Invasion or Innovation?  ## Metadata - Author: [[Crossword]] - Full Title: Invasion or Innovation? - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/303fc36b-64e6-4bfd-b74f-dd81d9b52f10 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Matt's Role** - Matt Mullenweg leads the WordPress 6.8 release, but his involvement seems minimal. - This has been a tradition for years, raising questions about the role's significance. Transcript: Jonathan Hopefully for our listeners too. Yeah, you're welcome. Speaking of nothing changed, the WordPress 6.8 development cycle post is up with some details about the release squad. And nothing has changed. Release lead is once again, the man himself, Matt Mullenweg. Yeah. Luke So I find it a little bit confusing and I don't want to misspeak here. My understanding is that it doesn't really mean much. I don't, as far as I'm aware, he's not actively involved at the moment. No. Jonathan Yeah. It doesn't mean anything. And, and I think, uh, I think it used to be, there's a, there's a role release coordinator, right? The release coordinator is the release lead. Luke Like in, in, in effect, right? Like in practice. So which leads a little bit of what's the point of that? So I, that is what it is. I am curious to see what that looks like longer term. I think that there's been, that's been tradition for some time, right? I mean, when's the last time Matt wasn't named as release lead? Jonathan Yeah, I'd have to check, but I think it was 5.9. It was, you know, that changed while we were recording this, this podcast. Our podcast predates this, this ([Time 0:00:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b3fe1ff0-7127-45d3-bd2d-022f89d62a51)) - **Back to Basics** - WordPress 6.8 prioritizes bug fixes and stability over new features. - This is seen as a positive step after Automattic reduced its contributions. Transcript: Luke Event, but it has been happening for years now. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about 6.8. I actually find myself kind of excited about it for a couple of different reasons. Part of it is some of the big things that have happened since like Automatic, of course, has pulled out the majority of their resources from going to.org. And that's, I don't want to misspeak this, but if I'm recalling correctly, it's a hundred less people. Like it's a significant reduction of, of, of people hours being dedicated to the project. And that's put the project in an interesting position where there's, there's just a whole lot less people to work on it, which we've touched on this in previous episodes, I also opens Up an opportunity and so this first this release will be the first one it's currently slated to drop in april 15th is the official sort of slated release date and there's a degree to which At least for me reading the post it feels very okay it's back to business um there's the the intention for this release is bug fixes and stability and no sort of new features are coming In at least from my perspective i i don't think that's a bad thing to just have a kind of anticlimactic boring release that just makes things better in the project what do you think yes, ([Time 0:02:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2ef51c3f-1ab3-4f56-82a3-cb2dec2c6a46)) - **The A-Team** - The WordPress 6.8 release squad comprises non-Automattic members, except for Matt. - It features experienced individuals from companies like 10up, StellarWP, and Google. Transcript: Jonathan I agree. I think that there is something very, very interesting about this release, and that is the release squad. It is no automaticians, except for, of course, the release lead, Matt Malenweg himself. And I don't know, it's just a celebrity, WordPress celebrity A-list, really. It's a team of amazing people from companies like 10Up, I think, have got a couple of people in there, and Stellar, WP, Google. And these are people we've seen around a lot for several years. Great. It's fantastic. It's almost like, but if you look at the image, like the inverse, look at the white space around the image, it's kind of like, well, who's going to be the next? There's nobody else really. Who's going to be the next release squad? And also like, where are all the new people? These people are all, have all been involved in the project for 10 plus years. You know, where, where are the up and comers? This particular release squad is excellent. And I hope we can maintain the caliber and the quality. But it seems like we've just gone, all right, we need people. And we're just going to take, we're going to ask all of the best people. And yeah, it's a great team. ([Time 0:03:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8716c76a-a002-499b-aca9-582677d93b24)) - **Mentorship Opportunity** - The 6.8 release squad aims to mentor future contributors. - This is a chance for newcomers to learn from experienced members like Tammy Lister and Jeff Paul. Transcript: Luke Okay. Well, maybe this is why I'm excited about it. So I've got a, I've got