In reply to Drew Jaynes.

Unsubstantiated?

I was harassed by one of the core committers and no sanctions were placed on this person. Luckily, he was friends with Nacin and a core committer. All he had to do was delete his tweets and all evidence was gone. I still have the tweets I sent and what Nacin wrote me. If you want evidence of nepotism, then let me provide it to you.

When I say harassment, I am not talking about the usage the core team uses, where if you don't like what a person is saying or how they are saying it, then it is harassment. I am talking about the legal definition of the term harassment. I am talking about had I saved the tweets and shown them to the police in Missouri, then they could have taken action. Seeing as Missouri has a law against that type and level of abuse. I doubt that if you had shown my tweets, they would have the same level of concern.

So yeah, what happened to this person? He was made a lead of WordPress. Yeah for justice! Either a rule is applied consistently or you will suffer the people crying foul.

What I am saying is that when you live in an echo chamber, it is difficult to understand what those on the outside are talking about. What? Are you seriously going to harm your friend? Come on. I would be more surprised if you did apply rules consistently, but the reason for vague rules is so that you are able to apply them inconsistently. You can just say that fair is fair.

I find that there are many in the core team that like to keep things as vague as possible. I think it is disrespectful to the community. If the review team respected the plugin and theme developer community, then their concern would be to educate. The idea that someone has to go out of their way to look up guidelines on an external site to be a conspiracy to apply rules based on whim. To be a king, instead of a leader.

I think I am biased. Usually, I assume good intentions, but I find that too many of the core team uses logical fallacies for it not to be a pattern. I'm not sure if it is a consequence of what appears to be an echo chamber some of you appear to be in. I find the general lack of acceptance of criticism beyond that which is vague to be worrying.

I find the level of censorship worrying, but well it is smart. If no one knows about criticism, then the people complaining are part of some conspiracy. If no one understands the level of nepotism in the WordPress community, then there is no nepotism, right?

WordPress leadership is a neat case study. I made some predictions. Some have come true at a faster rate than I predicted. I had given it 2 to 3 years before more aggressive censorship would take place, but any fool could have realized that would be happening based on the positions of the core team and I guess those in the friend circle.

My second prediction is unlikely to happen. The backlash for WordPress is too sparse and disorganized for any mass exodus to occur in any near future. I predict that if there was a viable fork of WordPress, that you would see a steady stream of people drop off and transition communities. The condition for the fork, would be that it be well supported.