Summary Hallway Hangout Triage Gutenberg Extensibility Issues

0:00  

I do my duties here. And yeah, so now say all that again, time.

0:08  

I’m never gonna remember that. But Hi, my name is Tammie, I think we maybe should have a board to surface things. And one of the things I think is really important as well is, we all of us here are very active in the project. And that’s awesome. But we also want to activate people that aren’t as active or maybe you don’t have as much time. And so that they can also participate on the key areas and their voices can be heard, either through us or in the right places, and not duplicate issues and all those kinds of things. So that’s kind of something I’m really keen on. So that was exactly what I just said. Yeah, that was good. It was excellent. Yeah. So do you want to start introduction first, so who are you what you’re doing? And

0:55  

what did what is? The Block Editor, good move for you.

1:02  

Okay, hi, I’m Tammie I’ve been involved in since he started the thing. I’ve had lots of different things. I’ve been involved with it at the moment, my focus is around development with that, and I work Inpsyde and I am contributed back to work there as a developer.

1:23  

Alright, kick it to somebody else.

1:27  

Yeah. Hello, I’m JoeMc Gill. I currently work on the WordPress performance team, via my role at 10up. I have been a longtime WordPress contributor committercommitter A developer with commit access. WordPress has five lead developers and four permanent core developers with commit access. Additionally, the project usually has a few guest or component committers - a developer receiving commit access, generally for a single release cycle (sometimes renewed) and/or for a specific component., in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., got involved working with Gutenberg stuff on agency projects, back when it was still in its infancy stage, and have have used use it and extended it on client projects. As well as you know, for some of my own personal stuff. So I my big interest in this conversation is just to bring some maybe perspective from somebody who is a developer contributor, who has worked on both sides of, you know, trying to maintain an open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project and using the tools that those open source projects provide in, in my day to day work, and how to maybe help get a path forward for some of the things that we may want to do here.

2:39  

I will pass it to Nick. All right, great. So I am currently working at Automattic. And I’m a Developer Relations, advocate, among other random things that I’m involved in. But extensibility is kind of I may, before joining Automattic, I was a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party developer and liked extending things and extending blocks in the editor and that sort of thing. So extensibility is very close to my heart. And I think the extensibility is probably one of the some of the hardest things to fix, or implement, because there’s all sorts of implications around adding hooksHooks In WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same. and filters and, and that sort of thing. So I think this is a really great discussion to be having. And one that is a hard one to have. And it’s hard to solve sometimes. So getting all these great minds together just to start working through this is great. Yeah, let’s see, how bout Jeff?

3:37  

Jeff Paul, Director of open source at 10 up, one of the focuses for my team is contributing to core and Gutenberg. And I’ve been active I just counted records, it looks like seven or eight major releases, going back to 4.7. So I spanned pre and through and post or now Gutenberg phases of the project. And I’m a strong advocate for getting folks off the 4x series of things onto the 506. So series, right getting them onto the Block Editor. And anything that’s blocking that, you know, very much an advocate for helping solve while the rest of the project advances, you know, future feature wise. And also from the lens that Fabian i and Joe have from the agency side, you know, building at the enterprise level being a bit different than building for like a consumer prosumer level. And just trying to make sure any blocks there at the enterprise level are things that are shared back with the project, prioritized, well documented and hopefully finding folks to work on those. So you know, concern both for the everyday consumer and enterprise. So I appreciate Tammy Fabian and Birgit firm So I’ll start it today. And I’ll tagtag A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.) Jessica.

3:44  

One. I’m Jessica. I have just started out at Greyd last week. So I’ve been brand new at this company. And we already had some discussion points on how they did extend Block Editor and decided later, specifically the global size at this point and what, that they ran into some issues and like it popped up and was like, Okay, I have to hop on this call. And, like, check with you folks about it a bit. And also, from my perspective, as being the default theme lead for 2024. I’ve got some more details into like, how people build websites, how they want things to be, and maybe what can be enhanced in the future to do so. And yeah, that’s why I’m here. I think Fabian can go next.

