Luke and Jonathan enjoy a conversation with Rae Morey, publisher of The Repository. Rae shares her origin story and they discuss the top stories of 2025. We discuss 2026, Luke expresses his optimism, and Jonathan asks Rae about the sustainability of The Repository itself. Oh, and AI, of course.

Transcript#

Jonathan:
Luke, I ran into a little bit of a problem today.

Luke:
What was that Jonathan?

Jonathan:
Well, as we often do before we start an episode of Crossword, I went to check The Repository for the latest issue and there was no issue.

Luke:
I know where this is going.

Jonathan:
So, Rae, when’s the next one coming out?

Rae:
The next one will be out on Friday, Friday 16th of January.

Jonathan:
Phew. Otherwise, I think our little business here is in jeopardy.

Luke:
I do not read the newsletter. I am an RSS subscriber instead. So I’ve actually had a preview of some of the major things that I think might make the newsletter this week already because I read the website. We are both huge fans of The Repository, It’s been going since 2019, I believe.

Tell us a little bit about like how you stepped into.. what was the motivating factor to start The Repository. Where did that come from?

Rae:
Oh, geez. So I’m a trained journalist. If I go way, way back to the beginning, I.. it’s funny because I’ve been having these conversations about what do I want to do when I grow up with my son. He’s five. And this week he decided he wants to be a police officer after recently telling me he wanted to be a science teacher at the local high school. So it’s been a bit of a change. But, you know, for me, it made me think, you know, what, what was that experience like for me when I was his age?

You know, I wanted to be a teacher too. Also a doctor at one point, a nurse, a lawyer of all things. And, um, but when I was 13, I went to a careers fair at my high school and I was walking around the different booths, talking to all the different people. And I came across one for the local newspaper and I stopped and thought, “I never thought about this before.” I always, I was a voracious reader when, when I was a child and still am. And I loved writing stories and I thought, wow, this makes sense.

I had a chat to the journalist who was manning the booth and he was lovely, ⁓ explained what he did day to day. And I thought, okay, cool. That’s what I’m going to do. And then that just stuck and I became a newspaper journalist here in Australia and worked ⁓ first for Fairfax. And then I switched over to News Limited at one point or News Corp.

I always loved chatting to people and hearing people’s stories and writing them. And, ⁓ so there came a point while I was working at News Limited where things just kind of just got really tough in the industry. And I thought, well, maybe now’s the time to jump into something else, into the other part of what I started at uni. I did computer science and journalism at uni, like a comp sci arts degree, which at the time all my lectures were like, you’re weird. Who wants to do that? You just do one or the other. ⁓ but these days it makes sense, right?

Luke:
No, that makes sense.

Rae:
Nobody really, well, my teachers at the time didn’t have that foresight. And so I jumped into the other part of my degree, which I did a lot of, ⁓ web development and I was never a great programmer, but did programming. yeah, so I went to work for, ⁓ WPMU Dev. ⁓ what was that like, more than 10 years ago now. And so that was, that was, it wasn’t my introduction to WordPress. I did a lot of websites long before that, you know, everybody does websites of friends and yourself, and I had 50 blogs or whatever, you know, always working on sites, but never actually sticking with them. And, ⁓ and then I worked for WPMU Dev and that was kind of my entry to the WordPress professionally, the WordPress world. ⁓ and so I led the blog and did marketing for them and ⁓ yeah, I just stayed in the WordPress world, but always, you know, I was always a journalist.

So I was always looking at things like, you know, I was reading all these blogs and all these new sites and wishing, yeah, I’d really like to know more. I’d like to know the story behind these things. And there are some really great websites and YouTube channels that do a lot of interviews, but you know, there’s always that sense that you’re not really always getting the full story because well, a lot of people aren’t trained journalists and also, ⁓ money is also a motivating factor and sponsorship, ⁓ which we can, we can talk about as well, but, ⁓

Luke:
I mean, yeah, that must be a motivating factor for you too, right? You’re not immune to that.

