I was actually asked by a handful of people what my thoughts on this were, and while part of me is loath to wade in(I’m loathe because someone will accuse me of being pro-WP or anti-Devpress, and ignore the fact that I’m a Devpress affiliate or that I don’t work for WP. I don’t pretend to know all the answers, or the reasons, but I know what bothers me.), I agree it’s something that affects the open source community. Personal attacks aimed at me will be deleted.
I’ll let WPCandy sum it up:
Yesterday I posted about DevPress’ offer of free memberships to any WordCamp attendees, provided the WordCamp organizers are legit and contact DevPress about their interest. A number of organizers showed interest in the comments of that post, and WordCamp Philly organizer Doug Stewart announced the deal for attendees on their blog.
Then, last evening, WPCandy was contacted by Andrea Middleton, who took an administration role with WordCamp Central earlier this year. Middleton notified WPCandy that the WordCamp guidelines (specifically the part on fundraising), WordCamp organizers should not allow companies that are not sponsoring their event to do giveaways at a WordCamp.(Source: WPCandy – Devpress deal for WordCamps is against WordCamp Central Guidelines.)
They cover the situation pretty well, but the comments on WPCandy and the twitterverse is what has upset me, greatly. This whole mess was blown out of proportion and could have been handled quietly and maturely off book, without any of the name slinging and pointy-fingers that I’ve seen.
What went wrong?
WordCamp Philly should have said “Let’s double-check about the rules, because this is a grey area.” They made a perfectly understandable human ‘gaff’ and assumed it was cool, because we all know Devpress is cool and GPL and basically awesome.
Devpress should have said “I want to give things away at WordCamps. I’ll ask the head honchos at WordCamp and find out what I need to do!” They too made a perfectly normal mistake, assuming that WordCamp Philly would do any needed due diligence.
One of the many things I’ve learned working for The Man is that people see a server on fire and always assume someone else has reported it, right up until you run in with a fire extinguisher and shout at them.(That’s a true story.) I always quote Lord Buckley here: If you know what to do and you don’t do it, there you bloody well are, aren’t you?
The right thing was to look before you leap and not assume. People made mistakes. They could have kept it all off the funny pages, too, by being patient. WordCamp telling WPCandy “Hey, sorry, not so much kosher.” was a polite heads up and WPCandy, being journalistic in inclinations, ran with the story. Devpress’s rep was, understandably, frustrated and upset at the smack down and at the slowness of resolution, and it showed. But as a ‘formal’ statement, his email is the example the need of a bit of PR.(This mess is in part why I don’t consider websites like WPCandy (and certainly not this site!) to be journalism. There’s an attitude and (supposedly) ethics to which journalists abide and a code to follow about how to handle this. One of them is that WPCandy’s email should have explicitly stated that Justin’s response would be posted on their blog. I studied journalism for a year, and I know I’m not a journalist!)
Who is right? Devpress or WordCamp?
A lot of ‘right and wrong’ ties into my last two big posts, about legality and morality. I’ll put it plain and simple for you: If you’re going to have a WordCamp, which is sanctioned and branded by WordPress, then you are obligated, legally and morally, to abide by their guidelines.
The rest of the bitching is commentary. If you don’t like WordPress’s rules and regulations, don’t use them. It’s just like the theme and plugin repos. If you don’t want to follow those guidelines, then you self-host, and as long as you abide by GPLv2, everyone’s happy. But WordCamp is run by WordPress, and they get to make the rules. No one’s stopping you from making ‘BlogCamp’ or whatever you want. You could probably even get away with using ‘Word’ in the title, though you would be wise to make it painfully clear that it was not a sanctioned WordPress event.
WordCamps are an extension of WordPress.org and the WordPress Foundation, which means that they are not community ‘owned’ products, though they are community driven. Maybe people are forgetting that, at the end of the day, the responsibility for WordCamp, and WordPress, is not us. We’re the result, and the reason, but not the responsibility. If WordPress vanished tomorrow, we could fork it and move on, make our own forums, and actually be okay. But right now, we’re all taking advantage of a free product. We give up our time and our efforts for something that doesn’t directly make us money.
Why isn’t the community in charge?
That points right back to the heart of the issue for me. The community isn’t in charge because it’s not a Big Dog. At the end of the day, every project needs someone to stand up and say “This is what we’re doing.” We need a big dog, someone to be in charge, and someone to draw a line. A lot of people have made noise that this should be a person the community votes on and approves. I disagree.