6:06  

Sure. Yeah, my name is Fabian, I also work over 10 up focusing half of my time on actual project work and half of my time on actually kind of setting best practices for doing all the extensive extent, stability stuff for the Block Editor, and so forth. And yet, one additional context I just wanted to provide this room with is that a year and a half an hour or so ago, Tammy and I and some others had an earlier installation of a similar meeting, where we spent a lot of time talking in a theoretical sense of just what we could do. And this is a new attempt of starting something similar, but actually looking at tickets and finding a way to, to essentially, we have a list here on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ of 120 issues that many of us have already created. And you’ll find many of the similar names in that list. And finding common things that kind of maybe looking at that list and adding a bit of prioritization to them, so that we can then see whoever has resources available or even talking with the core Gutenberg team of just, these really are the blocking things that not just one agency benefits from not just one person benefits from, but these are the things that really all of us are running into, and kind of actually making sure that we can all provide support with adding context, adding testing, adding code, contributions, adding all of those things in a kind of an organized fashion so that there aren’t maybe 120 issues that we can solve, but there maybe as an outcome for a session like this, three or four that we have a shortlist that we say, Hey, these are ones that we want to focus on, till the next time we meet, if we do decide that this is an ongoing thing, we want to spend a little more time on as as a collective as kind of that that group of folks that come together talking about accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) stuff. But with that, I see we have somebody else who joined Jacqueline,

8:15  

he’s opening late zoom decided to update the moment I tried to join the call as this difficult. So I work Automattic I’d literally just joined Automattic to like weeks ago and the Wu team. And we’re having a lot of discussions about blocks and extensibility and everything that was being talked about here. And I’m a developer advocate, and I can advocate for developers about understanding what developers are talking about. So a lot of what I’m trying to do is just get my head around everything. And we’re kind of save everything. So I’m probably gonna do a lot of listening and not a ton of talking if that’s okay. But I’d love to just understand what’s kind of being discussed. Welcome,

8:53  

welcome. Yeah. So my name is Birgit Pauli-Haack. I’m a run the site that’s called Gutenberg Times and have been observing the Gutenberg Project for quite a while, six years now. And I’m also working for Automattic as a developer advocate. And as that I really want to bridge the gaps between what the Bridgestone gap Yeah, between the extent the agencies over extensibility to the Block Editor, developers, if that’s possible, and I. So that’s why I also wants to do this full time. So it’s always hard for someone like Fabian or Pammy, who have other work to do or work to do to keep the ball rolling and to manage these kinds of things. And I just wanted to facilitate this as an on maybe ongoing it’s depending on what we designed to do here. Ongoing kind of check in or work environment on X To the extensibility issues are directly connected to the goodwill project. Yeah, that’s my involvement here. I think the next part of it would be to, to think about not so much processes. But I, I understand that Fabian and Jamie really worked and there was no real outcome, there was no real progress on getting some of the issues solved. So maybe we could create an was a do Fabian, who kind of, maybe we can have a project board where we kind of organize the issues and the, and track the progress on the issue through the different stages of it. And I know, we all kind of project manager or have been in project management situation. So I think we know GitHub, and that’s the most public thing to do. What do you think about that? You can just raise your hand to say yes. To Joe. No, there were several reasons.

11:20  

And I just wanted to back up what was said before that, we’ve all the best intentions, I think a lot of us have had the same conversations over and over again, which is really awesome that we are having the same conversations about like, what should we do? What how do we do it, but the idea of this with the board and other things was to have less issues or have more organized issues. So I have a plus one, studying to do that studying to try and grouping was mentioned, that is so important, working out whether anything still is a valid issue or not. Because working out whether something is extensibility, even defining what that word means, I have had about 20 different definitions. So that me about what that word is to people. It’s like people describing the elephant in the fable when people are describing what they want. And using that word, it really is. So that is also something for us to kind of work on. And it’s where it’s the middle ground, and what is wanted from that as well. So there’s a whole load of stuff on there. And I’m going to pass it to Jonah.

12:28  

Thanks. Yeah, I’m, I am curious, for those of you who have been sort of championing this effort, and in previous iterations, what were the things that kept you from being successful last time. Like, I think organization of issues and, you know, ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. scrubs, and those sorts of things are super important and helpful. But I’m curious if that is actually the problem that needs to be fixed in order for things to improve. Or if there were other issues that that caused that effort to stall, I

13:07  

can give a couple of reflections and lack of time, from the people who wants to be involved. Trying to coordinate time was always a complete nightmare, either from people who are involved in the agency side, or people who are involved on the call side, and just trying to align those calendars and trying to get their way. But it’s even for this meeting has been. And so we really need to be smart about a thing for whatever we do here, i plus one that and not rely on real meetings, like as in physical meetings, for it. Also, interest, I think, has been conversations rather than results who have also been something so talking around the point over and over again, and then having another conversation, say a month later that you have to then catch up on the conversation to get up to date, rather than just continuing it. So really, what you will probably need is I hate the words but working group or we’ve got a group of people that are working through something, getting it delivered, and then just shipping stuff that’s probably just as simple as we need here. And not be too like fancy with this. And those are my reflections on it, that it’s just been felt too big and too much of a thing that we need to define and we need to conquer. And then hundreds of tickets is daunting, despite its existence, and

