take a look at it to see if they would be interested in publishing the information on a centrally located page. There have been a few times where I’ve wanted to get in touch with someone about a particular issue but find myself at a crossroad with no idea on where to go. I hope this project fixes that.