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WordPress Is in Trouble

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Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#271

Post by [deleted] »

daitangio wrote: post #155
dangrossman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a mental breakdown, I think this is a (poorly executed) long pivot into Matt's companies having tighter control over the ecosystem and keeping more of the profits from hosting, plugin and theme sales. He's burning down "the community" on purpose. In a couple years, it'll be run more like Shopify, where the theme store and app store only list products that run their billing through Shopify and give…

I fear you are right. Remember they ask $25/monthly for 1 website on pressable, I can run Wordpress open source for 5x month on Linode, and there are ready made installation on docker, digital ocean and so on…

[deleted]

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#272

Post by satvikpendem »

legitster wrote: post #246
dangrossman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a mental breakdown, I think this is a (poorly executed) long pivot into Matt's companies having tighter control over the ecosystem and keeping more of the profits from hosting, plugin and theme sales. He's burning down "the community" on purpose. In a couple years, it'll be run more like Shopify, where the theme store and app store only list products that run their billing through Shopify and give…

One thing to keep in mind, WordPress being open source was an afterthought. It inherited a GPL from b2/cafelog. If Matt woke up one morning and decided he wanted to make WordPress closed source, he couldn't. But what he could do is force everyone to pay a license fee for the name, and anyone who did not pay he publicly makes hell for them. You could also pretend to encourage them to fork, knowing full well they would…

I don't understand your point about forking, yes they'd have the GPL but so what? They can control their fork from then on, it doesn't matter if they have to continue open sourcing contributions, in fact it'd be preferable to whatever Matt is doing.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#273

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

JBiserkov wrote: post #245
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this unique to "late stage capitalism"? That same sentence can be used mad lib style for any human endevor. >Perhaps more indicative of ________ where rent seekers try to extract more and more value and consolidate more and more power Feudal Europe Roman patrician class British Raj Ming dynasty bureaucrats Latin American drug cartels etc Point being that the "late stage capitalism" people lack rigor and don't…

Don't argue with me about definitions, I'm trying to explain what I think the GP meant and why `the "late stage capitalism" people lack rigor and don't add to the conversation` is incorrect. Capitalism-imperialism: a system based on endless growth and expansionism, where the proletariat in the imperial core is pacified by the crumbs the capitalist give it from the plunder of the colonies; the crumbs also allow the pr…

okay sure, going back and forth on definitions is boring.

I just disagree that late stage capitalism imperialism is where we're at. It's not true for the US, or the west or the globe.

Yes we're in the anthropocene, and while that phrase has a negative implication nowadays, it is not true that anthropocene means "low hanging resources" have been consumed leading to uncontrolled rent seeking. It is no more true than a barracuda lurking in a coral is an out of control rent seeker. That's just the nature of barracudas.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#274

Post by xenodium »

pryelluw wrote: post #5

At this point, I’m planning to move away from Wordpress due to the instability and into a regular wiki based site. Unsure of which at the moment, maybe some suggestions? Prefer static file based rather than host a DB.

I just launched a drag and drop service myself https://lmno.lol. Use your favorite text editor to edit your Markdown blog file.

No tracking, adverts, paywalls, or bloat. I'm also bringing a little nostalgia back with ASCII art headers (optional of course).

Here's my blog on it: https://lmno.lol/alvaro

Wrote a bit about how I got to build my own service https://lmno.lol/alvaro/blogging-minus-the-yucky-bits-of-mod...

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#275

Post by lupire »

pants2 wrote: post #126
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason that Reddit's API changes killing the best clients was so poisonous is that the resulting non-exodus showed other companies that they can take user-hostile actions with impunity. A big enough mass of passive and undiscerning users will stay no matter what. Hence there being more freedom to take a strategy like this.

I think Reddit's API changes and more did lead to an Exodus of a good chunk of power users that gave the site more of an identity. But what's worse is the official Reddit clients gamify using Reddit so much that, on the whole, content quality is down significantly, even in the smaller niche subreddits that usually had great stuff. The problem is high quality content isn't profitable, endless scrolling is.

The problem is there communities are hard to build and easy to destroy.

Reddit destroying its user communities causes real damage. Those users don't magically congregate somewhere else.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#276

Post by micromacrofoot »

beshrkayali wrote: post #64

I really think Matt is suffering from some sort of a mental breakdown. It’s a sad situation and there’s a lot to learn about open source projects with a huge user base and where the bottle necks exist. But I think people who know or are close to him should seriously consider an intervention. I can’t believe after two decades he’d just decide to throw it all out in a blazing fire and tarnish his reputation (and Wordpr…

he's not wrong about the fears, he's just reacting in a terrible way

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#277

Post by ismail »

jjmarr wrote: post #132
llm_trw wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has been user hostile since 2014. It's just that as long as you hurt one part of the community the other parts hate you're fine. The mods are universally hated on reddit and they were the ones most impacted by the changes. The average user either didn't notice or stopped getting automatically banned for joining the wrong subreddits.

> The average user... stopped getting automatically banned for joining the wrong subreddits. Still happens, you're just not allowed to talk about it. /r/bannedforbeingjewish (which collated this) is banned,[1] but to give an example, /r/interestingasfuck (13 million subscribers) bans users that are members of /r/Israel.[2] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/bannedforbeingjewish/ [2] https://archive.is/OkfOY

Let’s be super clear, [2] does not ban the user for being Jewish as per [1] claims.

There is no way for the mod/bot to know this rather. It is clearly spelt out in the terms.

“You have been banned for participating in a bad-faith subreddit (specifically Israel) which brigades other subreddits and spreads propaganda/disinformation/racism/sexism.”

Personally I don’t use Reddit that much, so I can speak to if this statement is true or not, the mods however do think it is.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#278

Post by LocalPCGuy »

lupire wrote: post #266
harikb wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an alternate possibility 1. They introduced a checkbox for "users to confirm that they are not affiliated with WP Engine" 2. A court ordered Automattic to reverse course 3. Developer thought it was easy to quickly just change the text rather than make code changes. Let us not say people are crazy when there are alternate narratives

That's likely to corrupt the database backend, which now appears to store old "non WP Engine" affirmations in the same location as new "pineapple pizza" affirmations. How will they be able to distinguish?

You're assuming they actually care to distinguish. But real answer, barring a brief period where some users may get a cached version, they can likely just use the date of change to determine before and after if necessary.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#279

Post by [deleted] »

harikb wrote: post #261
vasco wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may have a point about what will happen, but that can happen at the same time as a mental breakdown. How do you justify something like this https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/17/pineapple-on-pizza-is-deli... if you only believe in the power play? How does this fit in?

Here is an alternate possibility 1. They introduced a checkbox for "users to confirm that they are not affiliated with WP Engine" 2. A court ordered Automattic to reverse course 3. Developer thought it was easy to quickly just change the text rather than make code changes. Let us not say people are crazy when there are alternate narratives

[deleted]

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#280

Post by nathansherburn »

lupire wrote: post #266
harikb wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an alternate possibility 1. They introduced a checkbox for "users to confirm that they are not affiliated with WP Engine" 2. A court ordered Automattic to reverse course 3. Developer thought it was easy to quickly just change the text rather than make code changes. Let us not say people are crazy when there are alternate narratives

That's likely to corrupt the database backend, which now appears to store old "non WP Engine" affirmations in the same location as new "pineapple pizza" affirmations. How will they be able to distinguish?

I don't think the purpose of the checkbox was to collect useful data but an any case storing it as a date would probably solve the issue.
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