14:32  

Nick surfer just jumping in here. The one thing that I wanted to add on the previous calls is that I think we tried to be too high level and on the high level conversations where we nobody could share actual client work they’re working on which always is the case with with these projects. And oftentimes in in this agency world, we’re working on a site for half a year or a year where not running the current version of the good work plug in, we’re running kind of core maybe version behind the current cycle, or something like that. And so by the time that a site is released, you can actually share case that in a just public room, it core has moved on three versions at that point. And that made it very difficult, because we were trying to talk at that higher level. And that, that is the thing that I would want to try, kind of, for this iteration, I was hoping that will really we can all add view issues to that issue board, we can all do that separately, we can all kind of champion our organizations to raise those types of things with the frustrations are. But then. And this is where also, kind of none of us have the time currently, or are sponsored enough to have a real a huge time investment to champion large tickets. So it is more kind of small wins that we’re trying to get it here. But for those small wins. And this is probably going to be the most difficult thing. But if we can, as a group decide, hey, this is a small subset of features that we can agree are right now important ones. And then kind of as a group focusing on those, or just even getting something reviewed in the Gutenberg repo. And in all of open source can sometimes take forever. And I think that is where having this group where we can decide, hey, this is something we want to take a look on, we have some core, or we have some committers of the repo where we can actually get reviews, make sure we’re kind of utilizing the people that we have here in a more efficient, smart manner to actually kind of move some of that stuff forward. But that’s may also be just unrealistic. I’m not sure. Nick?

17:08  

Yeah, no, I think. Now, granted, I’ve been involved in this project, much less than someone who’s on this call. But I have found that extensibility tickets actually like the hardest to get through. Much harder than like bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. fixes, or even new features for that matter. And the feedback that I’ve heard is that implementation and other extensibility feature has like an implicit expectation that, like, for example, I’ve seen there’s a bunch of issues, I can actually find one here about how like, there’s a, there’s a constant in and the gallery block that sets the maximum number of columns, or you can have, and someone posted a ticket wanting to, you know, a filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. or something to be able to modify that. If a filter is implemented that and people are gonna start using it, and then that means it needs to be maintained, forever. And so I think I’ve heard that there’s a lot of reticence around things like that, that might have a relatively minor impact benefit on the project, but also create some sort of maintenance burden in the future, and maybe chord changes, and the gallery block completely gets rewritten, who knows. And then that caused all sorts of problems. So I think that we have the expertise and the knowledge from you all working with agencies and whatnot, to try and prioritize this list of extensibility issues to the ones that are like, the most impactful, the ones that are really, yeah, maybe you can’t have a 10 column gallery block, but like things that like really impact, you know, agencies in larger organizations from adopting this. So I kind of look at this project as a way to kind of prioritize that big list of 100 down to the ones that even if they are more, if even if they’re like a bigger issue to solve, and they take longer to solve. It has a really huge impact on folks building sites for clans. That’s my two cents.

19:07  

Yeah, two sinks. So I asked if Mamanuca would join, who’s a major contributor and also mentor of new contributors on the project, and he had a dentist appointment, so he’s not in a think he would rather be here than at the dentist. So he is excused but he will watch the recording and also comment on whatever the outcome is. The second one is, I also asked Jay Ghosh, a Greg sulkowski. And he’s super interested in these also major influencers. It’s a Gutenberg Project. super interested in that extensibility discuss discussion as well and could definitely be a resource to get the input from the project to move Here’s the best way to go. So that was the two things that I wanted to mention, as well. I also know that was the adminadmin (and super admin) design extensibility is always on the forefront of the developers. Because I know that that’s one of the big things that they need to get right, for that part. But that doesn’t mean that Block Editor shouldn’t be. Yeah, not ignored, but neglected. So I would want to what I wanted to do, if you’re okay with it, kind of spend maybe five to 10 minutes to look at the list of things. And come up, each one of you was the top three things that you think would be high impact and low hanging fruit, either one of those two, go through that and just spent the time? I don’t know, 10 minutes if that’s okay. And goes through the two links that I wanted to share with you. One Nick already shared? What was it about Fabian? Was it there was extensibility? Sheila, that’s the one here, I think. And then there was, and those are issues sorted by thumbs up. But that doesn’t mean that that’s just one criteria. But it gives you at least some markers for that. And the other one is it blocks adoption, which is not always labeled also extensibility. But it might be that they’re low hanging fruits, there isn’t too much to look at to lose in 10 minutes. Okay, let’s do the first one first. Tammy, like it’s too much for 110 minutes. So let’s do the first one first. And where do we share it? Yeah, we can share it in chat. So we know what everybody’s kind of looking at. And just bring in so everybody knows, somebody does that as well.

