• Work done:
  • Members of team also continued support in Core AI with myself and @neel33 both focusing on 6.9.
  • Posted about Q4 proposal for focus.
• Feedback wanted:
  • Proposal on Q4 focus.
• Looking forward: work planned this coming week
  • Discovery into the roadmap for: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2025/10/24/call-for-developers-wordpress-events-tooling-improvements/. Now an issue to start piecing together what program can do to here.
  • Look at what can be learnt from the WP Credits team and distilled down to tasks. Now an issue in Github.
• Slack: can be found in #core-program.

If you don’t see anything mentioned here you would like called out please mention in comments.

#this-week

Main focus: Roadmaps

This will be initially a discovery task that ends with recommendations, leading to documentation of a proposed format someone can follow looking to make one. Potentially the tasks could be to:

• Gather and document all existing roadmaps across teams.
• Look at how they are built, maintained and communicated.
• Suggest a lightweight process for teams that lack one.
• Find a central place for a combined roadmap. Initially considering roadmap/ page as the location with potential iterations. This should not distract or get in way of each team maintaining their own roadmaps, but also provide a way for contributors to see what needs working on.

There might be other tasks form during this. An initial GitHub issue has been made to enter discovery for Roadmaps.

Collaborations

During the initial collection of ideas for goals and focuses there were a few opportunities for the Core Program team to collaborate. Whilst not a direct goal, these will be continuous areas and those linked are done so as people identified to connect with and find out how the Core Program team can continue to support.

• WP Credits: this team needs feedback but also programming support as it grows and @peiraisotta has supported this connection. One particular idea to work on in future is even a list of opportunities to contribute.
• Five-for-the-future: @gusa raised on several occasions where opportunities might arise for programming to support this area.
• Tooling for WordCamps: this is in discovery right now. @harmonyromo is championing this work as what direction it will take is being worked out.
• Improving recognition of invisible contributions: @estelaris is working on this by starting within the documentation team. @felipevelzani also continues to do work around non-dev contributions.

Next steps and get involved

Now there is a proposed goal to focus on, the next step is to get feedback and then start working on this together. This post is that opportunity. Is there anything you would like to add? Are you interested in collaborating or getting involved in any particular area?

Props to everyone that contributed to the discussions for Q4, release and future, helping form this focus and also those that reviewed this post: @annezazu, @4thhubbard, @peiraisotta, @jeffpaul.

• Work done:
  • Members of team also continued support in Core AI with myself and @neel33 both focusing on 6.9.
  • Closed out all goal discussions for Q4. A post will be coming this week.
  • Documented how proposals can work including discovery issues and roadmaps.
• Feedback wanted:
  • Recognising post still is open for input: https://make.wordpress.org/program/2025/10/26/recognising-contributors-work-discussion-notes-and-potential-opportunities/.
• Looking forward: work planned this coming week
  • Discovery into the roadmap for: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2025/10/24/call-for-developers-wordpress-events-tooling-improvements/. Now an issue to start piecing together what program can do to here.
  • Look at what can be learnt from the WP Credits team and distilled down to tasks. Now an issue in Github.
  • Make an issue that surfaces the goals for Q4.
• Slack: can be found in #core-program.

If you don’t see anything mentioned here you would like called out please mention in comments.

#this-week

• Work done:
  • A summary of the discussion went out on contributor recognition: https://make.wordpress.org/program/2025/10/26/recognising-contributors-work-discussion-notes-and-potential-opportunities/
  • @peiraisotta invited learning about how the WP Credits team are doing onboarding to learn and maybe use as a resource. Made into issue.
  • Members of team also continued support in Core AI with myself and @neel33 both focusing on 6.9.
  • Closed out Goals for WordPress 6.9 so work can be done on it and made stubbed GitHub issues for each.
• Feedback wanted:
  • Goals for Q4. (Will close this week)
  • General goal collection for beyond Q4 and wider focus. (Will close this week)
• Looking forward: work planned this coming week
  • There is a call for developers and roadmap support on WordPress event tooling improvements: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2025/10/24/call-for-developers-wordpress-events-tooling-improvements/.
  • Look at what can be learnt from the WP Credits team and distilled down to tasks. Now an issue in Github.
  • Fill out the stubbed issues on goals for 6.9: Noteworthy, Punted list, Iterations on docs.
• Slack: can be found in #core-program.