WordPress was never about ‘community’ in that sense.
The community doesn’t provide oversight to the plugins, the themes, or the forums on WordPress.org. Sure, we volunteer our time, but we don’t all have trac commit privileges, do we? We are not where the buck stops for this, and we have to keep that in perspective. You can tout all you want about doing what the ‘community’ wants, but the community provides ideas, suggestions, dreams and hopes. Someone else looks at the bottom line and says yes or no.
That’s really very freeing to me. That makes it easy for me to say ‘You know, I really hate this new thing.’ and I don’t feel like they’re going to revoke my license. As long as I keep it all in perspective and remember that I don’t have to like it, but as long as I play this game, thems the rules, and it’s okay. You can support the tool without loving every aspect of it, and no one says otherwise.
The responsibility of oversight belongs with WordPress, not you or me, and the fall out does too. A community has trouble being in charge like that because oversight ‘committees’ rarely work to anything but mediocrity. As it stands today, WordPress is benignly governed by a company who listens, pays attention, and respects us, even if they don’t do everything each individual wants, and they keep their eye on the scope. (Perhaps by comparison, you should read up on the growing pains Drupal’s had recently. Not enough oversight there, perhaps, but I have to study more about their entire situation to know for sure.) If everything goes great, we ignore our overlords, and when we don’t like something, we vilify them.
Why are you so mad about this?
The vilification.
I’m upset to see people being mean to each other. People are blaming each other, calling names, and pointing fingers. Of course this is a situation that makes people angry and emotional, but if we’re running a business, we don’t get the luxury of doing that publicly anymore. You no longer speak for yourself, you speak for your group.(I run a fan website for an actress. Every single time I speak my own speculation about the TV show she’s on, someone assumes I know something secret and am not telling them, or I’m hinting at what’s to come. I no longer am able to speak for me the fan because of this. Trust me, I know how daft it is, and I hate it.)
But the problem is I see a lot of name calling aimed at one person alone. That really bothers me because it looks like people are attacking a person and not remembering that the WordPress Foundation manages WordCamps. NOT the community. NOT the sponsors. NOT you or me. Hell, not even the volunteers who are doing the work!
The Foundation.
If you have a problem with WordCamp and the WordPress Foundation, do the right thing and take it to them.
Most importantly, we need to be patient with each other. You don’t change the world in a day. Sure, we’re used to a fast paced world, where decisions are made on a dime and the whole status quo changes in the time it takes to svn up. But things still need to happen with thought and understanding. We have to look at the whole situation. And that’s why with responsibility comes the need to have oversight.
Comments
32 responses to “Oversight and Responsibility”
I didn’t even realise this was an issue until now. I’d seen the post on WP Candy but put that down as one of the most boring and pointless articles on WP Candy so far. Fascinating to see that anybody actually gave a damn about it.
I’d have assumed people would go “um, oops” and that’d have been the end of it. It didn’t look like something worth worrying about to me.
It shouldn’t have been an issue. But at 76 comments there (and a surprising number of people asking me why I wasn’t commenting… that was weird), I think it’s one of those moments where everyone needs to go ‘oops!’ as you said, and start the conversation over.
As the WordCamp Philly organizer who solicited, approved, and posted the DevPress offer, I’d like to offer a bit of commentary.
To address your last point first: I have found it difficult to come up with a coherent response to this affair precisely because I know that I represent our event and, to a lesser extent, the Philly WordPress community. I don’t want to say or do anything that would reflect poorly upon or negatively affect said community.
In regards to the actual solicitation: did I seek WordCamp Central’s approval? No. To be perfectly frank, I didn’t see the need. None of our other sponsors have had to be cleared first (other than meeting the “it’s the venue” or “they’re offerings are GPL’d” burdens laid out in the guidelines) and so I simply assumed that the offer would be fine.
In fact, I viewed it as less than a full sponsorship, for several reasons:
1) They did not ask for, and didn’t receive a permanent link under the sponsors’ page or sidebar
2) Their “donation” wasn’t monetary in nature, but rather in-kind
3) The DevPress guys themselves are some of the best-spoken, most intelligent and GPL-friendly folks in the WordPress community
In all honesty, my thought process on seeing the initial offer was “Awesome! This will make a great gift to our community!” I forwarded the offer along to my fellow WC Philly organizers and then, on receiving confirmation from DevPress as to the offer, I made the post.