22:24  

I think looking at the actual issues and raising one’s kind of that we individually to see as impactful and have found I think that is a good thing. But have we actually kind of do we want to create a ticket board where we actually want to just add the prioritization for them or do we want to start with just a Google doc where we’re sharing some of those and can can

22:51  

i Okay, yeah,

22:54  

I agree. Yeah.

22:57  

I mean, I’m ripping that band aid off and just like if we can just get a board and just get them there. Someone can tell us off for the board like ask permission later. I feel I don’t know if you’re like let’s create a board

23:09  

I’m gonna I’m getting a board

23:14  

nobody would call that back to skip the recording of where we said the board the board the board is it like

23:22  

the project right? You want to project board Yeah.

23:29  

I think in the long run project board will be very useful for this I mean, as we handle it to kind of triage accessibility issues so I don’t think it’s that controversial thing No, I’m

23:40  

joking. I’m making it a big issue for me said we could do

23:49  

so it’s a new board

23:53  

I think that the ones that Jeff shared earlier are pretty good as well. I think I was the one about adding like a toolbar slot top bar slot for folks would be this I know Ryan in our team here I’ll share it again. So

24:11  

I think we need quiet 10 minutes okay. I’m sorry but everybody.

24:49  

Evening Think if you find issues you can actually add them to the project directly and then we can kind of go into a list and I added already some thought this was supposed to be quiet 10 minutes break on herself Give me a break

28:57  

is your board GB extensibility because there’s another project called extensibility that’s closed just because we’re confusing everybody

29:07  

extensive bility route somebody needs to spell check those things

29:23  

Yeah, I didn’t have a real name for it that just kind of Yeah. What did you add that

31:04  

To think to 10 minutes are over no good. So alright, let’s go through the comments here. Yes, pharyngeal right there is definitely ReactReact React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/. should be, I think real needs to come concrete, then have questions answers for that link for the

31:38  

recording purposes Fabians comment in the chat was Riyadh would also be a great person to talk to about this because he’s able to share a lot of the concerns why stuff isn’t very extensibleExtensible This is the ability to add additional functionality to the code. Plugins extend the WordPress core software. in many cases, just adding a context.

31:49  

And, Jeff, thank you.

31:52  

So there was a discussion two years ago that we started in the Gutenberg repository that is also linked there, where it was phrased as a proposal for more extensibility. And that there’s a comment from React that is really thorough on just some of the reasons why extensibility may not always be the first thing that comes to mind what the implications for longevity and kind of refactor ability and performance. And all of those things are in the editor today. And so I think those are also a lot of the things that we’re running into with these, with these issues of just, how can we introduce this without making a pain for all of us in the future, or making it non performance or kind of what I learned kind of the one takeaway that I got from that discussion, and some others with React in similar tickets was using a methodology of registration and registration, versus kind of filtering, in many cases, with the Block Editor, because a lot of the stuff, something that the editor tries to avoid is having. Allowing you as the developer to change a specific location because the location may change. And so you wanted to kind of filter something by the semantic region, and not direct location, but it’s very abstract.

33:30  

Was this part of this also? Defining and helping people know where not the line because there’s never going to be a definite line on what is it sensibility or what isn’t sensibility, but what can be expected or, because I think one of these problems, while a lot of people do talk a little bit is, or at least, like I’m wanting to reflect that, right, that can be felt is 100 issues. And that can feel like I’m asking for things, and they’re never gonna get added. And that’s probably quite fair that some of these don’t get added, right? Because then they’re not going to every case or they’re not gonna stay, they’re sitting like, what somebody’s might do one case, or they might even not be valid anymore, all these kinds of things, right, all these factors. Are there, whatever alternative approaches, so some definition, even almost I could issue template for extensibility. I don’t know. But defining and surfacing those discussions that you’re saying a little bit more, I think would really help. I’ve had that same discussion over and over again of what is extensibility? What should we report? How should we report internally, where I am now, over and over again? And I think everybody is within agencies and everybody is where they are about how do you know and I think it’s a good thing. But we don’t, you know, it’s about trying to get the best approaches in and no one wants to be saying no, this doesn’t go in. It’s about trying to get The mean, in the best possible way. That was a meaning in there. But it’s also just like it’s overwhelming with all this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and no definition, because everybody’s describing it completely differently. And not knowing all that history. There’s so much history and the discussion of extensibility. And it’s changing. Because we’re talking about an agency, we have to bear in mind that there are extensibility, from people who want to build products, who people who want to do other different things, who are in rapidly different situations. And that’s just going to change, the more instances that the editor goes into and wants to kind of be used into is going to be different people are going to want to extend in different, different situation.

