Paul Bearne 7:21 pm on December 19, 2023

Proposal: Add company icons to sponsored contributors on about page

To do this will need to ask for small icon (eg. favicon) or fetch
some aria-hidden markup and hover title etc.

I am suggesting this to encourage companies to support WP more and so user can see where the support is coming from.

Thoughts

This was prematurely published and a new/updated proposal will be coming soon
and I have been ask to expand this

Olga Gleckler 7:57 pm on December 19, 2023

I have another, but related thought. There is no place to actually see release contributors apart from the About page Contributors tab, and this information cannot be Googled. So, the only way you can share your achievements is actually to make a screenshot of the About page. There is no information about contribution to the release in your WordPress profile, either. So, if you didn’t write yourself that you made something, it will not be there. I wonder if making this information about contribution more visible and accessible will make contribution more appealing in the first place, otherwise adding information to your profile yourself looks a bit like bragging. I suppose most contributors are not doing this.
- Paul Bearne 10:46 pm on December 19, 2023
  
  Yes, I agree maybe we can add that on
  There was an ask at the State of the WordState of the Word This is the annual report given by Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress at WordCamp US. It looks at what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and the future of WordPress. https://wordpress.tv/tag/state-of-the-word/. for a more permanent record of contributions so that might be the answer.
- David Levine 11:27 pm on December 19, 2023
  
  Love the idea of adding this info to profiles. Would make it a lot easier to know who you’re speaking to on support/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/./tracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress./anywhere really.
  - Jonathan Desrosiers 4:44 pm on December 21, 2023
    
    I agree that surfacing more details about a contributor’s history on their profile is a great idea!
    
    I also think that an official location to visualize the data in the Credits 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 another neat idea. But, I would like to point out that there are some 3rd party sites that already do this. One that I always reference is DisplayWP. As an example, here is the 6.4 release page on that site.
    
    We do have the official documentation pages for each release (example of 6.4). Historically, only the minor releases have listed all of the contributors (see 6.4.1). The major releases typically only list the release squads.
    
    I think it’s a fair ask that we list all contributors on each major releasemajor release A release, identified by the first two numbers (3.6), which is the focus of a full release cycle and feature development. WordPress uses decimaling count for major release versions, so 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, and 3.1 are sequential and comparable in scope. page in some way. I also wonder if there are any structured data schemas we could use to better surface who is listed and why.
    - Aaron Jorbin 5:23 pm on December 21, 2023
      
      I completely agree with and wish to add to Mr. Desrosiers’ comment. The release posts do list all contributors. For example, see the giant blue box at the bottom of the 6.4 post.
      
      If someone needs to reference that they are a contributor, that is an easy way. I would say a better way is to link to the specific contributions on tracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress./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//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/./etc. since it allows folks to see the the full extent that a person contributes.
      - Marcus Burnette 10:11 pm on December 23, 2023
        
        Just jumping in here to say that this has also been added to The WP World. For example, here is the 6.4 release contributors page: https://thewp.world/wordpress-6-4-contributors/
        
        These exist back to 5.0 currently.
        
        And, if you’re in The WP World, your contributions show up on your Presser profile. Here’s a profile, for example, for @afragen who’s contributed to many releases as you can see (make sure you’re on desktop view): https://thewp.world/presser/andy-fragen/
        
        Also, from 5.0 to present so far.
        
        Andy Fragen 11:24 pm on December 23, 2023
        
        Hey Marcus, cool example.
        
        I also think a way or an 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. to list all WP versions the person contributed to is a great idea.
        
        Jonathan Desrosiers 6:00 pm on January 3, 2024
        
        Thanks Marcus! That’s really neat and reaffirms how I personally feel. If we surface data in a usable way, the community will always come up with creative ways to present it!
David Levine 11:25 pm on December 19, 2023

This is a huge boon for transparency. Love it!
Thomas Cloer 3:30 pm on December 20, 2023

Thumbs up!
Torsten Landsiedel 8:18 am on December 21, 2023

I don’t think this design will work for every logo and just a favicon is not clear in every case. Not sure if this is helpful to achieve what you are trying to do with this proposal.