Should I have thought the matter through further? Given the reaction, the answer is obviously “yes” in retrospect. Should I have cleared it with WC Central? Apparently. It comes down to the fact, though, that I made a judgement call that I and my co-organizers felt was best for our community given what we knew at the time.
I think a good deal of the frustration shown in the WC Candy thread and on Twitter and elsewhere derives from what are two obviously separate concepts of what a WordCamp is and is intended to be: the WordCamp Central position (one which you seem to endorse) is that WordCamps exist largely at the pleasure of Central and the WP Foundation. They are put on and sponsored by Central/WPF and, if their rules are too burdensome or odious, pound sand. The thinking here seems to be that, absent that organizational level, WordCamps would not exist.
The other view, and the one which I espouse, is that the WordCamp name lends an official gloss to what is essentially a community organized event. We view our community, and others like it, as the lifeblood of the WordPress ecosystem. Absent community involvement, the core team would consist of Automattic-paid contributors. Absent the community, the Plugin and Theme repositories would be sad shells of their current selves. Absent the community, the WordPress Theme Review Team would not exist and themes would still take months (and months!) to make it through the review process.
Perhaps it’s a selfish or self-interested position, but the “only Core counts” mentality that pervades certain corners of the WordPress ecosystem really rubs me the wrong way. Core committers can’t possibly deploy blogs for my friends, family and community members. WP Foundation board members (whoever they may be) can’t advocate for WordPress’ use internal to my workplace.
I guess my core point is: WordPress wouldn’t be what it is today without a vibrant community and any actions, be they from Central or from our local communities themselves, that damage that community should be avoided at all costs.
Gah. Sub “Their offerings” for “They’re offerings” above.
I do but only for one reason: WordCamp central exists to provide oversight and regulation to WordCamps. Therefore it’s … y’know, theirs.
You can’t go and make your own Starbucks store without Starbucks, and they retain the copyright etc. You’re licensing the WordPress name, logo, etc (for free IIRC) and in return you get the endorsement of WordCamps. But that means that while you run the franchise, the buck stops with them. You don’t have to like it, but that is what you agreed to.
That’s why I said you made a perfectly understandable, totally reasonable mistake (one I probably would have made too). Whoops. We live, we learn, we move on. That, in and of itself, isn’t a big deal, and had the whole thing not picked up steam with WP Candy and ‘free for all camps!’ then it wouldn’t have even been a blip on anyone’s radar. But it got picked up and people started pointing fingers and naming names and … Ugh. That just bothers me because now we’re acting like a mob and less like a community.
Yes, but WordPress also wouldn’t be what it is today with out the oversight of WordPress itself. Of course damage should be avoided, but the damage here is not just because WordCamp said ‘That isn’t actually okay!’ I think the community reaction (name calling, knee jerk angry retorts, etc) is possibly more damaging than WordCamp raising a red flag.
At a guess, people are shirty about it because most of the time they do what they way. And when they can’t, they cry foul when actually it’s fair.
I disagree. The name is theirs. Everything else is ours. I bristle when people seem to conflate the name with the event.
If the name had naught to do with the event, Doug, then why are you using it?
The event isn’t yours. It’s everyone’s. WordCamp provides oversight.
We’re using it because, quite honestly, “WordCamp” has been synonymous with “WordPress community event” to this point. Folks in the WordPress community know what WC is supposed to mean, so it’s an easy mental shortcut. Plus, we had one last year.
Additionally, the *Camp moniker has come to mean a very specific sort of event in the tech community at large — FooCamp, BarCamp, PodCamp, etc. — and our event last year (and hopefully this year) lean in the same direction.
We’re only human and we’re trying to put together a compelling event for our Philly crew, who honestly could care less if it’s WordCamp or WordUp! or The Semi-Annual Philadelphia WordPress Meetup Clam Bake, Fish Fry And Code Poetry Slam. “WordCamp” is a nice shortcut for us but isn’t necessarily a must-have.
Just a drive-by comment for the time-being (perhaps, or perhaps not, more later):
Here’s my problem with this stance: WordCamps are not franchises. Neither the WordPress Foundation nor WordCamp Central actually run any WordCamps. WPF merely licenses the use of the WordCamp trademark, and WordCamp Central merely facilitates events that are locally organized, planned, scheduled, and carried out.
