I was heavily involved with Wordpress from about 2006 to 2012. I made it do things it was never designed to do before a lot of plugins like this existed. It was garbage then and it’s still garbage now. I stopped using it primarily because I saw what a cluster fuck the internals were and how out of control the plugin upsell ecosystem became. There were inklings of this behavior from the supreme leader too, like believing theme sales were antithetical to the entire point of WP. So I jumped ship with a real bad taste in my mouth and never looked back. I’ve tried it a handful of times over the year and it still looks like the same turd with a few more layers of polish. Still won’t scale out of the box without caching plugins.
The irony of this entire situation is Matt didn’t even make Wordpress. It was forked from a blogging engine called b2. How’s that expression go? You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
What an ego trip... now I'll definitely stop considering WordPress, even if it perfectly fills the use-case (mine or client's).
I know it was frustrating for Automattic to see WPEngine as a leecher, but to be this hostile and volatile does not inspire confidence. What if you had a WP instance hosted by Automattic and said something the leadership does not approve? Will you get banned with no way of recovering your website? (Ghost had a similar story.)
he must be having a legit mental breakdown. i do not understand any of these decisions done so haphazardly with no regard to users or their current situation, even if that was the direction they were moving. basically, telegraphing that he will personally go out and fuck up your day if you cross him. pettiness to the nth degree right here.
At first we were saying it as a joke, but I am increasingly seriously wondering just how many famous people in the Valley are in various stages of stimulant psychosis, considering how widespread the joking-not-joking talk is about liberally using Adderall etc. to maximize "the grind".
Well, an essential part of psychiatric diagnosis is often to notice the presence of a noticeable before/after change. Psychosis, mania, are valid hypothesis that would make a CEO take surprising decision.
I don't see how that belittles the struggle of patients. Having and company and being bipolar is far from life on easy mode.
Greed and incompetence are also valid hypothesis, although don't necessarily need an abrupt change in behavior.
he could be all of them? i'm basing this off the fact that he was able to run and build it up to what it is today, then suddenly going off the rails. more of me grasping at an explanation than a declaration of truth heh.
Aside: each and every post about Wordpress on HN over the past couple of days has been downweighted basically to oblivion (I expect this one to vanish from anywhere near the front page very soon). Is there a reason for this? The topic is rapidly evolving and is relevant to the HN community.
> The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.
> Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.
It could also be moderator action.
My most viral submission suddenly dropped from the top story to page 8, despite having far more points than anything else on that page, and only being a few hours old. I suspect this happened because it was a negative post about Amazon. The comments were not overheated. Most posters agreed with my sentiment.
> If you use WordPress for a living, I recommend strongly that you consider changing platforms.
I initially thought this as well. There are alternatives but unless those alternatives are 100% API compatible with WP plugins and themes nothing is going to happen. Wordpress users and devs will continue to use WP. business as usual. Matt knows this.
I don't know much about WordPress, but it's pretty amazing to me how much staying power it's had. It seemed crusty, bloated and not long for this world 10 years ago to me.
Matt also knows that the messy WordPress API (both actions and filters) is difficult to integrate into a well-architected software project as a plug-and-play mechanism.
Readit News
Lots more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821400
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821336
The irony of this entire situation is Matt didn’t even make Wordpress. It was forked from a blogging engine called b2. How’s that expression go? You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
I know it was frustrating for Automattic to see WPEngine as a leecher, but to be this hostile and volatile does not inspire confidence. What if you had a WP instance hosted by Automattic and said something the leadership does not approve? Will you get banned with no way of recovering your website? (Ghost had a similar story.)
First, blaming things on “mental breakdowns” is incredibly lazy and shallow and belittles the struggle that people with mental illness have.
Did you ever stop to think that maybe this guy is just greedy, or an incompetent CEO?
I don't see how that belittles the struggle of patients. Having and company and being bipolar is far from life on easy mode.
Greed and incompetence are also valid hypothesis, although don't necessarily need an abrupt change in behavior.
Overheated discussions get demoted. I think the idea is that the comments should support discussion of the content, but not usurp it.
> The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.
> Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.
It could also be moderator action.
My most viral submission suddenly dropped from the top story to page 8, despite having far more points than anything else on that page, and only being a few hours old. I suspect this happened because it was a negative post about Amazon. The comments were not overheated. Most posters agreed with my sentiment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821336
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821400
And that's just on this development. Each stage of this crazy story has had plenty of views and discussion here.
There's flagging a post, but that would show up next to the post - do you have any examples?
https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=41791369
https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=41815614
https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=41821336
Note the orange line indicating rank, which in every case shows a very sudden and precipitous drop in the rank of each post.
I initially thought this as well. There are alternatives but unless those alternatives are 100% API compatible with WP plugins and themes nothing is going to happen. Wordpress users and devs will continue to use WP. business as usual. Matt knows this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821336 ("Secure Custom Fields by WordPress.org (wordpress.org)"; 11 hours ago, 153 comments)
Matt, if you read this...
:(
Decided to seek out the absolute antithesis of WordPress after this experience, and don't wish to be dependent on peoples whims so much anymore.
I recognise the limitations of SSGs, but I think these are overcomeable, and the benefits (Speed, CI) seem massive.
I am open to hearing other suggestions people may have though.