35:47  

One of the things kind of looking at the actual board right now that I personally would find very helpful, though it is a slippery slope, because it’s hard to enforce. And everybody has different opinions. But we’ve already done in the chat here, adding impact and level of effort to the various tickets, because they’re looking through a list. I think they’re probably between five and 10 tickets that are our things. Yes, they are correctly labeled as extensibility issues. They are I would almost say developer experience issues in a way where it is technically already possible. It’s just not super straightforward. You have to there’s a lot of repetitive code, there’s a lot of stuff that you have to do, but you can already achieve it. Those things. Yeah, adding a new APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. is something that can make that a lot easier. But a lot of the things that kind of I think there’s the differentiation between is something not possible at all, or is something just difficult. And I think that is one interesting differentiation, that I’ve factored into kind of how I choose tickets, because most of the time, if it is possible, then maybe the prioritization for making it easier, is not as high as something that isn’t directly possible. But I may, I may also be off here,

37:24  

that’d be blunt, they creep into your hand, or did you know, okay.

37:32  

I don’t know why that was up there.

37:35  

Because you wouldn’t see. I think everybody’s like, do you wanna speak? I don’t know, like, it’s kind of gonna get to the combat. And I feel like I’m like committing some project management sin or something. But we could flag somehow the needs testing needs, documenting that it’s just needs documenting that this is the way that you can do it in the ticket. And that could be the approach that you take to strip these out a little bit, rather than just having a big lump of things.

38:06  

Yeah, I think focusing on things that are not possible, is probably in our best interest. And I mean, you know, developer advocates in the room, I guess I’m putting on myself can go in and try and document how you would do these complicated things.

38:19  

You want to triage free now, and just do that, because I love some action. This is what February and we were having a discussion at WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Jeremy’s and exactly what we were talking about, like, action still

38:29  

I added to so somebody added already impact to as as as a field to the project. And I added also effort to it. So if there are nine, nine issues in there, and if you can, I don’t know, show it just kind of vote on a high middle low, or something like that. For each one of them, then we have already a board there. And then we can say okay, the other set come in. We also can divide up on the Kanban board, but

39:08  

you’d be proud I’d love to just plant now the things that Nick and ever develop dev well about for documenting and just get them out and then we can focus on the other ones. Okay,

39:18  

kick them out.

39:22  

I don’t think there’s anything in there now that falls in that bucket.

39:33  

So we also could have a status needs documenting.

39:40  

Right. I think those tickets already are of the type developer documentation and extensibility and there are 234 and that kind of even if you just change the filtering to exclude those like this, this element right here is one One of those that when you see this is all there, it just needs to be documented. Okay, and an example of the thing that I was seeing this issue that are just their churches now the ad has block style function. Yeah, that would be a nice quality of life improvement. But using the HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. tag processor, you can already just check for the style, check for the class name. And if it is there, do your thing. And so that is a low effort, but also low impact. I would say it may be saving you a bit of code here and there. Which one could say it’s less error prone or whatnot, but probably also low, low impact.

40:48  

Exactly. This is a great example of one that I’m like, yeah, be nice. But there’s more important things to probably focusing.

40:58  

Said one of the ones that are in on the project already, or I’ve totally missed, missed the plot. Sorry, I’m kind of

41:06  

it’s on the project board right now. Okay.

41:07  

Good. I don’t have to look at that. We had another person join our meeting. Jacob or Jakob, would you like to just briefly introduce yourself? And why are you here? can certainly unmute? Yeah.

41:27  

Yeah. Sorry.

41:30  

Yeah, I’m way too late to this meeting to be honest. Yeah. As high priority tickets coming in just minutes before the meeting. So it’s

41:44  

kind of, yeah, we

41:45  

know each other. Kind of. We’ve seen each other no, I’m just I’m just joining here to to kind of like check out what, what I can bring to this meeting, or what you guys are discussing. We’re obviously just to introduce myself, we are extending the Block Editor build a product, based on the Block Editor, mostly? Yeah. And extending some blogs extending the side of the tour trying to at least, and yeah, just doing our best. And when you

42:12  

say we did I miss it? Or did you miss it?

