Attendance
@macmanx @clorith @jmdodd @bcworkz @themeislesupport @keesiemeijer @lasacco @d4z_c0nf @francescodicandia @gmosso @cristianozanca @vitormadeira @jcastaneda @ipstenu @bethannon1 @jdembowski @hardeepasrani @numeeja @stephencottontail @fierevere @tnash @girlieworks @abletec @lukecavanagh @songdogtech @justingreerbbi @kenshino @afercia @sergeybiryukov @imazed @stevesterndatacom @voldemortensen attended.
Announcements
- Along with the move to bbPress 2, a forum redesign is on the horizon. The first research steps have been taken and feedback is requested at the linked post.
- The 4.6 Field Guide is up. Please review this, as it’s a great high-level overview of what’s changing.
WordPress 4.5.3
We have not identified any new negative trends introduced by 4.5.3.
WordPress 4.6 RC 1
WordPress 4.6 RC 1 is here. This is the first Release Candidate, meaning that the developers are reasonably sure this could be the final release, so please make sure you’re testing. Less bugs in the final release = less threads in the forums.
Varying Vagrant Vagrants is a simple way to run local WordPress sites for testing, though there are others, and of course you could always just install the beta on a subdomain on your own hosting provider/VPS/dedicated/cloud/etc, and don’t forget about the Beta Tester plugin.
4.6 OMGWTFBBQ Draft
The 4.6 OMGWTFBBQ Draft is up and open to feedback in its comments section.
We’d especially appreciate suggestions for the “Not a Bug” section (these are items which are intentional changes, but may seem like a bug or glitch to users offhand, like Dashboard fonts being different).
Rosetta Forum Migration
The Rosetta Forum migration is underway. Portugal was yesterday, Central Asia and Europe are happening today. English will be last, as many plugins are needed.
Of note, there is a URL change in this process. Rosetta Forums are moving from [language].forums.wordpress.org to [language].wordpress.org/support/ and redirects will be established.
Additionally, only the last week or so of moderated posts will be coming with, mostly because that’s the default action for spam and there is a lot of it. Subscriptions are coming with; user roles for moderators are also getting ported. Favorites are not, they can be backfilled pretty easily, but there is no place to actually view them on a current user profile.
New Spam Trend
Be on the lookout for clever SEO-like spam. Spammers have been posting threads that seem legitimate, usually whole paragraphs or two that always contain a passage like “I ran my site through [the best free security scanner on the internet]” or “I’m trying to find a way to add a mobile theme to my [best used cars in Cleveland] site.” (where the bracketed text is linked to the site)
The requests truly look legitimate, and most of the time there’s either no reply after you leave yours, or the thread continues with what really do seem like legitimate replies filled with further SEO-like spam.
Please use your best judgement on these, reply if you want to, and tag them “modlook” (without the quotes, of course) when you see them. For Mods and Admins, likewise reply if you want to, but also use your best judgement to either strip the links or nuke the whole thread.
Marking Threads as Resolved
We should only mark a thread as resolved when there’s proof that the usefulness of the thread’s openness has ended: when it has been solved, when a Trac ticket has been opened, when the OP has re-posted elsewhere, or when you as the developer of your own plugin/theme have decided that you cannot help the user any further.
In general, lack of reply is not a reason to mark a thread as resolved (threads can be re-visited any time until they are automatically closed after a year), with the one exception of the Alpha/Beta forum. In the Alpha/Beta forum, unresolved threads are monitored by developers, so resolved status there should be more a question of “Is the existence of this thread useful to the developers?” If not (if the OP has stopped replying and/or a Trac ticket has been opened), it’s resolved.
“Test 4.6” Emails from the Plugins Team
Yesterday the Plugins Team sent out the ‘Please test for 4.6’ email to all plugin developers. Of them, about 80 had auto-replies (down from over 200 a couple cycles ago). 22 of the 80 have been closed for not removing auto-replies. 4 had developers removed for bounced emails or ones that said ‘this person doesn’t work here anymore.’
Therefore, if someone is surprised their plugin is closed, ask them to please check the email associated with the plugin committers. If they are sending auto-reply emails, and they’ve been warned before, they were probably closed. They can email plugins (at) wordpress (dot) org and the Plugins Team will help them out.
Is there a need for more pre-defined replies?
A question was raised about the need for more pre-defined replies. In general, we try to keep the list short. The spirit of the list is, “You’ll be answering this several times per day, so instead of typing an answer each time, just copy/paste this.”
We added a new pre-defined reply today under “WordPress.com Blog” for when folks ask for help with their WordPress.com blog.
A pre-defined reply for “Please don’t use these forums to ask for general feedback on your site.” was requested, but we’ll table that for next week when we finally discuss and vote on a formal rule against that type of thread.
Checkin with International Support Liaisons
- The Italian support community has made a strong effort to be more present in the weekly Support Team meetings.
- The Dutch and Russian support communities are doing well.
Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)