Sorry if you had that impression

On 13 January 2024, the WordPress Twitter account (that is, Mr. Mullenweg) made a tweet requesting donations to a crowdfunding campaign for restoring the Bay Lights in San Francisco:

Dear community, on behalf of @photomatt [that is, Mr. Mullenweg] turning 40 (on 1/11), let’s try to get the contributor number on this crowdfunding campaign as high as possible! Right now it’s 1,111, the minimum donation is $10, if you can swing it, let’s do it:

Source

The tweet was not well received:

How is lighting up a bridge relevant to Matt’s birthday – especially for the average WP user who lives thousands of miles from San Francisco? 🙃

Another reply said the tweet was inappropriate:

This post, specifically using the official WordPress account to crowdfund for a completely unrelated campaign, is both offensive and inappropriate. I’ve requested in the MakeWP Slack marketing channel that the @Automattic employees who posted it remove it immediately.

As is often the case, there were also those who were upset for different reasons:

Pretty sad that y’all look for a reason to attack Matt and generate drama rather then see this post as a simple share to a donation campaign in which you can participate or not.

Another tweet followed that tried to explain what the issue was by quoting the relevant part from the rulebook of the Marketing Team:

[I]t is not appropriate to solicit money or other material resources through the WordPress Marketing channel. This is primarily because there is no fair and transparent way to conduct a fundraising initiative while avoiding conflicts of interest within the team.

Then, Jenni McKinnon, a contributor from the Marketing Team of the WordPress project, messaged Mr. Mullenweg and asked him to delete the tweet because it was violating the rules.

Mr. Mullenweg replied to Jenni McKinnon:

I can post anything I like to W.org, the various channels connected to it, etc. The guidelines are good to keep for people on the marketing team, and I agree no one from there should have posted anything like this.

EDITOR’S NOTE. We find this a stunning statement in its whole. We also think it is moronic in its last part: How can you agree that others should not post anything like this, and yet post something like this yourself?

Jenni McKinnon continued the discussion on Slack (the tool used for communication and coordination by the teams of the WordPress project).

You hold all the keys and if that’s the case, you are on every team and you need to follow the rules like everyone else, or there’s no point having rules at all

Mr. Mullenweg replied:

@jenni That’s not how the teams were set up or work, sorry if you had that impression

The fundraising tweet for the lights of the San Francisco bridge can still be viewed on X/Twitter. Mr. Mullengweg did not remove it.

EDITOR’S NOTE

It is the opinion of the kindness.is contributors that this episode, and many other episodes like it in the WordPress project, reflect badly on everyone involved.

Obviously, Mr. Mullenweg acts and thinks like a dictator: Rules are good to have for the small people, but not for me. I can do do whatever I want. — Mr. Mullenweg shows no respect for rules and he shows no respect for people.

But why do volunteers keep contributing to a project when they have objections this strong to the way it is run? Why don’t they act in a way more consistent with what they say?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The screencap of the exchange between Mr. Mullenweg and Jenni McKinnon was taken from the Bay Lights post at WP-CONTENT. The WP-CONTENT post was also our main source for this article and the base for the research we did for it.