Put another way: without WordCamp Central and/or without licensed use of the WordCamp trademark, local WordPress-centric gatherings would continue to take place, perhaps by another name, but entirely the same in every other respect. However, without local communities organizing, planning, scheduling, and carrying them out, WordCamps would absolutely cease to exist.
And this is not a situation in which we, the community, must merely say, “thank you, sir; may I have another?”. Since local communities are the lifeblood of local WordPress-centric gatherings, those local communities have every right to complain about unjust and overly burdensome requirements placed on local events.
At the end of the day, all WPF and WCC should concern themselves with is ensuring that the WordPress and WordCamp trademarks are not abused, and that the 501(c)3 status of WPF is maintained. Everything else should ultimately be left to the purvey of the local communities putting on the events.
No analogy is perfect and can withstand all tests. They’re not meant to.
Didn’t say it was. I said that people should have talked to each other first. And should be talking to each other now, actually.
And without WordCamp (and WordPress) they would too. It’s a two way street. You can’t have one without the other.
But. But. While you certainly can complain, you should think about how your complaint benefits the community. Bitching because you’re mad has its place. Bitching instead of getting off your ass to say “Hey, WCC adnd WCF. I don’t get it. Why is it this way? Can we change it? Let’s have a beer and talk.”
That’s what we should be doing. And if I should run a WordCamp and this sort of thing arises, I hope I take my own advice.
(PS: We don’t have actually a ‘right’ to complain, but I’d never stop anyone from doing it.)
Chip – I find it ironic that you were the most stoic defender of the theme review process (& guidelines/rules) and in contrast you are opposed to less intrusive WordCamp guidelines.
What is the difference between the theme review process is to ensure quality and prevent people from adding crappy themes to the repo & the WordCamp guidelines preventing crappy sponsorship deals?
Last year when Justin Tadlock protested the theme review process, you didn’t let him off the requirements on the grounds that he’s a good developer with a good rep in the community. He still had to follow the guidelines just like everyone else.
Whether it’s the theme repo or WordCamps, If exceptions are made the guidelines based on community standing or some other arbitrary assesment then the guidelines become useless.
Ron,
One critical difference in your analogy: the WPTRT requirements were developed in an open fashion, with a great deal of back-and-forth argumentation for REQUIRED vs. RECOMMENDED vs. INFORMATIONAL, etc., while the WordCamp guidelines (never explained as “rules”, please note) were developed by a small group of people (if that) with no such open process.
@Ron
Chip was extremely open and willing to discuss my opinions about the theme review process. We definitely disagree on some aspects, but there’s always open discussion on them.
I was allowed to help shape those guidelines.
@Justin – is the theme review team willing to discuss and change the guidelines with a theme author while their theme is in review and have those changes apply to that review?
I wasn’t trying to defend either the theme review or WC guidelines. I was pointing out that the theme rview process does not make exceptions. If a theme is perfect in every way except it lacks the $content_width assignment, do you approve it or send it back?
Whether on not folks can discuss and adjust the guidelines over the coming months, people should be able to respect the current guidelines while they are in place in the same way they respect the theme review process.
@Ron,
I’m actually really glad you brought up the WPTRT! I think it makes a fascinating comparison/contrast case study.
I’ll have more to say later, but I just want to make this quick point:
Actually, the standing rule of the WPTRT is that everything (within our control) is subject to an exception: provided that the Theme developer has a reasonable, valid, well-supported justification for an exception.
I would approve that theme with a note to fix it in the next update. I routinely make judgement calls when reviewing themes. Not everything is black and white, even with code. Sure, we try to stick to the standards, but that’s not always possible.
@justin – That’s much my feeling with this whole crap-basket, though. It’s not just as black and white as ‘The people want this, we must do it!’
In many ways, I laud the fact that we have guidelines and not rules. If you have rules, the rules lawyers will wiggle their way around to word things so we end up some annoying branded event no one wants to go to. At the same time, WordCamp Central wants people to have a ‘standard’ sort of event. If you go to WordCamp Leningrad, it’s the same (enough) as WordCamp Lichtenstein, and you feel like it’s being on IRC or the forums, only in a LARP. My nerd is showing. 😈
Both sides need to work together. I don’t recall anyone in the community being polled before the non GPL themes were yanked from the repo and an oversight team was created. I do recall people screaming bloody murder.
