Josepha 3:37 am on April 30, 2020
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Quarterly Updates | Q1 2020

To help all contributors stay aware of big projects and efforts across WordPress teams, each team’s listed representative has shared an update for the year so far. Below are their top priorities (and when they hope for it to be completed), as well as their biggest wins and struggles. Have questions? I’ve included a link to each team’s site in the headings.

Accessibility

Community

  • Contacted: @camikaos, @mariaojob
  • Priority: With in-person events on hold, the current priority is to provide documentation, resources, and support to aid a shift to virtual events.
  • Struggle: There has been a decrease in volunteer participation in reaction to this uncertain climate of the global coronavirus pandemic.
  • Big Win: The team has shown great resilience and compassion in dealing with the pandemic and encouraging a shift to virtual community connection.

Core

  • Contacted: @jeffpaul
  • Priority: Meeting 2020 priorities across the two upcoming releases, WP5.5 and WP5.6, while preparing and mentoring for the latter to be an all-female lead release squad.
  • Struggle: There is a noticeable decrease in productivity of component maintainers, committers, and more senior project contributors.
  • Big Win: WP 5.4 released on time with the help of a large number of new contributors!

Design

  • Contacted: @karmatosed, @estelaris
  • Priority: Achieving timely Gutenberg editor and WordPress releases.
  • Struggle: There is a decrease in engagement from design contributors.
  • Big Win: Processes have been documented with the help of a new team rep!

Marketing

  • Contacted: @webcommsat, @harryjackson1221, @maedahbatool, @miker, @yvettesoneveld
  • Priority: The team is prioritizing recruiting and training contributors to increase capacity and effectiveness.
  • Struggle: Developing new onboarding practices for contributors who are unfamiliar with communication within WordPress.
  • Big Win: Supporting WordCamp, Meetups, and marketing team members as we acclimate to new routines in response to the health crisis.

Mobile

  • Contacted: @elibud
  • Priority: Priorities include foundational work for new blocks and features in the block editor, improving the page template UX, and supporting new blocks with an ETA of June-end.
  • Struggle: Use of the web block editor code can cause unexpected behavior on mobile. By using integration and snapshot tests, these breaks will hopefully be identified earlier.
  • Big Win: Implemented dark mode support on WordPress Android and added support for seven new blocks: button, column, columns, cover, group, latestPosts, shortcode.

Polyglots

  • Contacted: @nao, @ocean90, @casiepa, @petya, @tobifjellner
  • Priority: The team’s focus is to increase the number of package releases and the top 100 plugins/theme translation completion range.
  • Struggle: Improved onboarding for local teams and streamlining outreach to new translators that includes feedback and PTE request procedures.
  • Big Win: 36 local packages were created for the 5.4, with 45 developed within 24 hours of the release. Fun statistics: since January there have been 5 new GTEs, 162 new PTEs, and 2,022 new contributors!

Support

  • Contacted: @clorith
  • Priority: The team is focused on forum improvements.
  • Struggle: The meta team isn’t always available to assist with improvements.
  • Big Win: There has been an increase in the number of frequent contributors.

Themes

  • Contacted: @kafleg, @williampatton
  • Priority: Easing the transition to Full Site Editing and the new block-based theme foundation.
  • Struggle: Trac cookie issue; a disconnect between theme requirements and what users are submitting; staying in sync with Gutenberg developments; triaging licensing, escaping, and plugin territory; and improving the theme directory without a working database in the meta environment.
  • Big Win: Despite a fair amount of challenges, the team was successful in accessing the Theme Check plugin, preventing malicious themes and authors from entering the repo, an updated theme unit test, and a transition of requirements to GitHub for an easier process of proposed changes.

Training

  • Contacted: @chetan200891, @jessecowens, @juliekuehl
  • Priority: Development of a new theme for the Learn site.
  • Struggle: Outreach to developers who could work on the new learn site theme.
  • Big Win: The last few months have had many new contributors join the training team, and all lesson plans have been moved from make.wordpress.org/training to Github.

Triage

  • Contacted: @desrosj
  • Priority: Bringing the total number of tickets in Trac down to a reasonable number and ensuring that every ticket is accurate and actionable.
  • Struggle: The team’s main issue is availability with two team leads having conflicting responsibilities.
  • Big Win: The number of open tickets on Trac has stabilized, indicating that triage is happening organically!

Security

  • Contacted: @whyisjake
  • Priority: The team is currently working towards the 5.4.1 release while also working on larger MFA items. Goals include: 2FA/MFA in core, 2FA/MFA on WordPress.org, Auto-Update for Plugins/Themes, Auto-Update for Core, and decrease the Security backlog.
  • Struggle: As with many teams, the current global crisis limits the time contributors can working on pending tasks.
  • Big Win: For the first time, in large part due to @ehtis work, all tickets are under a one hour response time!

Tide

  • Contacted: @jeffpaul
  • Priority: The team’s work is resolving rate limiting and caching issues to allow v1.0.0 release with a realistic ETA of v1.0.0 by WCUS. 
  • Struggle: Tide development is dependent on having enough available contributors with Go coding, WordPress, and WordPress Coding Standards experience.

#quarterly-updates