Technology and design in plain language.

29 October 20081. Ray:

they don't know what kind of talent they are skipping over.........

29 October 20082. Mark:

The title of the WP post is "Calling all WordPress-loving Icon Designers." The last paragraph in the intro is "I’m always meeting people at WordCamps or via email who say they wish they could give back to WordPress, but that since they aren’t PHP developers, they feel like there isn’t any opportunity for them to be a part of the open source project. Well, here’s a golden opportunity. Want to design the new WordPress icons?"

It seems that the call is to avid WordPress users more than it is to designers. For you in the MT community it could be a serious horn-honking thing to "win" this opportunity, while at the same time not be in the best interests of the WP community.

If all they want is icons, it seems you would be an excellent choice. If they want community-provided icons, a star in the MT world might not be the best choice for them.

29 October 20083. Dr. Mike Wendell:

That's a shame. I do note that any trackback from this post is not showing up on the wp.org blog post. That doesn't surprise me.

I think that this Jane person is quickly on her way to alienate as many folks as she can. Sounds like a typical Automattic employee if you ask me.

29 October 20084. Jane Wells:

Jesse, I certainly didn't mean to slight you. The point of posting on the WP dev blog (as opposed to a general design community blog) was to put the opportunity in front of the WP community, for the reasons I outlined in my post that Mark references above. I was trying to give the people who'd been asking for a way to be involved a chance at bat. Bringing in a professional who doesn't use the application for their own site would have been like bringing in a designated hitter, which was the reason we didn't just hire someone in the first place. I'm trying to move WP design stuff out of the perceived "Matt is a design dictator and Automattic makes all the decisions"-land and into "This is an open source project, and the community has a voice"-ville. I'm not trying to play Platform War... I have a friendly history with the founders of both MT and Blogger, have used both platforms happily in the past, and I think the animosity that seems to occasionally spring up between the communities is just plain silly. I mean, it's just software, right?

The point was that this wasn't a design job, it was a community opportunity; surely you can appreciate the difference. You'd be eminently qualified to be hired outright, but in order to be a community volunteer you'd first need to be part of the community. If I'd posted on a design blog and then said no because you don't use WordPress, I would see your point, but the post was on the WP dev blog and stated clearly that it was a community thing for the open source project. I don't understand why that screams partisanship to you, but to me it's just giving an extra opportunity to the people who've been asking for it.

Dr. Mike: You don't even know me; do you need to talk about me like that? I'm a nice person, and I try to give people opportunities to be involved in the dev cycle that they didn't have before. "This Jane person" wouldn't write things like that about you. Can't we all just play nice?

And for the record, I would absolutely approve this trackback if it had shown up in the dev blog moderation queue. The only criteria for approving trackbacks is that it must contribute to the conversation, which I think Jesse's post does. However, no trackback has come into the queue from this post. If Jesse wants to send one, I will certainly approve it.

30 October 20086. Dr. Mike Wendell:

Sorry you feel that way but I've seen her stepping on a lot of folks toes recently. As to the "Can't we all just play nice?" comment, I await the day that she and the other Automattic employees start to play nice. I invite Jane to go look up support ticket UJE-369880 and wonder when they'll start doing so. I'm actually amazed that she didn't make a racist or bigoted comment in my direction. They have in the past.

30 October 20088. Anil:

i think those of us who have been at SIx Apart long enough have known Jane since before WordPress existed, and it's great to see her putting her talents into helping bloggers the way she is doing.

The idea that there's an "MT community" vs. a "WP community" is stupid, and people who perpetuate the idea usually are either uniformed or have an agenda that goes counter to what's good for blogging. Pretty much anyone who's serious about blogging uses multiple platforms and adopts technologies from everybody in the space, and if they identify as belonging to a community, it's based on the topics they talk about or perhaps as part of "the blogging community" as a whole. If we see someone from the MT community helping WordPress users, we think that's great for blogging, and the MT team itself and all of us at Six Apart have created a ton of resources and services and tools for WP users -- the latest I just blogged about on sixapart.com today.

Jesse, glad to see more people appreciating your talents, and good luck!

30 October 20089. Mark:

I admit I am probably quite uninformed, and that I am anything but an "avid" blogger. I can easily say I have no agenda, since I'm not active in either MT or WP. But I know there is a pride in accomplishing something or in being defined as a part of something. If Jane and the WP community had decided to keep the icon contest limited, would that have been a bad thing?

The idea of separate "communities" may be stupid, but it's life. The recognition of communities does not imply a need to move to commonality or non-distictiveness (?). Neither does it require battle-lines and mud-slinging. Congeniality is certainly desired! SixApart certainly holds meetings and functions that are not open to "non-community" (non-employee) members? Sure, we can (and do!) all benefit from shared resources, but the notion that we HAVE to share resources all the time seems silly.

As if I have a handle on it all. My point is simply that limiting a particular "thing" to a specific community is not, by default, stupid.

Also, I know that Jesse has enough talent in his pinky to run most others out of the game. Go, Jesse!