So it wasn’t even the first day of the bug tracker’s existence when bug notes got rowdy and prompted Shelley to write a post lamenting WordPress developer communication and more. I started to write a reply in the comments, but it got pretty long so I decided to post it here.

Shelley: Different people particpate with the development process at different levels. While I appreciate the point you were trying to communicate, it seems like an inappropiate place to role play a clueless user. (Particularly posting under your own account.) Ryan and I fully realize that the reply would mean very little to someone who didn’t know PHP or diff, but it was a dialogue between you—Shelley Powers the bug reporter who has written several advanced hacks and plugins for WordPress—and a developer who wants to address the problem. Someone else probably would have been treated differently. In the past you have been very indignant when someone assumed you didn’t know something and addressed you at a level you deemed patronizing. In that situation, how is anybunny supposed to respond?

It’s silly for it to come up in the first place. Communication is much more than 50% of successful application, it’s 100% essential because without it the code doesn’t really matter. The project falls in the forest without making any sound. However the bug tracker doesn’t seem like the best place to make this point. If you really feel strongly about this, why not write some guidelines or best practices in the wiki and send a note to the documentation list.

There a thread on the forums which addresses some of this.

The Standards Police, I think Keith is totally off here, as I began to express in Dave’s comments. A laissez-faire approach to compliance isn’t helping anyone. Someone needs to set an example, and if it’s not these guys who will? Jeffrey and Doug, each with no small amount of content on their site, seem to have no problem keeping things compliant. Neither does Eric, Tantek, Joe, Lars, Anne, Mark, just to name a few. Don’t tell me “validation is very hard and takes quite a bit of effort.” That’s a weak cop-out. Accessibility is very hard, design is very hard, music is very hard, driving in between the lines is very hard. If you don’t want to make the effort, then don’t dabble and make flippant comments that hurt the field as a whole and insult the people who work “very hard.”

I’m coming out. This site is to the best of my ability valid XHTML 1.1 sent with the proper MIME to browser that can handle it. Even the photolog, which took me hours and hours of work to get to the point where it is now, and for a long time was far from decent markup. However I am fairly certain that there are some comments (particularly on the mosaic thread, which now has almost a thousand replies) that have broken validation, and though I am very busy I will personally check each of these. WordPress helps a lot. The WordPress site is also XHTML 1.1 with the exception of the forums, which are compliant by default (more hours of work) but which could do a much better job of validation input. These are my weaknesses, out for the world to see. Even though the sites work just fine, and “validation doesn’t pay the bills,” I’m going to devote my time to fixing these problems because how can I presume to be a member of an organization devoted to standards without following them myself?

Update: Pulled and republished.