Theme Review Team issues an Action Plan

Improving the Theme Reviewing process in WordPress.org

The WordPress Theme Review Team released an action plan for improving the theme reviewing process in WordPress.org, addressing the many bottlenecks in the process and ways to tackle them.

The queue is currently backed up with hundreds of themes waiting for approval. Tammie Lister noted that the Theme Review is well aware of the problems which led to introducing the proposal for changes, a proposal that the admin team has already signed off.

Tammie adds that the objective of these changes aims to reduce queues and making the reviewing easier. All in all, improving the theme reviewing process for those being reviewed and those doing the reviews. “Our role as a team should be to check that the theme has no licensing, security or ‘breaking’ issues. Any issues beyond those three categories should be dealt with after the fact not during review”, she added.

The proposed changes deals to work on various aspects of theme reviewing. Below are some of the important changes that are pertinent to improving the theme reviewing process in WordPress.org.

  1. Structure of the team.

    It calls for the change in the structure of the Theme Review Team, completely removing admin roles. Only 2 tiers will function: key reviewers and reviewers. Key reviewers will have the authority to manage tickets and have access to the make.blog.

  1. Make.blog.

    A co-review process to be added on the make blog to ensure unanimity. No posts will be publishes unless two key reviewers sign off the post.

  1. Release Focus. 

    The team will focus its efforts on specific projects linked to WordPress releases which are pertinent to resolving the long queue. Regular team meetings will be held to collect ideas for future projects.

  1. Review Flow.

    To resolve the continual blockage, the process should get as close to the plugin review one as possible. Tickets aren’t just allocated to one reviewer. Anyone from the team can pick up a ticket if the reviewer doesn’t respond. A response time up to 7 days will be kept for both reviewers and those being reviewer with the possibility of being reviewed by anyone.

  1. Review Quality. 

    For quality, education and a set of standards are to be set for people to learn from. With equal importance given to encouragement of good reviewers and monitoring to help the team.

  1. Review Baseline.

    Reducing the theme requirements to restrict only those that have security, licensing, or breaking issues will resolve the issue of the long queue. The team plans to include other requirements for themes that are automated so that less manual checking is required.

This will definitely be a game changer. This plan will definitely work towards improving the theme reviewing process and many theme authors who have been waiting for months may finally get their themes reviewed, if these are implemented. For a more details on the proposed changes, click here.

 

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