a bias here. Um, Tammy Lister is going to be the design lead. She's of course our co-founder on the Gildenberg front. She does, she does a bunch of things. Awesome for a lot of reasons. And talking with her about this, I know for a fact that her focus is yes, get the job done, but she's already looking ahead to how do you mentor and support and train up the next folks, right? That's something that matters to her. I know that that's the case with Jeff Paul. He's fantastic. I feel fairly confident this is the case with most of the people there. They recognize they want this to go beyond themselves. So I think what remains to be seen is who shows up to tap into that wealth of knowledge and the willingness to share. And I think this is, yeah, I think it's a golden opportunity that can do the project a whole lot of good because that institutional knowledge is a big deal in a project like this. And it's much less about the code than it is the relationships and the context and the stories and everything that's got us to this point. That's beautiful. Yeah, I'm excited to see what happens with it. Can ([Time 0:05:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/800e917c-252b-4764-8175-78de4bb7ba41)) - **AI Plugin Invasion** - The WordPress plugin repository faces an influx of AI-generated plugins. - These plugins are identifiable by their excessive comments and single-file structure. Transcript: Jonathan I tell you about something interesting that's been happening with plugin reviews? Tell me. It's a bit of a pivot, sorry. No, let's do it. Interesting thing has been happening which is that we got the queue down to zero yeah we we've been right on top of it we've been keeping the queue number really really low and always the Queue for the last few weeks has been about 50 or so plugins waiting and it's uh you know about less than a week wait. So great until about a week ago, suddenly something changed and we had over 50 plugin, new plugins submitted a day. And now we've just been inundated with plugins. And you look at the vast majority of these plugins, they're all written by AI. Oh, wow. Okay. How can you tell? So now, you can tell. I've done a lot with AI. I've done a lot of programming. One of the giveaways, which is, I don't know, it's good or it's bad, is that AI just litters the code with comments everywhere which is great i was going to say is is one of the giveaways That they're well done well they're not they're often not well done actually oftentimes they get the job done they are a bit ugly but it sort of works the front end is often missing a little Bit of love, a bit of TLC. And the code base is usually poorly structured, right? Because AI, it really wants to limit the amount of files that it uses. The code is well written in terms of like coding standards. Luke It adheres to those usually but it tries to put everything in a single file wait this is i feel like this is kind of a big deal and you're right on the front line here with this what's the sentiment Amongst the team like is this like oh no here comes all the spam or is there a record like it's like a feels like a potential like watershed What's ([Time 0:06:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/026de36d-61c4-453d-8e73-239d5674fc6b)) - **Honesty Button** - Plugin reviewers desire transparency from developers regarding AI usage. - Knowing the extent of AI involvement helps reviewers allocate their efforts efficiently. Transcript: Jonathan The vibe? We've not really had a chance to properly talk about it, or at least I haven't had a chance to talk about it with the team. The vibe in Slack is mixed. It's like, oh man, we were on top of the queue and now we're getting this sudden huge influx of all of these AI plugins. Kind of wish that there was like just an honesty button that says I wrote this you know this is mostly AI with a few little tweaks versus I wrote all of this from scratch because I would prefer To review the you know if you're going to ask me to put in hours into reviewing your plugin then I want to make sure that you put in the time and attention into right effort effort is a key Luke Indicator here right it's like it's not the problem it's not the problem at all in fact it's probably a win um shorter sooner rather than later that they're using these tools because Coding standards there's a bunch of things that could be done but you want to know that if you're going to put your efforts as a volunteer that there's corresponding effort on the other Side. ([Time 0:08:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1a120b81-5a6d-408b-a926-714fbd4f7622)) - **AI Plugin Guidelines** - Jonathan suggests creating guidelines for AI-generated plugin submissions. - This would support developers while acknowledging the reviewers' volunteer status. Transcript: Luke Would it make sense I mean here's my. What if you guys as a team put together a guidepost? Because here's the idea. I'm going to suggest that this is a great opportunity because of all the things