A place where the credits for each release are available seems to be more helpful as already mentioned.

Also, showing the company logo diminishes the work of all those freelancers who are contributing to WordPress.
- Paul Bearne 12:55 pm on December 21, 2023
  
  I have been a freelancer for most of my time working on coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and an image without a logo clearly marks as self funded
  
  I do hear about the Favicon not being clear. but I am planning to have a hover action with more detail and I did want to use the full logos as this is meant to just be a nod to the companies. We are celebrating the people on this page, not the companies.
Jonathan Desrosiers 4:37 pm on December 21, 2023
As someone who is heavily involved with ensuring contributors receive proper attribution and helps collect props for contributions release to release, I have some pretty strong feelings on this. While I think improving the level of recognition sponsors receive is a worthy idea and something we should explore further, adding company logos to the credits page is not something that the project should do in my opinion. Let me explain a bit.

First, a little bit of historical context. After the props list is compiled for each release, contributors (@jeffpaul, @cbringmann, and myself for at least the last 10-15 releases) go through the list of WP.org accounts on the credits page for that release looking for any accounts that have a display names or logos representing a company or business entity. Those contributors are individually contacted and asked to change their display name to reflect the person behind the account. If the contributors are unwilling to change their display name or GravatarGravatar Is an acronym for Globally Recognized Avatar. It is the avatar system managed by WordPress.com, and used within the WordPress software. https://gravatar.com/., then they are not listed on the credits page. This does not happen often, but does on occasion.

Project leadership has long fought that contributions belong to individuals, not companies or businesses. This is a standard and belief that I firmly stand behind.

An example scenario this aims to discourage is one where a company asks all of their employees to contribute to the project using the same .org account, say “Acme, Inc.”. Not only is this bad practice from a security perspective (accounts should never be shared), but it hides who is actually responsible for comments, change suggestions, tickets, expressed opinions, etc.. It can also make it difficult to determine if someone is being abusive or acting in malicious ways and taking action in those situations.

If someone moves on from Acme, Inc., they also lose their ability to definitively show what they worked on, how they worked on it, and when. Contributors are more than welcome to create accounts like `acme-jack` and `acme-jill`, but their overall identity will change if they change companies.

It’s very important that undesired behavior is deincentivized through any solution we arrive at. For example, we don’t want contributors submitting 100 separate typo fix pull requests every release just to game the props system to be listed as noteworthy so their company logo shows up. While these contributions are important and the project shouldn’t reject any well meaning contributions, we want to make sure that contributions are fueled by the right reasons without ulterior motives.

For anyone that has not yet done so, I recommend reading through the notes from the Increasing contributor recognition and celebration session at the 2023 Community Summit. Individual vs. corporate/business sponsorships and motivations were discussed at length. An approach that I really like is how the Drupal project approaches this problem. They view it as rewarding business entities for good corporate citizenship, which is weighted by the last 90 days, and affects how they’re displayed on drupal.org in a number of ways. As a project, WordPress does not really have officially sanctioned corporate profiles in the same way. Though the 5FTF area of .org is a good start.

With that context aside, here are some reasons why this specific idea is exceptionally difficult:
- Who qualifies as a sponsor? Sponsors aren’t just companies and businesses. There are many individuals that sponsor contributors as peers.
- What qualifies as a sponsorship? There are many ways to “sponsor” someone to contribute. Full-time employment, recurring dollar amounts (such as through 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/ sponsorships), stipends, etc.
- What is the threshold to be considered a sponsor? Can someone sponsor a contributor for $10 a month just to get their logo on this page?
- What happens if a contributor is sponsored by many people? Who’s logo gets priority on this page? Do they all show? How do we prevent this from becoming a full-page newspaper advertisement.
- What happens if a contributor is sponsored during one release by one company but sponsored by a different entity for the next release? Does the logo change for all of the pages their shown on? Does it stay pinned for a specific release?
- If the logo is static for a release, what happens if a business entity dissolves?
- What happens if a contributor moves to 100% unsponsored?
- What if a contributor’s sponsorship is given for a specific goal or contributions. For example, working on WP CLICLI Command Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress.. If they are also shown on the credits page for other contributions to the release, does the company logo show up there?
- What equivalent recognition is there for companies that sponsor areas of the project not represented on the credits page release to release? For example, polyglots (shown when a non-default localeLocale A locale is a combination of language and regional dialect. Usually locales correspond to countries, as is the case with Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil). Other examples of locales include Canadian English and U.S. English. is active but not with avatars), WP CLI, community, etc..
These questions make it clear that an entirely new system or 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. (or extension of the current API) would need to be created in order to facilitate this specific request.