42:18  

From the company great. We’re based in Munich. And

42:24  

Jessica is already here. Yeah. Cool. But okay, thank you. So where were we

42:37  

watching the boring,

42:39  

low impact low, and

42:40  

I asked so that the people who are watching the recording, see it because someone share their screen, because faces are beautiful and amazing. But watching a screen is so much better. So

42:53  

this is the I’m sharing the screen. We have now the accessibility board and view one. And there are 12 issues in here that have been selected. And now we are going to and then there are each issue could have a click here an impact and an effort. And that’s where we’re gonna do now. And have everybody go to the issues and give them low, high middle or low, high middle impact effort.

43:33  

Maybe one thing that could help us doing a synchronously here I’d know is actually, yeah, we have effort and impact. But I think high medium, low means something different to all of us. And maybe adding somewhere in the description just a quick Hey, this is what it actually means. And this is what we think would then help make that call or we need

43:58  

to define that otherwise, we’re okay with the elephant again.

44:01  

So what do you want to want me to write for impact I?

44:16  

I guess the reason why I’m saying this, the reason why I if we label all of these impacts higher that doesn’t add any value to nobody, if we’re kind of what we’re trying to do here is come together as a group and say, Hey, for our work, these issues are the ones that actually would make our lives in the enterprise a lot easier. And if we just leave everything is high impact, that doesn’t help any of us

44:43  

totally agree. So what makes it high or middle or low impact?

44:58  

Doesn’t have to be fair, we don’t say that. But But yeah, so

45:07  

the backup just a second is the goal for us to have basically anything that’s labeled extensibility. Beyond this board. And then, for example, like we were talking about the one that maybe would be nice to have as a solution, would that just be listed as like, low priority? Because I’m thinking about, like, a lot of the items in the list list, I would, so far that we’ve added, seem to me kind of like medium to high. And some of the low ones aren’t on the list. So it might be nice to have a board that has everything, but then we triage based

45:50  

on the fact that I think a good outcome from this will be to add everything. I’m not so sure about the prioritization, I think that that might come totally, that can come with like, I almost want to group it into things and think about like, releases and grouping it into things. Because I will be like, Okay, this, like 6.5, what’s going on in there? What could we group together? What are people focusing on feature wise in the core team? What can we get in that? sensibility that kind of is a companion that while they’re working in that area, what can we all get in, in that area, or something like that, that’s like, maybe a kind of good way of working and getting people’s contribution. But also, one getting everything in one working out what’s needs testing was even valid anymore, or what’s old and just sat, there would be a good idea, because there’s a lot just sat there, that probably isn’t even valid anymore? What needs better descriptions? And what is the game, and what just needs documentation and shouldn’t even be sat there? And we should just puntpunt Contributors sometimes use the verb "punt" when talking about a ticket. This means it is being pushed out to a future release. This typically occurs for lower priority tickets near the end of the release cycle that don't "make the cut." In this is colloquial usage of the word, it means to delay or equivocate. (It also describes a play in American football where a team essentially passes up on an opportunity, hoping to put themselves in a better position later to try again.) To be honest, because we should be okay about pending stuff and saying, Okay, that’s an issue for that. It’s just not gonna get in there. So

47:07  

what do we do with a sport? Get everything in there and then work asynchronously? Over the week on it? Or? Yeah, but if you want to work on it, we need to probably have those columns. Also. There is no needs documentation or not valid anymore. Well, no valid is kind of kicked, but you probably want to, I don’t know. Um, so first, we were kind of on the track to prioritize things to do high impact, low hanging fruits. And so that’s one idea for putting those issues on the board, to weed out all the things that are at the moment, not interesting, or that are not packable, or it’s just kind of to to right now, it’s about 10% of all the issues. But it seems that there is a good group of 12 issues to solve, and to move forward. I’m not sure about everything, if you go back to a backlog. That is, yeah. Unless it’s, it’s not really helpful. The time when, when it’s kind of but I get your point where you say, we need to kind of whittle through that if they’re still valid, or if they’re still necessary. But I think that’s a secondary task to do. I think it’s more like, okay, what are high priority, low impact, high impact, low effort, things that we can then discuss this and see how we can get them solved. But, yeah, I’m just a facilitator and kind of, but I also know that one of the things was outcome specific. Fast wins, if not, quick wins. Yeah. If so, I’m not quite sure if we have the two directions, not be detrimental to each other.

