I’m going to make an analogy and it isn’t a perfect one. That’s the thing with the vast majority of analogies.
This is an overly long and perhaps unnecessary post to dissuade us from writing or caring about “top” lists of folks in the WordPress community.
<rant>
WordPress is an army. Our army is made of many, many people and those people have different reasons for being in the army. We’re lead by some incredibly talented folks that work very hard to improve WordPress, but the body is large, diverse, and important.
We remember great generals and leaders of armies. But those that lead create structure and regularity so their armies run. Folks fall into that structure, labor in it, work their way up it, etc.
WordPress is a big army, with a small structure. There aren’t all that many at the helm of WordPress’ code direction; there are six project leads, a couple dozen contributing developers, and a couple hundred with code credits in each release. But commit-credited contributors aren’t the only part of the WordPress army, and project leads and committers aren’t its only structure.
WordPress has a slew of other ways to be involved. There are currently twelve Make WordPress blogs: Core, UI, Accessibility, Mobile, Support, Polyglots, Themes, Documentation, Community, Plugins, Training, and Meta. Each of these represent sub-trees of important contributors to the platform. Some of these sub-structures are small (like the WordPress.org Meta team); others are quite large — like Community (think WordCamp and meetup organizers) or Plugins (Think of the 20,000+ plugins in the repo).
These are just official WordPress channels for promoting and improving WordPress. This doesn’t even begin to describe the surrounding ecosystem of consultants, product makers, and website owners — many of whom are also part of the core structure.
It’s fairly easy to identify the official leads of the WordPress project, as well as release leads that rotate. There are definitely some quieter but heavy-lifting contributors that don’t get much attention, but there are thousands of people that are important to the WordPress platform, and even more thousands that evangelize for WordPress, and millions that use it. I don’t know a single person that could truly create a list of “top people” in such a vast community without a ton of research.
So, making a list to identify prominent folks in the WordPress community doesn’t really thrill me. Recently, one got a lot of attention because a lead developer pointed out some of the problems with it, and it spiraled from there. But the list isn’t unique; there are hundreds of these, and the goal of each is to get clicks and shares from those listed to encourage pageviews.
I’ve never liked these lists because you can’t list everyone that truly matters and it can also ruffle some feathers. Imagine if you just spent 20 hours a week for months building one of WordPress’ best new features and see a list of 100 people important to WordPress and you’re nowhere near? Yeah, maybe that’s thin skin; but I’d just as soon not promote or encourage such lists.
One more note on my admittedly weak army analogy: what good is an army of generals with no foot soldiers to execute the plans? The entire body of an organization makes it move. It’s great to cite outstanding achievements and highlight excellence, but such things should be done genuinely, with care and not for clickbait.
</rant>
“and not for clickbait” should be the internet equivalent of “first do no harm”.
So what’s interesting is that Torque has a readership that’s actually quite a bit bigger than just WordPress core community members. It has designers, writers, and even comedians have written pieces about content on it. I’m curious why people view having a post that’s a good starting place for people to follow. I think anytime a publication serves both advanced and newly brought in demographics you’ll have some interesting interactions. Add 40-80 community writers to the list and you’ll get some varying opinions (remember that the magazine has more contributing writers than anything in the WordPress space by far).
I think people’s reaction to being on or not on the list is interesting. Conversations on listicles as a medium aside.
As an example this more technical article posted 3 before that one:
http://torquemag.io/big-wordpress-database-cleanup-increased-website-performance/
And this community one after it:
http://torquemag.io/torque-writing-wordpress-helping-empowering-others/
Yes, WordPress is an army. But I think that you have to give new members in the community a place to start and understand our community. Not everyone comes pre-deployed with a twitter follow list when they join. 😉
“But I think that you have to give new members in the community a place to start and understand our community.”
Does an article like this new list on Torque really help with that? All I see there is a list of 100 seemingly random names from very different fields (bloggers, devs, organizers, etc). I guess there would be a good way to create such a list (for example by categorizing the people or providing more background) but this one is, in my opinion, pure clickbait. It is not written for the reader but solely for the listed to feel good about themselves and get them to share the article.
Most of us on this list weren’t aware it was even being published. I wasn’t aware. But when I saw my name — and the completely wrong byline abt me — I had the author update and decided the list wasn’t wven worth skimming through. He said the Torque Mag editor helped him create the list — and obviously neither researched very well. So… It’s unfortunate.
The problem with list posts such as these is that with every person they include, there is someone that they exclude. The list published by Torque excludes people who are currently having a huge impact.
Anyone who is even a little involved with the community and project will notice glaring omissions: Petya who is pulling together and leading the polyglots team, Tammie who’s been helping to overhaul theme review, Drew and Kim who have had a massive impact on developer documentation, Ryan and Rachel for their work on the JSON REST API, Janneke who’s doing wonderful things with TinyMCE, Boone for fixing the mess of taxonomies, countless others who are making things happen behind the scenes. These people, and others like them, are influential not because of the noise that they make, but because of the work that they do.
Over the coming year, and into the future, you will see the impact of these people on the software that you use, and the community that you are part of, in a very very real way. The REST API, for example, will completely transform how we use WordPress, and growth in international communities will change the dynamic of the whole community.
So it’s puzzling to see a list of “top 100 WordPress influencers” that excludes the people who actually do influence the direction of the community, and that includes people who would likely wonder why they are on there. I’d love to know the criteria that were used to decide who has influence and who doesn’t.
If the aim is to provide “a post that’s a good starting place for people to follow” then it’s fallen short of that aim. It’s not a good starting point. It’s all rather incoherent and random. But, if the aim is to get people clicking, commenting, and discussing, I’d say that’s a job well done.
So Siobhan,
Couple items here.
