Currently, we are proposing a change to the Guidelines that would blanket-prohibit Themes from adding admin notices, redirects, or other similar functionality on Theme activation. The intent of the Guideline is to curtail the proliferation of nuisance/obtrusive Theme marketing in the user’s Admin.
In the vast majority of cases, such activation functionality should not be needed. Themes are required to use add_theme_page() to add a Settings page, which ensures that end users can always find the Theme’s settings page under the Appearance admin menu. The new requirement for sane defaults will ensure that Themes will always work “out of the box”, at least at a baseline (i.e. no-broken-sites) level. The recommendation for Themes to hook settings into the Customizer will help ensure that end users can visually preview Theme settings changes via the core Customizer (Appearance -> Customize). And the Contextual Help API ensures that Theme developers can add as much rich-text setup/configuration detail as necessary.
That said, there is still room for appropriate, standardized admin interventions on Theme activation. If we can agree on a consensus for standard admin interventions, then the Guidelines could reflect that consensus, and reviewers would have an objective standard to use when reviewing Themes.
So, let’s discuss. What’s appropriate? What isn’t? How can we define appropriateness objectively?