Rae:
That is, yeah, it is. But you know, at the same time, ⁓ and I’ve got this, I’m pretty sure I have this in my editorial policy as well. you know, I, my sponsors aren’t off the hook if they do something. There was a, there was a case a couple of, or an instance, a couple of a few years ago in the early days of The Repository when GoDaddy was the sponsor. GoDaddy was a great sponsor for a couple of years and yeah, there were a couple of times when they were, hit the headlines and I just reached out and said, look, I’m writing, writing a story. And, you know, they were like, okay, cool. ⁓ they, they knew that I was just going to report it how I wanted and they never stopped me or tried to influence what I was doing. ⁓ and I think I’ve just carried that through with how I work and a lot of people, I hope respect that. And I hope that doesn’t put off sponsors, I think it also, I think, yeah..

Luke:
Well, I think, the very fact that you have an editorial policy is for me what is so attractive about The Repository and what sets it apart because aside from that, it’s like you said earlier, there are YouTubers and there are bloggers out there that are trying to cover this space and they do varying degrees of good jobs. But as far as I know, There’s only one journalist.

Jonathan:
One of the things that struck me, over this past year, on this thread, we get a decent amount of feedback from Crossword about what we should or shouldn’t cover. People are like, ⁓ you went too easy or you were too hard or whatever the case may be. And I’ve felt some internal pressure. Luke and I have had some discussions where it’s like, how do we handle some of these things? And I saw at one point that I was putting an unrealistic pressure on myself, which is the pressure of a journalist. And one of the things that I’ve appreciated, because for me, like I, while I have appreciation, understanding, I don’t have training in it, right? And there’s a lot to be said about the time and effort that’s required to get to be good at that. And there’s something about the low barrier of entry that even WordPress allows of publishing, that makes it easy, like, “I’m going to start a news site” and sort of do this. And what I’ve appreciated about the work that you’ve done over the years is the professionalization that I’ve seen you bring to it.

And for me, I had that moment where I both I see it as as valuable and aspirational to a degree.. but I’ve also been like, well, that’s it was also helpful to say that that’s not what we’re doing here with Crossword, for instance, there are things that we can cover, there’s things that we can go over, we try to be objective about it where we can. But I think for me, that’s something that just stood out as I really feel grateful that The Repository exists and there is this professional effort to tell the stories of what’s going on in our community.

One of the things that hit me is like, jokes aside, about what we’d actually cover on Crossword if The Repository didn’t exist. I think I would be sad as a member of the ecosystem if it didn’t exist because there’s some important, really important stories that you’ve covered over the years. And yeah, I feel grateful for it.

Rae: I appreciate that.

Luke:
What were some of the biggest ones from last year? There must be a theme, right?

Rae:
Geez. What were the biggest stories of last year? ⁓ It was interesting. I published ⁓ a kind of a year in review post on the 30th of December covering the most read stories of the year. So these were the stories that people clicked on and read. ⁓ yeah, it was really interesting to see what were the top 10 because, you know, 80% of them, eight out of 10 were negative. And that’s a real shame. I think that the most read story, which I found really interesting was ⁓ how the WordPress sustainability team was shut down. Yeah, people care about sustainability, it turns out that had more. So what I didn’t include in that piece was that piece, that story had ⁓ twice as many clicks as the second most read story. So people did do really care about sustainability. ⁓ And a lot of the story, you know, there was a lot of, there was a lot of negative news over the past year, you know, with the WP engine versus Automattic versus Matt lawsuit and everything that kind of stemmed from that. Yeah, that’s been an interesting one to cover.

Luke:
How are you feeling about all of that WP Engine versus Matt stuff? You know, like, are you feeling over it? If you’re anything like me, you’re sort of feeling like, man, can we just move on now? Like it seems to be dragging on. Also, do you think, sorry, this has just struck me. Do you think the sustainability team being disbanded was like a bit of a canary in the coal mine when it came to all of that?

Rae:
Mmm. Two very interesting questions. I’ll start with the second one though. Canary in the coal mine, I think we were way past that by the time that happened. I mean, that happened in January, 2025. And so we’d already been through everything that had happened, you know, the end of September with WordCamp US and then all of the, pardon me, shit that hit the fan during October, 2025 and November. And then December, just felt like it was never ending at the time, right?

Luke:
Right. Yes.