If you don’t see anything mentioned here you would like called out please mention in comments.

#this-week

Thank you to everyone who joined in that discussion. Here is a summary of the ideas and resources shared and a look at how things can move forward, with a few opportunities.

Notes

During this discussion a number of challenges to contributors and teams which everyone agreed on were identified, these ranged from:

• Identifying what is a valued contribution.
• Some teams work on standardized release cycles and others do not.
• There are multiple types of contributions.
• It’s not always easy to catch a contribution when it happens
• Finding paths in contribution: how can someone know where and when they are going to follow a particular path within a team?

There are also implementation issues:

• The credits page itself is only visible when a user clicks the ‘upgrade’ button on auto updates.
• The difference between props vs team recognition.
• Badges not being the entire solution.

There is also a lot of prior art:

• Properly Recognizing Contributors in Large Open Source Projects by @desroj, WCAsia 2024. 
• Props Bot 
• Criteria for Creating or Migrating Repositories under the WordPress GitHub Organization
• Increasing contributor recognition and celebration
• Invisible and under-appreciated: bolstering “behind the scenes” contributions
• Refreshing the contributor pipeline
• Refining Five for the Future for a Robust WordPress Community
• Finding your way around WordPress
• Non Code Contributions to WordPress – This led to some changes to how props are given out in core (Core gives them liberally) and some of the current features of profiles. Discussion was continued on https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/22305
• Engaging / Retaining New Community Devs – This led to the headers and handbooks that make sites have now but also left open the questions around motivation.

Out of scope for the program team

A point to be clear about is the paths on each team are up to the teams themselves, as is managing their contributions. One thing the core program might do is look at where patterns of this exist and suggest things to work on.

It’s worth also noting a few other five-for-the-future discussions spiralled out of this one root discussion. Whilst not an issue to discuss, it’s worth focusing on distinct ways forward and not veering into other teams, or owned areas. There is already a Slack space for this discussion and to not duplicate this work it is important to continue that there in #five-for-the-future.  The program team has a focus and keeping to that is important.

Opportunities

How does the team move forward with all this conversation and start some potential work? Out of the discussion there are some things that could be done and on purpose these are reduced to the easier things to focus on and build up.

• Document all the ways contribution is recognized: this way each can be surfaced, and any team can know what could pick from to suit their purpose. 
• Explore iterations to the noteworthy contributors section and credits. If time, doing this for 6.9 would be ideal.
• Look at what other projects do and consider what could bring in. This is a longer term idea but looking outside is great for us to learn from and GitHub Community Discussions area has an interesting recognition system which was raised in discussion.

These are just to start with, but as it’s good to get started on things, finding distinct tasks is a good next step in such a long discussion, along with documenting and bringing to this make site.

Feedback is welcome on these opportunities as they have been proposed as next steps.

Props @desrosj, @jorbin, @estelaris for reviewing and contributing to this post.

#contribution

This is a new briefer format to get the week started:

• Work done:
  • PR added for readme.
  • Discussions continued: Goal discussions continued within repo began for Q4, WP 6.9 and a more general. Note: the goals will be posted on this site once formed in discussions, they won’t only happen there or have decisions made there, however it’s easier to start there than Slack.
• Feedback wanted:
  • Goals for WordPress 6.9.
  • Goals for Q4.
  • General goal collection for beyond Q4 and wider focus.
• Looking forward: work planned this coming week
  • Post summary on contribution recognition discussions from Slack.
  • Post goals if enough discussion comes up.
• Slack: can be found in #core-program.

If you don’t see anything mentioned here you would like called out please mention in comments.

#this-week