With the daylight savings spring forward I was 1 hour early for the meetup. It was deja vu all for me when the meetup started at 1 PM EST…
Today’s items discussed:
Test WordPress 3.9 beta 1
With the beta being released please install, test and report any issues that are found. If it’s plugin or theme related then create a topic in that sub-forum to let the author know. Topics in the alpha/beta sub-forum should be closed once a trac ticket has been submitted.
The beta tester plugin makes switching easy https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/ (it’s beta, not on production sites since things may break) and any feedback is appreciated.
Identifying active contributors in support
@jenmylo will be reaching out to team reps about identifying people to get badges on the new profiles that are being worked on. At some point that may be automatic but in the beginning the badges will be manual for this purpose.
Give this some thought re names. I have some idea about forum regulars but IRC needs to be included and at some point names will be discussed.
Blue Welcome Box for make/support
Last week @kpdesign brought up the idea with me about creating a blue welcome box for make/support like the one that the other make blogs have. It’s a good idea and @Ipstenu earlier this week said she was thinking about the verbiage.
The current stickey is on point but the welcome box should invite people to participate but not seek support here. Also it would go along with the whole look/feel/branding of the other make blogs.
YouTube and the parenthesis
More of an FYI: it was discussed that YouTube’s embed code is adding a close parenthesis at the end. It’s 100% on YouTube’s end and is not a WordPress issue.
The parenthesis can be removed from being displayed via a filter (it’s still there in the oEmbed data) easily enough but I had some question about if the bad oEmbed results will be cached or not.
Dealing with misinformation in IRC and the forums
This happens in the forums a lot. Sometimes people insist that handing out bad (really, really bad) advice is valid. See some theme discussions about making changes as an example. In IRC it’s not child themes, it’s often “why are you even suggesting that function or a filter or… when we’re talking about a header image?”
How to deal with that without a confrontation? jackreichert suggested sandwiched feedback for that situation and provided a link to an example. The idea is to wrap the criticism (negatives) of what they’re doing with positives. Don’t just focus on what the person is doing wrong also talk about what they’re getting right.
It’s not a bad idea and it was an interesting conversation. In the forums most members, when asked not to suggest something like editing a theme directly or (much worse!) editing core will change their tune. But occasionally a member will get caught up and argue the point.
The transcript of todays meetup can be found at this link.