Matt Mullenweg recently paused multiple WordPress.org services for a holiday break but unintended effects started almost immediately, affecting the attendance of future WordPress conferences taking place around the world. Joost de Valk requested a fix on GitHub.
Mullenweg’s Pause In Services
Mullenweg’s unexpected pause in WordPress services affected new account registrations on WordPress.org, new plugin, theme and photo directory submissions and reviews of new plugins. Mullenweg did not set a time for the return of those services, only saying that they’ll return once he has the “time, energy, and money” sometime in 2025. So the pause in WordPress.org services is for an indeterminate amount of time.
Unintended Consequences Of WordPress Pause
Joost de Valk filed a GitHub ticket calling attention to a serious issue affecting WordCamp registration for new community members. The GitHub ticket foregrounds the problem inherent in Mullenweg’s unilateral decision to pause certain WordPress.org services.
Mullenweg’s dramatic pause in services had the unintended consequence of diminishing the growth, energy and momentum of the WordPress community itself.
Joost’s GitHub ticket explains why Mullenweg’s holiday break is disruptive:
“Recently, a change was made to require people to have a WordPress.org account to buy a ticket for a WordCamp. Because of that change, the new Holiday Break imposed by Matt causes issues. Because of that imposed holiday break, people can no longer sign up for a WordPress.org account and thus can no longer do that before buying a WordCamp ticket.
There are several, large and small, WordCamps that might be affected by this, as can be seen from the list on Central, and probably including WordCamp Asia 2025.”
Members of the WordPress community agreed. These are a sample of the comments representative of WordPress community members’ concerns:
MakarandMane shared:
“Following 2 weeks there are two Wordcamp Kolhapur & Kolkata.. After 2 weeks another WordCamp in pune.
Kolhapur is new community which focus totally on new attendee who don’t have an account. This will affect our tickets sales and contributor day.”
A concern about WordCamp EU was also raised:
“And WCEU has just opened their ticket sales…
In the WordCamp rules, we have to be inclusive…. refusing to sell a WordCamp ticket is not really…. welcoming to new community members”
Solution Found
A solution was proposed to fix the issue caused by Mullenweg’s pause in services.
WordPress community member dd32 posted:
“It’s been agreed to re-open the registration for WordCamp purposes, that’s been done in https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/14325”
Community members were grateful for the fix although some reported that they were still blocked from registering a new account for WordPress but that was a glitch in their browser, fixed by switching to a new browser or a new IP address.
Concern Raised About Solution
Not everyone agreed that the solution was ideal. One WordPress community member posted their concern and received four likes from other members, indicating that others agreed with them.
decodekult wrote:
“I would suggest reconsidering this solution. It addresses the urgent thing here (people could not buy ticket!) but it ignores the primary petition: remove wordpress.org login requirement for buying WordCamp tickets.
The change that closed this ticket does not do that: it guesses where you came from, and if it contains the magic words, then you are lucky enough as to create an account on wordpress.org.
Given that the primary reason for requiring a wordpress.org account that the owner can log into for buying WordCamp tickets was precisely preventing specific people from buying WordCamp tickets, because they could not log into their accounts due to their relationship with a specific company, and given that this ban was legally lifted by a court decision, I raise my hand here and request, as this ticket did from its own title, that the wordpress.org login requirement be removed for buying WordCamp tickets.”
What Happens When Decisions Are Imposed
The importance of what happened is not just about the inability of new community members to register for local WordCamps. The issue is one of decisions and control. One person, Matt Mullenweg, appears to have made the unilateral decision to pause WordPress.org services. Joost de Valk himself uses the word “imposed” to characterize the pause, writing:
“…the new Holiday Break imposed by Matt causes issues. Because of that imposed holiday break, people can no longer sign up for a WordPress.org account…”
The word “imposed” in this context means a unilateral decision made by one person without consultation or choice from community members. Imposed is a strong (and appropriate) word because it conveys that the holiday break was not optional or voluntary but mandated by Matt Mullenweg.
Although this issue was solved by the WordPress community, it would never had happened if the decision had been made with input from stakeholders across the entire WordPress community, from developers, core contributors to WordCamp organizers. This is what happens when decision-making lacks community input and accountability.
Read the GitHub ticket:
Remove wordpress.org login requirement for buying WordCamp tickets
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