49:22  

Maybe just for the prioritization, one. One thought that I wanted to share is looking at this ticket which no I don’t want to share my own thing but I think it points to something that I shared in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. right now it’s the provide a way to extend customized global stealth sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme.. That is something that I personally would categorize as a high impact because even with all the time the world’s creating a custom solution for this right now is not really possible yet. It can try but it that is something that just isn’t possible. will inquire I’d know, whilst another element is in there the navigation block allowing extending the list of inner blocks, it’s also not possible that you can always build your own custom navigation block that is an output you have, you have an alternative way of doing something, it’s not ideal. And I would love for the navigation blogblog (versus network, site) to be much more extensible. But that is something that I would maybe categorize as a medium impact item. Yeah, we’re wasting a ton of time doing it. But it is kind of from my perspective, the way that I was looking at the prioritization and that I’ve been thinking about it is np achieved at all today, versus there is maybe a way around it with a medium thing that still cost a ton of time. And then there is a ticket in there somewhere for adding adding a custom date format to the post date block, adding a custom post date block for a project where you need that is probably a five hour ticket. Yeah, it’s not great. Now, I’d rather use the core block, but it’s maybe a low impact, low impact ticket, just to share my the way that I’ve been thinking about those. And I do think we’re our group here, the actual contribution that we’re doing code contributions, we likely won’t be getting at any of those high impact items. But the value that we’re adding here is sharing across the board that those are tickets that all of us are running into, so that we can advocate for them so that others can join in the efforts to maybe resolve them or prioritize them for not for another for the next release or for a future release, versus kind of those lower medium impact ones where we could actually do the code contribution or results.

52:10  

Just speaking when I put in the chat, so potentially what I’m hearing there, Fabian is maybe we spend time advocating for the high impact things or high priority backs. And and but we efforts otherwise focused engineering wise on the low hanging ones that perhaps are easier to move along to done.

52:30  

Add value by actually working on low value thing by low and low impact, lower impact things and then sharing things that are higher impact that we are all running into.

52:46  

Yeah, go ahead.

52:48  

No, I agree. And I think that great examples, that navigation walk and I actually was talking to some other folks who are working on Navigation block recently about this, where the navigation block was perhaps in a lot of flux in the last few years. But now it’s a little bit more standardized. And this limitation and Marin, not being able to create your own custom navigation item block and insert it into the navigation block is observed at this point. So I think that like really advocating in providing, like use cases like hey, we need this, because XYZ I think would really help move some of this stuff forward and, and focus prioritization on some of the core teams to get this stuff done. So more and more being more vocal about it and providing examples about why this is preventing X, Y and Z from moving forward.

53:37  

Yeah, I like that list. Thank you for it. Jeff, for the the issues already connected with a PR, I think those are the ones where we can very fast, pretty much see if that’s something that can be pushed forward. If it’s an important thing, too. Alone commenting on it, commenting on it kind of brings it higher already on the on, on the subscription lists of people that have already kind of moved forward moved on from it, because they put it in on February 2021, which is about two years ago. But it’s still important though, it’s still something that that is missing, and then just get it higher on on the radar again. And was also okay looking at the PR does it have need a review? Does it need to be rebased or this connecting with the with the program or was the developer of the PR might might be one other thing to do to kind of get things forward? So I had the idea to kind of take that list of 16 and put it into in progress as well. If it’s not already in there, and and see if we can kind of triage that through and see, what’s the next step for each one of them is?

55:24  

I think for some of them, because some of them are oh, hold, just having a context comment in the air, like, just like, what is the current state of that ticket based on like, what we know now would be good, like guests. Okay, the first few paragraphs are great, and reading it quickly. But just like, even though, we put it through just saying some context on it, and that that kind of would be good, like, is it something that’s, I don’t know, I’m sticking out the air. But is it something that we absolutely know, in like, middle of next year is gonna get done anyway? And therefore, like, that’s gonna get solved by something or things like that. So I think that making sure each one of those has a next action is really, really critical. Now.

56:12  

I agree. How do you want to approach it?

56:16  

We have quite a few people in this call. You could take some ownerships. Yeah.

