WordPress Community Team meeting

The WordPress Community team definition is:

This is the home of the Make Community team for the WordPress open source project!

Here is where we have policy debates, project announcements, and assist community members in organizing events.

Everyone is welcome to comment on posts and participate in the discussions regardless of skill level or experience.

There is a meeting every month for the WordPress Community team contributors. The agenda for the Thursday 9 January 2025 meeting includes, as usual, the question “Are there any blockers?”. My reply to this question is as follow:

Emotionally heavy environment:
I’ve been called “a traitor” or laughed at for advocating for WordPress and contribution, which could be bearable if it was my paid job, but not when I contribute my heart, free time and personal money to attend events we organise. The sentiment from the general public (I mean meetup attendees here) and end-users is becoming heavy.

We (the Community at large) have lost organisers and probably attendees.. I 100% agree with Taco: “we don’t need any more negative sentiment”… see his thread (WordPress Slack) especially when we see the division now in the community, and prominent contributors being banned.

As a Meetup organiser in Geneva, we haven’t organised any since September, partly because of that sentiment, people are less interested in coming/co-organising (we will have one at the end of January though, let’s see how many people come).

As a WCEU organiser (not even a lead organiser), I received messages to clarify about Patchstack not being accepted as a sponsor! It was not a decision by the WCEU organising team, neither from the Sponsor team, nor from Lead organisers, and even less my decision as part of the Local team! Why am I being asked about it?

Last year, there were projects such as the Health dashboards and Contributor Mentorship program, and outreach/media/marketing, to bring new people and a new generation to WordPress. All of it feels wasted, at least the hours I contributed. And the Sustainability team was to be merged with the DEIB working group and to include Five for the Future and aim for the sustainability of the project (social and financial, on top of environmental sustainability), but Matt killed the team yesterday (WordPress Slack).

I’m partially sponsored by Themeisle since last August (thank you!). It covers 5 hours/week which I dedicate to WCEU2025 and GatherPress, but doing more in the disheartening environment is difficult, I’m currently looking for people to continue the local Meetup here, and I will probably not take on new WordCamps to mentor (as an “event supporter”, currently two). This is to be confirmed.

I started to contribute to WordPress years ago because I wanted to give back as we get it for free, and it allows me to run some sites (I gave much more than it benefited me). And after that because I liked the events and for the friends I met. However, it should not come at the cost of mental well-being by getting involved in conflicts, as that ultimately results in a personal net loss.

Disclaimer/free-speech: I’m free to speak, organise, sponsor or participate in any project, event, interview or article I want.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not represent the views of my sponsors or the projects I am part of, such as the WordCamp Europe organising team, the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program, my roles in the Make Community team, GatherPress community engagement or WPpodcast translation. If there is any conflict with these projects, I welcome any feedback, and I am open to stepping down from my roles.