Thanks for this article on the CMS platform work for W3C. I’m the founder of the agency who is working on the W3C redesign project.

You make a lot of good points. I’ve written a post explaining the background of how we chose the CMS which I hope makes this clearer and addresses some of your concerns. https://w3c.studio24.net/updates/on-not-choosing-wordpress/

I was not aware of ClassicPress so thanks for that. However, I’m not sure using a fork is such a good idea for W3C who are keen for some stability in their tools. Having said that I see Backdrop (Drupal 7 fork) is still being actively maintained so this approach can be successful. https://backdropcms.org/

We are trying our best to work in the open on this project and will continue to post updates to https://w3c.studio24.net/ as we go along. W3C is committed to taking community feedback on the project.