The Documentation team was excluded from the WordPress 6.8 release, and that experiment continues with WordPress 6.9, creating a situation where information about the new version is lacking.
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Program transcript
Hello, I’m Alicia Ireland, and you’re listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community.
In this episode, you’ll find the information from September 8 to 14, 2025.
WordPress is testing a lighter structure for its Release Squad, with fewer members in the core release team, aiming to reduce operational load. One of the most significant changes is that the Documentation team has been excluded from the release squad, relegated to having only a liaison instead of leadership or effective representation in decision-making during the cycle.
This has concrete consequences: documentation tends to become something done “when there’s time,” creating several situations. First, some user or technical materials arrive late or incomplete, forcing users, support, or the community to “fill gaps” even after the version is already in production. Second, contributing to documentation loses visible value if authors don’t have a clear role or real recognition during the release process, which discourages participation.
The feedback gathered strongly reinforces these concerns: several contributors argue that reducing participation for efficiency risks eroding transparency, making essential needs invisible, and demotivating people. It is seen as a decision that not only affects technical quality but also community health: recognition, morale, and volunteer retention. As several comments make clear: “Documentation is not accessory, it is infrastructure. If it is not well integrated, the product and the user experience suffer.”
Because of this, the call from the Documentation team is clear for the next release (WordPress 6.9): restore defined documentation leadership with real authority; establish barriers preventing new versions from being published without developer notes, reviewed user documentation, and all resources associated with the release; ensure at least a minimum level of staff commitment equivalent to three full-time roles across those working on materials. As they put it, a WordPress release is not truly complete until the documentation is complete, and that means not only code, but also manuals, examples, changelogs, and guides. Without that, the technical part works, but adoption, support, user satisfaction, and the community are weakened.
Meanwhile, as documentation loses weight, a new Slack channel called #content-creators has been launched to connect content creators, both veterans and beginners, to share audience feedback, bug reports, or improvements when creating content, and to spread new WordPress features more quickly. Although already active, it is seen as an experiment that will evolve based on creators’ needs.
In six months, its performance will be evaluated: measuring how many people joined, the level of participation, and conducting surveys among creators to assess whether it has truly been useful. Anyone producing WordPress-related content is invited to join, even if they don’t consider themselves an “expert” or feel insecure; the channel is open, including to those who simply want to follow the conversations.
The Core team will enforce that all users who want to publish content on Make/Core must have 2FA enabled. This will apply starting September 16, and all Administrator, Editor, or Author users who don’t enable it will lose their status and be downgraded to Contributor.
The Performance team is already focused, six weeks ahead of the first beta of WordPress 6.9, on 25 tickets that should be included in this version.
Some of the improvements relate to the loading of certain elements, continuing along existing lines, enhancements to script fetchpriority, and key storage and usage for optimization.
On the Developer Blog, a new post provides a step-by-step guide on how to create a button-style block that allows users to switch the site theme from light to dark mode. The system is built using the Interactivity API, requires no custom block, leverages modern CSS tools, and can be applied to any theme.
The Systems team will redirect the domains wordpress.ong and wordpress.ngo to the WordPress Foundation donations page.
They will also redirect the domains wordpresscampusconnect.org and wpcampusconnect.org to the corresponding events page.
And finally, this podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons license as a derivative version of the podcast in Spanish; you can find all the links for more information, and the podcast in other languages, at WPpodcast .org.
Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!
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