For those of you that have been following me on Twitter, I’ve referenced the ideas forum quite a bit. I’ve been keeping it under wraps because there was less of a chance of running into people responding to the same ideas but since Jane Wells has made the work more public today, (Highly appreciated by the way) it’s time I make the call for help to clean up that place.
What I’ve been doing is browsing the ideas that are filed Under Consideration and working my way from the last page to the front. So far, it’s been pretty funny to read some of the ideas submitted by some notable community members that today, can code up their own solutions to problems. I guess if you’re given three years, you have the opportunity to learn a thing or two. At any rate, here are the directions to help me with the ideas forum.
If you want to help (this is an easy way to contribute for those who aren’t coders), go to http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/view/considering and start looking at threads. Start from the pages at the back of the list, and on each one you can help resolve:
- Read the thread.
- If you don’t know if something exists as a plugin or has been implemented, use Google.
- Add a comment to the thread indicating the status/outcome. If you found an appropriate plugin, link to it.
- Add the “modlook” tag.
- Bask in the glow of knowing that this small task is part of a big job, and is much appreciated by the community.
The sooner we get the old ideas cleared out of there, the sooner it can become more useful as a discussion tool (and clear up Trac to focus on accepted features and enhancements).
So if you have any spare time or are just bored, feel free to go through a page or two of ideas and update them. I’ve actually found a few ideas that are three years old that still have merit and are worthy of still being considered for future versions of WordPress. If you don’t know of any way to answer the idea, move along to the next one and save it for someone that does know.
I’ll take a look around …
… ok, I tagged a few threads. It’s a start.
@Edward Caissie – heh, I’m going to go snooping now to see how you performed :)
@Edward Caissie – Checked out your work and you did good :)
@Jeffro – Thanks. It’s a lot like answering questions at WordPress Support forums, just a more focused/directed response.
Added my small contribution (as djr) for today. Will continue tomorrow and later this week if time permits.
It’s good to see this being addressed – a functional Ideas Forum will do a lot of harness the collective intelligence of the community.
So, since this post went up, a few people have pitched in, which is great. However, some people are leaving a comment and adding ‘modlook’ without actually indicating what the resolution would be. Adding a code snippet or saying something is invalid isn’t as helpful as explicitly identifying that it can be solved with a plugin, was implemented in version x, is controlled by themes, or has been voted down repeatedly by the core contributor group. A little more clarity would be helpful. If you aren’t able to put it in one of those categories, best to leave off modlook, since if I can’t tell the correct resolution from the comment, I still need to go look it up, which will get pushed off until later, and then I’ll have to go back and look at the thread again. Thanks!
I would love to filter out post in ‘Under Consideration’ not already tagged with modlook, to speed up eliminating those tickets. Is this something which can be done already?