WordPress Community 4.0

Last week I wrote in the Post Status newsletter that “it’s the time of year when everyone is reflecting on the past twelve months and thinking about the year ahead — what we did or didn’t achieve, what we hope to get done…” This period of reflection usually carries over into the new year a while, and this is the time when we round up lots of “year in review” blog posts that come out all through January. This year is no different. We have our own.

People are genuinely interested in how others are doing and what they’re doing in the WordPress community. But nobody provides a “year-in-review” for the community. There is no “State of the WordPress Community” event. Core Team Leads do not follow Matt with their own “State of” presentation. I saw comments and heard them echoed in our team Slack that SOTW ought to work this way.

Maybe.

Or maybe there should be another space for that. SOTW is a celebration with an accent on the future. That’s not just important, it’s a necessity. The needs and concerns of volunteer-driven task groups are about identifying problems and looking for solutions. But when you are chronically short on volunteers, the accent might need to be on the problems. To absolutely no one’s surprise — and as Milana Cap told David on Post Status Excerpt — the Docs team has a near-overwhelming workload. They’re not the only ones.

A lot of post-2021 reflections I’ve been reading and hearing are about feature some really hard times. We’ve all been through the wringer, but everyone’s experience is different. I’m impressed with the way people tend to understate their own hard times. You see “Growth” talked about a lot — not “Grief” — but it’s clear a lot of the growth is happening while moving through fear, sadness, loss, and pain.

Bob Dunn has been doing a lot of reflection about the WordPress community since November on his personal blog. We’ve had a lot of chats about the topic as well, with Bob and others, as a team. I was especially taken with Bob’s idea that there have been three “versions” of the WordPress community. Bob feels a “4.0” release is needed and might be just around the bend.

I asked Bob — and have been asking a lot of people — If we aren’t currently the community that’s going to get WordPress where it’s going (or ought to go) — what do we need to change?

What might “WordPress Community 4.0” look like?

That’s a question we want to create space and time for, to listen to what you have to say. You can leave a comment here, email me, or get in touch on any Post Status channel, on or off the record. Blog about it. Tweet about it. Help start this needed conversation.