Rae:
And then by the time January came around, think, I think what really struck me was that it was a, there were four team reps for the sustainability team and they were all people who were self-employed and just doing what they could in their own time to represent the sustainability effort in the project. And they, their efforts, I mean, they weren’t, they weren’t working on this full time. They didn’t have a huge team. They were just doing what they could and their work was just kind of tossed to the side, which was a real shame. They were starting to build momentum.

But, ⁓ you know, it’d be great to see those sustainability efforts come out in other parts of the project and the Make teams. Yeah, we’ll see. There was a petition that was signed at WordCamp Europe, but I haven’t heard any more.

Your other question about the lawsuit and whether I’m over it. I have court listener updates that I get to my email every time there are new documents filed in the case. And you know, sometimes and I’m starting to wrap up.. there have been instances where I’ve been wrapping up the newsletter on Friday because you know, we’re a day ahead here in Australia. And so I can send out the newsletter to Europe and America during their day. You know, it’ll be 4:59 on a Friday afternoon and Automattic or WP engine will file a file a document and I’ll be like, my god, I just want to end the week. I want to go and have a beer and I don’t want to have to like read through a 30 page or 170 page document, but it has happened to have worked back late to make sure these stories get done.

Am I over it? There is part of me that’s like, I really want to know what’s going on. That’s just a journalist in me. But it does wear me down a bit having to sift through so many documents and also just the, just how, I don’t know if childish is the right word, but how just ridiculous it gets with the whole ~ just what happened with the discovery. I don’t know if you followed with, sometimes I publish a lot in stories, but also what happens in between I publish in the newsletter. And some of the things that have happened with the discovery between the two sides going back and forth. And it’s just the court saying enough, no more, don’t ask for more time for these things, you know, just sort it out yourselves. So it’s been interesting seeing how both sides operate.

Jonathan:
A lot of the stuff gets quite emotionally charged as well, right? There’s a lot at stake in it. I’m curious, you mentioned the, ⁓ like it’s been more negative than not. For you as a journalist and with your background, is that just not typically how it goes in terms of what gets the attention? Like, is that, like, ⁓ the optimist to me, it’s like, well, that’s kind of sad, but I’m wondering, is that just, that’s just how it is? Yeah.

Luke:
Is that normal? Is the WordPress world more negative or is it about on par with the rest of the world?

Rae:
I think it’s on par with the rest of the world, to be honest. I mean, it just kind of reminds me of what I studied in journalism 101 in uni. ⁓ Humans are just attracted to bad news. ⁓ And, you know, I could publish a good news story and not many people care. It’s just, it’s a shame because there have been some great news stories in the WordPress space over the past year.

But they didn’t get any attention because all of this negative stuff just drowns it out. ⁓ One of my favorite things over the past year has been the momentum behind ⁓ WordPress, Campus Connect and WordPress credits. think, you know, we talked for years about generational change and getting more people into WordPress. Well, here’s a project or a couple of projects that are helping that effort. And the vast majority of, you know, the people closest to the project don’t really care about it. I’ve published stories and they hardly get any clicks. But you know what, I’m going to keep publishing stories.

You know, I think the ⁓ how Campus Connect came to be was such an awesome example of, of, you know, innovation just in a small, in a small place in India, these, the local ⁓ WordPress meetup were like, we want more people coming to our meetup. How can we do that? Okay, let’s tell kids at the local university about WordPress and train them. And that’s grown into this global movement where we’re seeing university students in other parts of the world, several different countries, all learning about WordPress and joining WordPress meetups. ⁓ I think it’s a really lovely story. Same with Credits. There are university students who are right now contributing to WordPress and helping the project and getting credits towards their university courses. ⁓ You know, we’re not talking enough about that. And I think those are great stories.

Jonathan:
That’s amazing. One of the things that was a highlight for me of State of the Word this time around is when Mary came on and was talking. At first I was confused because she referenced the WPCC. And I was like, wait a minute. I’m mixing my acronyms here. And then it’s like, Campus Connect is the one that she’s referring to. And was really happy to see that get airtime. And admittedly, I’m looking forward to actually reading more of this coverage because admittedly, a lot of my attention has been drawn, as a human to the more negative. I think from a longevity perspective, investments in education, investments in the next generation, that’s, it’s, it’s ⁓ obviously essential in retrospect, but often easy to overlook. And if you’re looking at like where, what’s the trajectory, one of the things to pay attention to is the adoption with the next generation.

