Removal of the Zamir Plugin

Earlier today, I was alerted by contributors and community leaders to a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party in the WordPress ecosystem that violated community guidelines. 

I believe that WordPress is made stronger by its vibrant and global community of contributors, users, and extenders. It’s important that folks showed up to hold ourselves accountable as we strive to create and maintain a safe space for our collaborators to gather.

The plugin in question, Zamir, was reported by contributors to promote an icon that is rapidly becoming known as a symbol of support and promotion of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. Many contributors reached out to share additional cultural context around the symbol. WordPress guidelines call for all community members–including plugin authors–to “be kind, helpful, and respectful.” An icon that is connected to an ongoing war and humanitarian crisis upholds none of those values.  

The plugin’s description, “Shows the Z symbol to support Russia,” eluded initial plugin checks. While it is true that there is no current plugin guideline barring plugins that “support” political leanings, this icon symbolizes something more complicated than that. Contributors were right to report this and, with their help and the help of WordPress community members, the plugin has been removed from the directory. 

All contributors, community members, and extenders should feel safe and free from harm in the WordPress project and ecosystem. Neither WordPress, Matt, nor I stand for symbols of hate or violence. WordPress is a community made stronger by global contributors—and we remain committed to building an inclusive community in alignment with our values. Today, we’ve collaborated with contributors to remove a plugin that did not meet those values. I’d like to thank the community for quickly rallying together to engage about upholding our community guidelines and how we hold one another accountable. 

I am aware that this issue leads to natural questions about clarifying our plugin policies moving forward. I’ll work with the community to explore our guidelines and create a clearer framework for how plugins can be evaluated in the context of current events.

X-post: In last week’s Meta meeting,…

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/meta: In last week's Meta meeting,…

Proposal to remove spam/dormant Five for the Future pledges

Last fall Andrea wrote about several challenges with the Five for the Future website that are preventing it from fulfilling its intended purpose. I’d like to start working on the first challenge of addressing spam or dormant pledges.

The Challenge

Many of the pledges have no recent activity on their profiles, or none at all; many only have personal activity (maintaining a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party in the directory, asking for help in the support forums, etc); and many don’t participate in the Making WP SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., where contributors primarily coordinate.

That inaccuracy weakens the value of sincere and active pledges. It also makes it difficult and impractical for team representatives to use the pledge lists to recruit contributors for projects. The lists for Core and Community have over 1,300 and 1,400 people respectively, many of whom seemingly have not contributed, are unlikely to contribute, and/or are inconvenient to contact.

Proposal

To help surface active pledges, I’m proposing that we email all pledged 5ftF companies to request that they review, update, and confirm pledged contributors, teams, and hours. If they do not confirm within a reasonable period of time, their pledge would be removed.

Longer term, 5ftF could better identify and credit both code and non-code contributions. That would also help to keep pledges up to date.

To do this, we could automatically detect contribution based on Profile activity, and automatically remove pledges from folks who haven’t contributed in the past 6 months. In order to do that accurately, though, we’ll have to start crediting more non-code contributions, which often aren’t reflected on Profiles.

To track those, each team could request an activity that’s important to them, such as writing documentation; making changes to a Figma mockup; moderating a WPTV video; etc. We could also add a few things that cover all teams, like attending a Slack meeting, and giving/receiving props in the #props channel on Slack.

Once those are added to Profiles, then we could add an automated task to the 5ftF site which would examine all pledges every day. For those who haven’t contributed in 6 months, we’d un-publish their pledge, and send them a polite email to let them know. If removing them was a mistake, or they’d like to start contributing again, they can contact their team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts.. Teams reps will be able to re-publish their pledge.

Feedback

What do you think of this proposed next step? Are there problems that aren’t addressed, ways to improve it, or is there a better idea altogether? Please reply before March 31st.

+make.wordpress.org/updates/

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