Digressing, the premise of the idea is good, but the specific suggested implementation, in my opinion, is not. I would personally like to see a more holistic exploration for improving and increasing contributor recognition (both individually and for business entities of all sizes) across the entirety of the project.
Helen Hou-Sandi 4:56 pm on December 21, 2023
My initial thought here is that this is not a proposal as-is and therefore is not yet in a place to receive input in this venue. I would expect a proposal of this nature to contain/include the following:
- A list of behaviors you are hoping to influence and why / what they would accomplish
- Clear statements of all positive impact you see this having on those behaviors
- Thoughtful breakdowns of all the negative impact this could have on desired behaviors and existing behaviors and how you would suggest mitigating them
- A clear sense of what are expecting to get out of the comments on a proposal and what you are planning to do with the input
- David Baumwald 5:03 pm on December 21, 2023
  
  +1 These were my initial thoughts also, but couldn’t put them into words. This seems to jump the gun a bit by leaping to a proposal when there should be some sort of discussion and a _sense_ of some consensus among multiple contributors prior to being put forward here.
Aaron Jorbin 5:24 pm on December 21, 2023

-1. Contributions come from individuals, not from companies.
- Satyam Vishwakarma (Satya) 12:03 am on December 23, 2023
  
  Indeed, the contribution comes from individuals, not from companies, but many contributors are sponsored by companies.
  This promotes transparency and potentially encourages more global sponsorship for WordPress.
  It’s a positive initiative that I support, but I’m curious to know about how it’s implemented and the guidelines.
  - David Anderson 2:41 pm on December 23, 2023
    
    If the aim is to promote transparency, then a much higher priority should be to publish a page on wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ listing all wordpress.org peoples’ potential conflicts of interests, and which issues they should thus be expected to recuse themselves from involvement in. Criteria published in advance stops problems having to be resolved and discussed when they’ve arisen.
scofeild 8:31 am on December 28, 2023

The proposal to incorporate small icons, such as favicons, or fetch aria-hidden markup and hover titles, is a commendable initiative. This enhancementenhancement Enhancements are simple improvements to WordPress, such as the addition of a hook, a new feature, or an improvement to an existing feature. not only adds a visual element to the user interface but also serves as a subtle yet effective way to acknowledge and showcase the support received from companies. By encouraging businesses to support WordPress more actively, users can easily identify and appreciate the contributions made by various entities. This thoughtful suggestion aligns with the collaborative spirit of the WordPress community, fostering transparency and recognition. Looking forward to the refined proposal and the positive impact it can bring to the WordPress ecosystem.
Joe McGill 10:34 pm on January 10, 2024

I tend to disagree with this proposal in its current form for a couple of reasons:

1) Over the course of the 9 years I’ve been contributing to WP, my contributions have been both sponsored and unsponsored, and the employers who have sponsored some of my contributions have changed as I’ve moved positions during my career. I would be concerned if previous or future contributions were marked with the logo of whomever my current employer is. Nor should contributions made during a person’s personal time be attributed to their employer just because they are partially sponsored, which is a common scenario in our community.

2) We already have clear ways for individuals to identify whether their contributions are sponsored on their WP.org Profile, which link to the Five for the Future pledges. Perhaps there are better ways to use this info to recognize organizations that are sponsoring WordPress, similar to the outstanding roundups @audrasjb has been producing over the past several years, like this one or even directly in release credits?

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Communication

Proposal: Add company icons to sponsored contributors on about page

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Communication

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