After Aaron Jorbin shared a graph of new contributors per release, I gave him some homework to dig further into that data, and he has of course delivered. He looked back all the way to WordPress 3.2 (five years ago this month) to discover contributor patterns over 14 major release cycles. Impressively, twelve people contributed to all fourteen, and quite a few contributed to twelve or thirteen releases as well.
One of a few fun facts: If you contribute to one release, there is a 46% chance you will contribute to the next release. Be sure to check out all the stats. Here are the WordPress usernames of those who have contributed to the most releases:
- Last 14 releases: markjaquith, matt, azaozz, nacin, dd32, ocean90, lancewillett, helen, johnbillion, johnjamesjacoby, kovshenin, sergeybiryukov
- 13 of last 14 releases: ryan, scribu, aaroncampbell, jorbin, pavelevap, solarissmoke, coffee2code, drewapicture, markoheijnen
- 12 of last 14 releases: trepmal, dimadin, yoavf, garyj, georgestephanis, ipstenu, wonderboymusic, simonwheatley, ericlewis, jeremyfelt
It’s amazing to see all of those names of contributors over a long period of time. Many of the above names are Post Status members, so go you!