As it stands, I can see why this was an issue, but I can also see ways around it (from your end AND from WordCamp) and ways it might be handled better. I’ve been accused of drinking the WP Kool-aid and while I don’t think that’s true, I think I’m a lot more reasonable about this sort of thing that some people. That may stem from the sheer amount of red tape I deal with daily, and how many times I have to say ‘I’m sorry, but your ticket is 15 minutes off, and policy says…’
This sort of oversight seems both normal, natural and something than can be gracefully improved for everyone.
@Chip – I wanted to add that I wasn’t picking on you. You endured a lot of flack over the initial set of guidelines when they were put in place. The end goal was to improve the standard of themes (which I believe has been accomplished). As Justin has pointed out, those guidelines have been adjusted since through discussion.
So, what I found ironic was that in your comment on WPCandy you referred to the WC guideline as asinine. I would have expected you to step back and understand the whether or not you agreed with the guideline, you would recognize the purpose of the guideline is to ensure a standard for events bearing the name WordCamp.
@Justin – ok, perhaps $content_width was a poor example. However, you didn’t answer my initial question about changing the guidelines while a theme is in review so the theme can pass.
I hope the answer to that is no.
Ron:
One thing to note in re: the guidelines — they changed on or about Sept. 9th (i.e., a couple of days after the DevPress offering). The guidelines we were operating under read
(See screencap of the Google cache from August 30th here.)
Please keep that in mind before you judge the situation too harshly.
We read that to be referring entirely to raffles and thus were acting in good faith when we accepted DP’s offer.
@Doug – Yet again why I’d call this an understandable mistake.
They could probably make that even simpler – “You will undoubtedly be approached by companies wanting to offer you a free things to give away for them.” Drop raffle, and it’s clearer that this is just ‘Look if you’re not a sponsor, you don’t get to give shit away.’
@Doug – this week I’ve basically been working, eating & sleeping, so a bit of a delay in responding.
Hypothetical situation – a theme author put in a new theme for review a couple days before news of the timthumb vulnerability broke. The theme included the vulnerable version of timthumb. Assuming the theme meets all the requirements that existed when it was submitted, which of the following are in the community’s best interest:
a- send the theme back to the author
b- approve it because it met all the posted requirements at the time it was submitted
The reason I made the comments I did is that when I was added to the WP core commit team for the WP 3.0, the response from a small but vocal group amounted to, “Are you out of your freaking mind?” There were a couple people who were outright offensive & insulting toward me.
The leads based their decision to add me to the commit team on information that those other people didn’t have. Both Justin and Chip work on the theme review team and to a degree they also have to work where the decisions they are making are not always something that’s going to be popular, but they keep making those decisions for the benefit of the community.
The fact that the likes of yourself even needs to explain yourself in such a careful manner on this issue is somewhat worrying.
This reminds me of the GPL debates of old where it felt like questioning anything would get your head chopped off.
I don’t fear reprisals, really. I fear the drama eclipsing the event itself, which is about having really awesome speakers (local and imported) get our community members psyched about WordPress and then turning them loose into their homes, businesses, places of worship, etc. and using WP to its fullest extent.
That would be reason 2 why I was loath to wade in. 😕
I’m glad you weighed in on this. Definitely worthy of a blog post rather than a comment :).
Just to be clear, re: your fourth footnote: Justin wasn’t surprised that we published his email. We asked him to verify the quotable content, to which both he and the other members of DevPress said: “all of it.” We would never quote someone, or publish an email like that, unless it was given to us with the purpose of doing so. I should have made that clearer on the original post.
I’ve studied journalism as well, if only to know how my work does fall short most of the time :). In that case, though, there wasn’t anything sneaky going on.
Good to know 🙂 (and had I been a journalist I would have asked before posting). My limited experience in journalism did involve the use of email, and we were told ‘In that first email, make sure you’re clearly telling them you want to quote/use their reply in your article. If they say ‘Off the record’ then anything after that point is not acceptable to use.’
Wow, I wonder if my professor would laugh to know I memorized that!
I’ve definitely done the note in the first email/signature thing before. I tend to not do it so much when I’m emailing with folks that know who I am and what I do. Then I just ask after the fact if there’s anything worth quoting.
I certainly wouldn’t try and trip someone up and publish something they said that they wouldn’t approve of — that would make me sick more than anyone else, I think.
Yeah, I do a lot more thinking about CYA since I work for The Man. 😯
Also – Search replace. It’s WPCandy, NOT WP Candy.
Sweet 🙂
And go read How Legalism hurts a community! Eric may be demure, but I think it’s well written and a good point.