56:20  

But we are also an hour in and out to a meeting. Yeah. So

56:27  

yeah, that’s the homework. So we have a board. And if you have some time, go for that board. And maybe it say like, in probably three weeks, just to be gentle, because we have a lot of people here, full time contributors, three or four weeks, four weeks, probably really nice. Because it’s tis the season for like, not much spare time for people. And I think like, no one’s like, panicky. And always plus, to be gentle to people who are doing turkeys. Just bear in mind, and maybe even say in the new year we meet again or something like that, just to be super gentle about it. Because really, all we need to say the New Year mate, because honestly, light is not the season to me.

57:11  

Yeah, but it’s also the season where I don’t know, an agency work form. When I did agency work, it slowed down in

57:21  

America days, because that holiday. But people also actually go in to have time off with their families. And I want to be respectful for that. Right. Right. Right. Yeah.

57:31  

But yeah, so I, I would go and beginning of December. That’s

57:39  

good. Maybe, maybe we just have a check in the beginning of December. It’s like I was still alive. How’s he baubles?

57:46  

Yeah. Do you uh, do you want to check in on a Zoom meeting or just a asynch. Chicken, how we’re gonna man, this is a new group. And so we can all kind of do whatever we want.

58:01  

I’d advocate for the synchronous was nice today, especially being able to screen share and look at things together. And my comment in the chat, I would advocate if like, if anybody identify something in the intervening three weeks that perhaps we could all swarm on, even if it’s just like a Doc’s thing, right? Like, that is moving something forward, right? Even if it’s just minimal, so perhaps just like a 15 minute check in of like, hey, who has something that we think could be worked on? And then we, you know, if anybody feels passionate or interested, like actually dive in and try and get that done? You know, like, even just one thing by the end of the year would be, I think successful, right? It’s a low bar, but it’s a bar. Yeah.

58:43  

Okay. Cool. So any other thoughts?

58:50  

Well, I’ll just speak for myself. In the intervening weeks, just try and allocate some time to go through the issues test, if they’re still valid, add them to the board, add comments, that sort of thing. So I’ll try and allocate some time for that. Just trying to chip away at some of the stuff.

59:08  

I think if you can find duplicates upon anything, that’s also good, so if anyone wants to get some punting relief, that also could be something you could take, because honestly, like, if you can prove isn’t an issue anymore, that’s good is just as valid. Like you might think every ticket needs to know. So that that’s good as well. And I almost want to recommend that we do do an issue template for accessibility and clarify what it is just so that we’re kind of clear for people but that’s a totally never conversation.

59:43  

And the one thing that I do think would be really good for all of us to also take away from this and get reminded off again, is one of the most valuable thing we can do to all of these tickets is actually sharing context sharing reasons why this is impacting Yes. And that is with us as the representatives of the various agencies or plugins or other businesses that are extremely editor. If I look at 90% of these issues, even the ones that run our level is high impact. I don’t see a lot of us commenting there and kind of sharing descriptions of why they’re impactful, nothing. If we label something as high impact in here, that should deserve a comment with some detail of just why we feel that way, why we think it is high impact, so that even if it isn’t ourselves, somebody can actually help fix it and knows the context of why you were so passionate about it.

1:00:47  

Yeah, and I plus one, that you don’t have to share client work to do that either. When I wasn’t working in agency space, I had no idea what I did, or I thought I could infer, or I thought they did, but I didn’t have the insights, the people who are working in that space, too. And it’s not just agencies, people building products, people extending it, literally. So that’s, that is what’s needed to ask someone to judge something when they don’t understand it is unfair to that person, and it’s unfair to have that conversation. And you’re not necessarily going to get the answer that you want, you’re gonna get the answer that is going to be confused. And you’re not talking clearly. So use like the job to be done framework or something like that be really clear about what, why it’s of use, why it’s got impact, why it needs to happen, not just for your instant, so your thing, why it kind of expands out because a lot of times when someone reports it, they’re like, I need this will turn pivot out from the eye to the we like as project need this because this is what it could open up for and those kinds of situations and show that and that’s going to help them that’s part of maybe what we can do on some of these tickets is look at is and I’ve seen quite a few tickets, which are very narrow in their definition. So maybe adding some like context to why this thing should happen. would also be an evidence would be really good as well.

1:02:17  

Yeah. Yeah, I think that was a good closing remarks for today’s meeting. Thank you all for coming. We will share the recording. And I see that I get a summary done next week. But and share the board with that and also share what you’re going to do with the board. I also going to go through the 16 issues, Jeff shared that are already linked to br so we can all kind of move forward and get get him on the board. Well, thank you all and you all have a wonderful weekend. You’re such a great people to work with. Thank you so much. Bye