WordPress... Of course, that's what you always do. Of course, but hear me out. Of all the things, WordPress is... We want people to be building stuff for WordPress. If we zoom all the way out, everything else aside for a moment, it's a good, great indicator that people see there's opportunity here. I would be curious to know more about the nature of the plugins that are being submitted, but setting that aside for a moment, the take for me is like, man, what if you guys put together A guideline that's not telling them, you know, buzz off with all your AI stuff, but like, here's some things to keep in mind. We're volunteers. We're happy that you guys are using the tools. Here's some guidelines that could maybe improve the output of what they're doing that accounts for the fact that there's now AI tools. ([Time 0:10:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ba4b3a0f-609a-45ca-a6ef-990d9df5af19)) - **Custom Plugin Example** - Luke's brother used AI to create a custom WordPress plugin for tracking word count. - This exemplifies the potential of AI for personalized plugin development. Transcript: Jonathan Yeah. I want the world to move in a direction where software is something you build yourself with the help of AI, not something that you buy. And plugins, you're less likely to go looking on the WordPress plugin repo and more likely to just build it yourself custom. That's the world I want to live in. Your brother, I was texting him the other day, or today, I think, yesterday, and he sent me a plugin. He showed a plugin that he built for himself using AI that showed him in WordPress output like a block of how many words he'd written in the last month on his blog, things like that. Great. That doesn't need to be on the plugin repo, though. Yeah, Fair point. Yes. And so I think that, I think it's great that people are building for WordPress, customizing their site, using plugins and using AI to do that. But the question is, should we be distributing them? And I mean, I don't believe in just a blanket ban of all AI plugins. So what I think we might be heading towards is a more curated repo. And this is interesting because it probably is, if I'm right about this, it'll probably not only be WordPress, but the entire internet that starts to move in this direction, where we Start to say, oh, you know what we there's already 10 or so limit login plugins there's already 10 or so um plugins that allow you to customize the login screen there's already 10 or so You know of all these various different common common plugins that people try to build google analytics and things like this we don't need any more. Thanks, but no thanks. And I can sort of see a future where we start rejecting plugins, not on based on the fact that they're built on AI, but based on the fact that we've got a lot of them already and they're kind Of low quality. And that's negative because it sort of limits the opportunity for competition. But how else do you deal with it? Yeah, I think you're onto ([Time 0:10:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a2b60952-a6c2-4d51-b52e-a9c9c617f406)) - **Games and Plugins** - Jonathan used ChatGPT 03 Mini High to create HTML-based games, considering a WordPress plugin. - This highlights the potential for AI to inspire new plugin creation and sharing. Transcript: Luke Something here. So I want to relate a personal experience I had this past weekend. I started using the ChatGPT, the O3 or Mini Pro or whatever it was. I forget, it's some weird names, but the one that was focused on like code generation. 03 Mini High. Yep. Thank you. 03 Mini High. And I started, you get like 25 requests at the plus level, right? And I started making these like HTML based games. And by the time I got to my third game, like at this point, I was, I had put several hours of effort into like game design, thinking through what I wanted to do. And I got to something playable that had sound in it, that had browsers. Can you share it with me? Yeah, I'll text it to you afterwards. It was fun. No, no, no. But then at one point. Put it on the line and share it in the show notes. Actually, this is why I brought this up. Because at one point, I was like, hey, I think I want to turn this into a WordPress plugin. And because if I wanted to write about this, I would say, what would be the easiest way to just embed this in my blog? And so I stopped because I ran out of requests and I haven't come back to the project yet. But to me, I, yeah, my first go-to wouldn't be to distribute that in the.org. But if I got to a point where, hey, this is working pretty cool, I'd like to share this. This is like a gaming WordPress. And for the first time in a long time, I saw in myself this impulse to like, hey, this would be fun to put on one of my WordPresses and share more broadly. So we'll see what happens next with it. I'll text you the HTML, but I quite enjoyed that process. ([Time 0:13:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f85d6e71-21b8-4f04-b059-0427fb554de1))