Recently the new Executive of WordPress.org Mary Hubbard, did a question and answer Zoom stream with Matt Mullenweg. WordPress focused news outlets covered this in a rather unquestioning way (no surprise, considering the general lack of journalism from them). Watching it, her and others inability to answer a question pertinent to what is going on with WordPress, was unsurprising to us, but for those not familiar with the lack of proper governance of WordPress, informative.

At the 25:35 mark in the stream, she reads a question about “long term contributors have been banned, blocked from WordPress.org” that “has significant implications for the employees to contribute to Five for the Future.” She goes on to say that this has come up in recent conversations. She then starts to say there is an appeal process, but then pivots to saying she thought there was one. She then throws it to Felipe Santos, another employee of Automattic, who suggests contacting dpo@wordpress.org. That email address is listed on WordPress.org Privacy page as being what to contact it you “have any questions about our privacy policy or information we hold about you.” He then says:

We don’t have a really stricter process right now, to be honest, for that.

He then goes on to contact suggest contacting forum moderators.

Matt Mullenweg doesn’t add anything, despite being the person who presumably being very involved in the blocking.

How is what is supposed to be a mature project that is widely relied on, run in such a way that there is not a process for handling this situation? The answer seems to be an intentional effort to not have proper governance. That is a problem. What is even more of a problem is that “journalists” are ignoring such a glaring problem.