1. Torque has opinion pieces submitted by contributing writers. So really if this person from Cloudways views the community in this light than this is who he looks when thinking about WordPress. Hence why I discussed that it’s a community based /written magazine.
2. I get that people who are important aren’t on the list but in an editorial fashion I don’t think it was bad of them to publish the contribution. At what point do you say to a person, “Hey, your list sucks. Because it doesn’t conform to my view”
3. Also saying it fails in that aim assumes your from the core developer community. When people come to the ecosystem they often don’t go straight to core development. It’s an interesting topic though to think how do we funnel more community members there.
By the way this is why I’m not the editor of a magazine in an opinionated space. 😉 Too much stress. Writers have their own personality when submitting content. This one may like listicles that have obviously peaked folks thoughts, but others have a different style.
The magazine has a very interesting structure in that it allows a huge breadth of people have a voice on a more read platform. I particularly like Michelle S’s My Little Pony and WordPress article. Some blogs have 2-5 writers, and some run more as a contributed magazine. They’re different beats.
I don’t get to see articles before they go live, nor control the editorial process. And I think overall they do a great job bringing in a huge diverse set of voices to say things in different ways.
So I think everyone is getting a little overwrought here over a writers style than needed.
All very good points Thomas. Obviously, as seen by the responses, lists like this do more harm than good in the end to the community. There’s probably much better ways to highlight people who are growing in influence and bettering the community, and that probably starts by making it really personal and limited, like “Here’s 5 WordPress Influencers I’m excited to follow next year”.
Matt the cool part about Torque is if someone writes that Marie Dodson and Doc Pop will work with them to get that published. I overheard her in the office yesterday saying she wanted to find someone to write “Unsung Heroes in WordPress”. They try to do good work over there but often the people wanting to become writers and join the Torque contributors may be up and comers themselves. So in some ways lacking some of that super deep community context a publication like Tavern or this one has.
Good side – incredibly diverse and huge writing staff
Down side – incredibly diverse and huge writing staff
Ok I have to get back to worky bits now but I love discussions like this. Helps everyone see things in new contexts.
I think the title is what really kills the essence of the article. I spoke with the author about it and gave him some suggestions for future lists/articles. I know he’s very new to the community and I think in his over excitement he made some critical mistakes.
Like initially listing me as a WordPress developer. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. And it made me wonder how many other bylines were wrong – I didn’t even read the whole thing…
Hi and thank you for this post. I had these ideas and mixed feelings for quite sometimes now.
I like the analogy 🙂 and very much share your sentiment. Thank you for your continued sincerity and introspection. <3
Usually i’m on board with differences of opinions on these things (and if you call this “WordPress Drama” you have a low bar in terms of “drama”). I get the viewpoints and the points but having a hard time justifying the rant (with all due respect to Mr. Krogsgard who is completely on point with WordPress being an army which i’m not disagreeing with).
Allow me to retort. Because my therapist says it’s a good way to get rid of negative energy.
“Lists are clickbait”. – 99% of the time yes. However I actually respect Torque and i don’t usually see clickbait articles (unlike some other *cough* WordPress blogs *cough). So i’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. This list I thought actually was one of the more useful ones i’ve seen – it doesn’t list just 10 or 20. Plus there was people on this list i haven’t seen on others (it’s usually the same lists… Matt, Mark, Andrew… which are great but admittingly predictable).
“The problem with list posts such as these is that with every person they include, there is someone that they exclude.” – Correct. All lists exclude someone. It’s unavoidable. But as much as I HIGHLY respect Siobhan (whom I quoted from her comment above) the post NEVER mentions these were “top” or “best” so I think if you’re looking at this in that context that’s somewhat faulty. I mean, come on – I’m on that list. If this was a top 100, I wouldn’t want me on that list.
What is the criteria for someone being an influencer? IMO, anyone involved with the WordPress community is an influencer. You don’t need to be a contributor, on a make.wordpress.org team, involved with the REST API, etc. You are an influencer if you organize meetups, run a solo WordPress business, or make long winded posts on popular WordPress news sites. Ok, maybe not that list one. Point is if you see a list (especially if it’s not a “top list) and don’t see “big” people on it, realize that doesn’t make them any more or less irrelevant in the “influence” department.
Final $0.02:
If we are storming the castle of lists with pitchforks and torches (btw if you’re in the camp of not liking lists, let’s burn down lists on Twitter next please), then let’s make this constructive: what are BETTER ways of ones (especially new ones) in the community of finding others to follow? Maybe we can write and promote a blog post on that?
Now i’m getting down off the soapbox which a high horse was standing on.
I recently got back into the WordPress game as well, in a way that I only accept WordPress projects, because turns out I’m best at making it do whatever people want it to do and, regardless of some of the pains and headaches it creates, it’s still vastly superiour to anything else out there. I wrote an entire article (rant) on why, titled “WordPress Till Death Do Us Part”, http://zakb.co/blog/wordpress-till-death-do-us-part/.
As far as who’s an influencer, anyone doing anything positive with WordPress, in my opinion.
A list is never perfect. We all understand this. Well, most of us do.
Where the recent Top 100 list failed was:
1) Lack of context. Why should I follow them? What will they offer me? For example, Mr / Ms X is a designer is nice. Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of such things that I’m aware of.
2) Lack of repos. Show me the code. Please. I’ll believe it myself when I see something worth believing. Somehow I’m gonna guess I’m not the only one fond of muting on Twitter because the signal to noise ratio of WordPress expert Z is, dare I say, marginal (at best).
3) Lack for forward-thinking. Best I could tell, the list had a bias to WP traditionalists. That’s great. But who is off the list because they are beyond the horizon? Who is actually leading?
Oh snap. Did I just make a list too? 🙂