It is no secret that I am not a fan of the latest version of WordPress. I criticized the Alpha, Beta and production releases. I’ve since discovered that it is broken under OSX 10.5 with the Firefox browser.
Others have had similar issues:
- Canny Granny has had the same graphic upload error message.
- Shelley Powers relates in Wordpress 2.5 releases that she too copped abuse for trying to raise some fairly basic web standards compliance issues.
- Les can’t justify the widget placement design decision, and neither can I.
- Alekz has experienced the same TinyMCE blank popup bug as I, and has documented four other cases of it apart from his and mine.
Speaking to friends at dinner last night (both highly experienced web technology users) there was a lot of surprise at the severity of the design and coding errors.
Sephyroth says WordPress 2.5 - Not coming here soon - he’s looked at the security model and will not upgrade.
So… there is some pain out there without a lot of acknowledgment. Ever on the lookout for new blog ideas, I browsed potential WordPress hate site names. Some of the good ones are taken:
But there are others available - most of them involve some variant of the F word, so I am not touching them 
But there does need to be a record somewhere that this once-great blogging platform has started to go down the tubes owing to zero acknowledgment of issues - stay tuned for more details.
I hope you’re wrong about Wordpress heading down the tubes. I’m only just getting used to it!!! I can’t keep up with the fast pace of the internet world!!!!
Hi Lightening,
thank you for your comment.
My call that they are heading down the tubes is based on the historical reality that companies start to fail when they stop listening to their customers. They can go for years through inertia, but they start to die when they stop listening.
Best regards, Andrew
I always refrain from upgrading to any major release so I can let people like you decide if there are any problems. I’ll keep to the version I’ve got for now. Thanks.
Hi April,
thank you for your comment.
To be fair, some people (Microsoft operating system, low functionality requirement) have had a smooth run with upgrading to 2.5.
Hopefully 2.5 will contain fixes for some of the remaining issues.
Thanks for including me in your reading list
Best regards, Andrew
It’s surprising to me that the experience is so inconsistent. I’ve upgraded my blogs and all the bits that hang off them with no issues whatsoever.
I’ve followed the links you’ve published here and at On Blogging, and I’m not seeing any of the problems you and others are experiencing, either in technical or usability terms. For me, everything works and the new interface seems very intuitive.
Now, let it be stipulated, I’m probably best classed as an expert user - good with interfaces and pretty capable when it comes to dealing with technical glitches. As such, you’d probably be justified in expecting me to cope okay with any issues.
I’ve not looked under the hood at the way the code generates, so I can’t comment on the standards issues. I will agree, at least in part, with the widget controls. They are a little odd, but not terrible to my mind. I’ve certainly seen worse UI decisions.
Overall, it must be very environment dependent, which bugs me as it suggests that testing by the folks at Automattic is done on a limited range of environments and may be subject to some questionable QA.
Why don’t you contact Matt Mullenweg directly and see if he’s responsive?
Steve,
thank you for your comment.
Unfortunately, Matt Mullenweg’s email address is not commonly available - there is a contact form on his not-WordPress blog that would be intrusive to use I feel.
WordPress users have two options that I’ve been able to find for discussing bugs:
- report it to the forums, and get abused, or,
- join the developers mailing list.
Because of the abuse, I am not game to join the developers mailing list.
I have no doubt that they will fix the bugs in time, but because of the abuse, I have no interest in contributing to WordPress as a project. I’m actively seeking alternatives to WordPress even though the thought of migrating dozens of blogs is painful. But when they aren’t keeping their end of the social contract, there is no alternative but bailing out. I will not be the first to do it, nor I suspect the last.
Cheers, Andrew
I have to agree with Andrew. Wordpress will fail if it stops listening to its users, and that seems to have begun to happen. Just tonight I’ve been doing the rounds on blogs discussing the problems in 2.5 and reading views of many disgruntled users, many who are giving up on it entirely.
I took part in a lengthy discussion on the “Feedback and Requests” forum on Wordpress.org. Many users were expressing frustration at some of the backward functionality of 2.5, such as the flawed Write screen and the frankly un-usable widget interface.
It was reasonable to assume that this was the place to, you know, offer feedback or make requests, but eventually a moderator said “Stop complaining about it here. These are support forums, for people with actual problems… This is really not the proper place to vent opinions or to suggest changes to WordPress.”
In addition, when I challenged this, the same moderator said “The best way to get it fixed is to fix it yourself and then submit a patch”.
I understand that open-source relies on user contributions. But this moderators view is simply wrong. If you’re a good company who cares about your products, you will actively seek feedback from your customers but you don’t expect them to fix the problems too!
Further discussion led to all sorts of nonsense and it was hard not to get angry about some of it (though it did result in some useful hacks that make 2.5 a bit more like 2.3). The whole experience left a very bad taste in my mouth though.
For a company that prides itself on creating software that gives people a voice, it’s ironic and sad that Wordpress seem to be more interested in hiding and defending themselves than being open and listening to those voices.
PS: If you’re interested in the feedback thread in question, it’s here and long — only read if you have a lot of time! I’m gambit37 over there.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/164414
Hi Matthew,
thank you for your well-considered comment.
The whole “does FOSS equal users helping users or is it just one more way to produce software/systems?” discussion has been going on for a very long time - like yourself, I want to see a good user experience for Free/Open Software users. I think that ALL software manufacturers should be more responsive to human needs.
Best regards, Andrew
My email address is commonly available:
http://ma.tt/
And on other places on WP.org, feel free to write me anytime.
Hi Matt,
I will be in touch to discuss the idea of a WordPress feedback clearing house that I raised on onblogging.com.au - it may be that the appearance of responsiveness will silence many of the critics (including me)
Best regards, Andrew
Given Matt has had the good manners to respond here personally, I’d hope your contact with him will mean more than getting an “appearance of responsiveness”.
Matt runs a multimillion dollar company. It’s very much in his interests to actually *be responsive*. Ultimately, we the users can go somewhere other than WordPress for our blogging tools (there’s at least one obvious alternative) and write uncomplimentary material about the tools and community that have the power to drive potential and current users away.
The negative experience you’ve had with WordPress 2.5 both in terms of the software and the hostile community when you tried to raise issues are things that Matt should be addressing personally. He should be handing out penalty time to the aggressive responders in the dev community - reducing their standing and putting filters against their contributions to the code base so they have to re-establish their standing. He should also be strictly setting rules for community interaction - a tightly defined minimum behavior standard, testing quality - in depth and breadth, and time for responses to issues.
I’d personally suggest that WordPress use something like Get Satisfaction (www.getsatisfaction.com), which already has a community of people discussing their product, but no involvement from insiders.
Hi Steve,
thank you for your comment.
I agree entirely that there is a New Marketing imperative for companies to *be* responsive regardless of who they are and what they produce.
In a life-replicating-art sort of irony, I am proposing something very similar to GetSatisfaction to Matt even as we speak. I will email you a copy of the proposal for your ideas as we seem to be on exactly the same wavelength here.
Best regards, Andrew