Rae:
I think something worth mentioning too, or highlighting is that a lot of the adoption of these two programs has happened in, ⁓ not in Western countries. So it’s happening in India, some South American countries. ⁓ there has been Spain, but I think like,

A lot of people who might be American or in some European countries might have just not paid attention to this news because it’s not happening in their own backyard. So there is, ⁓ there is, you know, for people who are watching news cycle, if it’s not happening locally, it’s kind of shut out to them. So I think, you know, I heard recently, I saw in a Slack channel that one of the local universities in Australia might be joining WordPress Credits, which is pretty cool.

And, ⁓ you know, once we see more of that happening in, in some Western countries like Australia, you know, UK, America, Canada, we might pay more attention to this. So that is, that is something that I’m conscious of too.

Jonathan:
Well, one thing this is just sparking for me, like I’m actually going back to university now to get an MBA. And as someone who’s like passionate about WordPress, I’ve taught some WordPress stuff in the past. It makes me wonder like, what, what’s the gap? Like, what does it take to bring more attention to things like this at like my local like campuses, etc. So I’m going to that’s a takeaway for me is like look into that a bit more. Because if there’s resources being worked on, sometimes people, people may just not be aware of like, the energy that’s available to them.

If I think back to my early days in meetups, I found one of my decks the other day that I’d worked on with my brother for our local meetup. And I’m like, this was a lot of fun, putting this stuff together and educating local folks on like interesting stuff that was happening in WordPress. there’s something that can be really gratifying in that type of contribution that’s easy to overlook. And especially when efforts gone into making it a lot more accessible than one would think that it might be.

Luke:
Meetup contributions aren’t really recognized very well. I think it’s really hard to track contributions a lot of the time, especially things like sponsorships of meetups. Does that count? I don’t know.

Speaking of trajectories that you touched on earlier, what do you think Rae? 2026, WordPress 7.0, What are the biggest news stories of this year going to be?

Rae:
2026. Well, definitely 7.0 that’s coming out soon. I think I’ve been tracking what’s happening with real time collaboration and the various efforts to get that off the ground. ⁓ VIP has a solution out for its ⁓ customers, clients. ⁓ We’re seeing VIP and others at Automattic who are looking, you know, working on something for wider adoption with WordPress.

So that’s coming along. It’d be really interesting to see when that happens. I know a lot of people generally like, ⁓ real time collaboration, notes, “Yeah, we don’t need it. Why are we focusing on it?” I hear a lot from the agency crowd, totally get that. But then you see some of these other big sites with dozens, hundreds of users, how on earth are they creating content without being able to collaborate? You know, and ⁓ we’re so used to real-time collaboration in Google Docs and in other software. This is just something that has to happen.

Luke:
Hmm. I’m skeptical of real time collaboration, but not because I don’t think we need it. It’s cause I don’t think the technology exists to be able to support it. Unless, and this is where I guess it’s probably going to go if I were to make a bet.. Unless WordPress is, separated into two sort of different versions or at least like two different server requirements. And if your server has this extra stuff installed that is non-standard, then you get the real-time collaboration if you have maybe a supported host like a managed WordPress host or, you know, maybe only on VIP or whatever. And then, ⁓ please no. And then, you know, the version that is just supported on regular.

I think that’s probably where it’s headed.

Rae:
Yeah, I totally, I totally agree. Because yeah, like you say, the infrastructure that’s needed to support, you know, that, kind of, I don’t even know what the word is, but you know, that.. technical ambition to get real time collaboration working, it just doesn’t exist with regular hosts. so, ⁓ VIP have set up their own infrastructure to support their clients, to make it work, but that’s not available to everybody. And it would be very costly. ⁓

So yeah, we could see, we could see, you know, regular users, if they want it, they could ask their host to switch it on for them for an additional fee. I don’t know how that’s going to work. There are still lots of these issues. Yeah. There are still ⁓ lots of issues that need to be ironed out and the teams you can see in, in, in GitHub that the team’s trying to figure out all these, all of these different solutions and nothing’s been nailed down yet.

