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713 different user suggestions for features from the ideas forum garnering 36,676 total votes; 10 different releases; 1,090 commits to the codebase; 2,849,349 downloads; 1,041,846 new blogs, 20,212,994 posts and 1,648,046,157 page views on WordPress.com; and over 2 billion spams caught by Akismet.
Sorry, not good enough. I want kvetch stats. I don’t care if the whole ‘kvetch’ feature was a Habari-inspired publicity stunt and there was never any real working code behind it to count the comments, archive them or send them to a person who would read them. Make some numbers up to please me. You know, like you did with feed stats.
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And speaking of restrooms, the Men’s room trash can was continually overflowing and the paper towels were often all out.
What do you expect, if 85% of attendees are men? Their toilets just aren’t designed to cope with that sort of overload.
- Multiple data centers FTW! To be honest, I am more inclined to mock all the other sites for putting all their eggs in one earthquake-prone basket than to congratulate Automattic on their wisdom and foresight, but that’s because I’m an ungenerous glass-half-empty kinda girl.
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Recent Comments
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If you see any ads on this or any other wordpress.com blog, they are Automattic's. Not mine. Nothing to do with me. I could get rid of them if I were minded to hand over $30 a year, but to be honest I think I probably need the money more than Matt does. If any of them offend you or seem inappropriate, do please inform our Google overlords.
sunburntkamel said
c’mon, you’re not at least a little excited to hear sandbox from the horse’s mouth?
sunburntkamel said
also, isn’t this supposed to have a kicking baby squirrels tag?
that girl again said
Indeed it is. [clicks edit]
As for Sandbox, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Root said
I don’t want to be miserable but I can’t get into Sandbox at all. I tried. Really. I did.
Scott said
No need to be miserable! It’s just a tool to help designers and theme developers. I think it will help out those wanting to get started making their own themes to have it with WordPress.
But it’s not a drink-the-spiked-Kool-Aid kinda thing. No worries.
engtech said
i do like me some Sandbox.
except for the kitty doo-doo.
Root said
OT on Sandbox. I think the markup is a bit egocentric. And the negative margin positioning scheme does my head in. But its a fine piece of work.
Mark Jaquith said
Who you callin’ a horse?
Matt asked the four of us (Donncha, me, Andy, Michael) to name a theme that should be considered for inclusion in WordPress… but then added the caveat that once a theme was mentioned, it couldn’t be mentioned again. So I blurted out “SANDBOX!” as fast as I could.
Regarding the gender ratio, I would have pegged it closer to 20% female. But whatever it was, it sure seemed more than last year. Seems silly to bean-count … the important thing is that people don’t feel excluded or disinclined to participate. It may just have been the Lorelle effect, but I saw a lot of female participation.
Root said
I think there is a case for WP to ship with half a dozen common layouts all coded to a common nomenclature and consistent standard. Two col, three col, three col plus hmenu etc.
Mark Jaquith said
@Root,
Absolutely. One question we were asked during the panel was how we could improve theme/plugin compatibility. My response (paraphrased) was that shipping with Sandbox and encouraging themers to do Sandbox themes (CSS only) or Sandbox-based themes could go a long way towards increasing plugin compatibility.
Charles Stricklin said
I noticed a number of women there as well… well, the first day, anyway. The 2nd day was developers, so…
that girl again said
Of course, CSS-only themes also give us freedom to license them as we wish without anybody bitching about how we’re catching GPL by touching a dirty template function. Sadly for me, I would feel compelled to remove the Kubricky badness from single.php.
As for ‘bean counting’, I don’t think it’s silly at all. Automattic do appear to require regular reminders that not everyone in the world is a white middle-class Anglophone male. Considering that the majority of bloggers are female, they should at least pay lip service to ensuring we’re represented. (Yes, I am still mad about the fact that Automattic would rather have no .com forum moderators at all than give official status to any of the women who keep the place running.)
