at least kineda is good at garnering pagerank, if nothing else. (he made it to newsgator's latest buzz with this one).

See, you may remember that I entered the previous theme competition. You know the one, the one where the background #fff guy and theundersigned got stiffed because the judges didn't feel like awarding two of the categories. They listed them as TBD, and then decided not to determine them after all. Which, if you're talking about awarding prizes, makes sense. But as I can attest, and from talking to other winners, they weren't. And I know I'm not the only one. Now, I didn't enter with any intention of winning. And i'm not the sort to think that I should be making money designing on top off open-source software. If you're not going to award prizes, though, you should at least give people the bragging rights.

Andy's been on a rant about competitions where companies look to get design work for free. I emailed him about it, because I thought that competitions were valid within the context of a community, and I wanted to make sure he didn't disagree. Now I'm wondering if it's really so different. Like wank says, designs will come up to fill perceived gaps, and competitions only draw out more recolored K2's (which theundersigned has preemptively prohibited). I'll probably enter theundersigned's competition anyway, because I said I'd enter the next one, and it'll get my ass in gear to build the theme that's been kicking around in my head for a while now. And releasing it is on my 101 list.

It's probably not the fault of the community, though. I'm willing to put the blame for this squarely on Terry's shoulders. See, if you read the comments to theundersigned's post, you'll note that terry not only ignored the theme designers, he ignored the donors as well. See, for all his puffing (in the theme competition revived thread) about being such a giving member of the community, he's yet to give anything back. (remember that rather than do the work of displaying the themes himself, he threw all that work into Shadows' lap.) He spends all his time re-redesigning his own site. Which is the main complaint levelled at wordpress designers, the kind who everyone slammed after the winners were announced

Am I being harsh? yeah. Would this have been better handled in an email? definately. Don't think that because I bitch a lot, that I haven't tried to deal with this privately.

UPDATE: Shadows finally speaks his peace.  We can all go home now.

wordpress™ wank » the deplorable word
And then I went to catch up on the saga of the theme repository guy who got accused of being an evil scam-merchant because he dared to put Google Ads on his site. However, if you accuse people of accusing him of being an evil scam-merchant they go nuts at you, so I’m going to let that go with a long sigh and no further comment.

that about sums it up. ljdrama's got nothing on wordpress.com these days.

what's especially messed up is that after shadow asked for help, AFAIK, the only people to volunteer were myself and scott. and after just a couple hours of prepping themes, i understand a lot better shadows' frustrations. and why he removed my theme for my lack of politeness with the updating. although a well written FAQ in a prominent place would be much better. (the codex deals with how to make a theme work, but not how to put it into the blaw goes fear.) it looks like the back-ported features and the addition of theundersigned from the theme park should make shadows' workload a bit lighter.

which, if you take away my snarkiness, and the drama about advertising, is all that's left. theme park seems to more functional both for maintainers and theme authors. having those features on the Official™ repository, is a Good Thing™. that said, a better official repository will not make the rest of them go away. it's just not possible. (look at winamp, windows media player, etc.) other repositories will find better methods. themes.wordpress.net can't remain static and just plead that people not go elsewhere. but that's not a criticism of shadow, or steve cooley. that's just the way it works.

now if you'll excuse me, i'm off to kentucky for the weekend to deal with the nuclear fallout that my sister's college graduation is sure to be. every time i think i can't deal with anymore stress, i realize the road ahead is only going to be worse.