The primary bar to conference participation is of course economics rather than gender, though the two are not unrelated. I know that a few people on the wordpress.com forums felt excluded because they simply weren’t given details in time to make the necessary arrangements; but, again, that’s an economic thing based on the assumption that everyone’s like you and doesn’t have a boss.
And as for the suggestion that women can’t be developers, it doesn’t really deserve a response. There have been women developers in the past, of course. It’s just a really weird coincidence that they never make it into the sacred inner circle and end up going off to work on other things.
Alan said
I’m not sure about the entire concept of Sandbox. I never have been. It’s like, we start with a WP where you can only edit the stylesheet, go to a WP with complete template control, then say “Woah, people are [i]confused[/i] by our TEMPLATES?! Rather than make the template system less intimidating, let’s just give them a theme to edit the CSS of.” It seems like backpedaling to me. lol
that girl again said
Thing is, when they switched to a template-based model, everyone just used the files from Kubrick and only changed the CSS anyway, and Kubrick is just as crappy a base to build on as Classic was.
Also, encouraging everyone to just make new styles for sandbox rather than mess about with PHP makes it approximately four zillion times easier to implement new themes on wordpress.com. Everything Matt does these days is with wordpress.com in mind, including his latest GPL jihad.
Alan said
I guess I was on the minority in not using Kubrick as a base for anything then. lol It’s an incredibly versatile system when you actually delve into it, it’s a shame it’s a bit too PHP-intensive for the layman. C’est la vie.
sunburntkamel said
it’s worth mentioning that sandbox won’t replace the current templating system. it just guarantees a reasonable base for CSS “artists” to start from. people who only want to change how their blog looks can do it without learning PHP. people who want to change how their blog _acts_ can still write full fledged themes (and call them “mods” if they’re so inclined)
Scott said
You said “CSS artists.” He he he.
Scott said
Sorry. I sort of lunged at that last one. I must razz sunburntkamel when I have the opportunity. And I have so few opportunities.
Anyhow, Sandbox isn’t supposed to be gospel. The
Template: sandboxis useful for those who just want to design with CSS. The rest of the theme files provide, well, an inviting structure for beginners.@Alan: the
Template: xxxxfunction has been there for a while. Think Alex King’s WordPress CSS Styles. That’s, oh, February 2004.@Mark: Excellent. Please tell me Andy also blurted Sandbox. Heh.
Root said
I must add a caveat. If I was asked straight out if I think it is a good idea to ship sandbox in WP – my answer would be a very resounding no. It is a great bit of work because it takes on a completely new challenge, and after a fashion it finds a solution for that challenge. All kudos to the authors.? But is it a good template? Is the CSS a good starting point for further dev? IMHO the answer sadly is no.
Alan said
Scott: That feature is so poorly documented that up until a few years ago I didn’t know it existed. Then I found it out at wank.
that girl again said
Amen. The reason
Template:xxxxis hardly ever used is because nobody could be bothered to document it outside the forums. Nobody ever bothers to document anything theme-related, apart from the obvious stuff like template functions and the superiority of the GPL to all other licences. And when I finally find the information I need, there is nowhere in the Codex to put it, unless I want to create an unconnected user page that nobody’s ever going to look at. Theme designers get no love. Ever. </rant >Root said
@alan: you are not alone in not basing your themes on Kubrick. Anyone who posts here is prolly still wedded to Classic plus self dev.
I look a Kubrick as infrequently as possible. Ditto K2.
David W. Boles said
Dear Wank –
I have no idea how to privately contact you but I am curious for your thoughts on this article I just wrote and if you are seeing the same trends here or not:
http://urbansemiotic.com/2007/08/01/urban-semiotic-articles-deleted-from-google/
Feel free to delete this comment and I do thank you.
Root said
What is up? We need more WW.
Alan said
The output of wank has always been determined by the amount of wank in the community, man.
Root said
Well there is no shortage of wank AFAIK.
that girl again said
If Automattic can close feedback for the summer I don’t see why I can’t :p