Luke:
Yeah, different hosting plans. Yeah, that’s the other thing. And then if you’re going to do that and have like particular server requirements for this feature, then what other features can we do in the future that are suddenly unconstrained? So that’s an interesting thing to see, to think about as well. But yeah, what else? What else? 2026..

Rae:
Mmm. Yeah. I really don’t know, you know, we don’t know where things are going to go. Like last year, there were so many surprises. You don’t know what’s going to happen in the WordPress landscape.

Luke:
Man. hopefully this is the year of no surprises.

Rae:
Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

Jonathan:
That’s uncharacteristically optimistic of you, Luke.

Luke:
Yeah, the lawsuit is going to settle. Everyone’s happy. WP Engine’s welcomed back into the fold and life moves on. Matt steps down as the release lead of every single release, even though he’s not really involved. That sort of thing.

Rae:
Wow.

Jonathan:
Okay, Luke. Okay..

Rae:
Wow, okay, that’s an interesting prediction. I can’t really agree with any of that. I don’t think that’s reality. ⁓ I really don’t know how this is going to pan out. Yeah, I don’t know. Things could change really quickly.

Jonathan:
Yeah.

Luke:
Hahaha.

Jonathan:
Well, I think the reason why we’re inclined to ask you, Rae, is I think there’s a lot to be said about the value of having chronologued the past. At this point, The Repository runs back to 2019. You’ve got all these stories. So at least for me, one of the things I was excited about is you’ve got all this sort of context that you’ve got for what happens. That, of course, in and of itself is not a predictor for the future.

Because you just never know what can happen. But oftentimes patterns repeat and you can see things. It was interesting to see all the way back to your first stories in 2019, there was controversy about the editor, right? Like that was a thing that was going on back then. And this is pre-COVID and all that sort of took place then, right? And the impact that it had on our ecosystem. Rae, one of the things that’s top of mind for me, I feel this sort of sense of higher importance for the work that you’re doing.

Rae:
Geez. Yeah.

Jonathan:
Both for just, I guess, the current state and awareness, but also for history. I think it’s easy for, even as everything is digital, it’s easy for things to get lost and lose attention to it. My question is, at this point in time, how are you thinking, feeling about the sustainability of what you’re doing as a business? The Repository has sponsors. You welcome the contributions. How are you feeling about that? Going into this next year and think the longevity of like what you’re doing with The Repository.

Rae:
That’s a big one. And it is always front of mind for me, because you know, like anybody running a business, you’re trying to ⁓ ensure its ⁓ survival and financial sustainability. ⁓ Look, I’ll be honest, I’m starting the year without a major sponsor. We don’t have a newsletter sponsor. And that has me concerned. At the same time, you know, I did the numbers at the start of this week when I was back at work..

And I, we almost, I, we, ~it’s me and my proof-reader Mike and I, ⁓almost hit the financial goal, the very modest financial goal we set for last year. So that was, that was really heartening. But at the same time, I’m entering this year with half the sponsor slots filled. And so I’d love to chat to any companies that are interested in sponsoring, ⁓ you know, this, this project. The Repository is really reliant on community and ecosystem support and sponsors. ⁓ So I’m very conscious, you know, that that leaves this business very vulnerable to ⁓ what’s happening. I mean, in the past six months, 12 months, we saw, you know, I’m very conscious of what’s happening in the business landscape to, you know, relying on sponsors in the past six months, 12 months, we saw a lot of businesses, you know, do layoffs.

There have been a lot of there’s been a lot of consolidation in the WordPress space. And, you know, that’s something I think about, you know, who do I reach out to for sponsorship when all the businesses are all kind of being eaten up? I don’t know if that’s the right way to think about it. There’s been a lot of change. And, you know, a lot of people, you know, it’s really I really love that so many people appreciate the work that I do.

Sponsorship’s a tough one because for businesses, you know, they want to see ROI from, the money they put out into sponsorship. And I can’t always guarantee that because, ⁓ yeah, I don’t know. News publications the world over have struggled with this, with this problem.

Jonathan:
Yeah, and this is, I think, a general challenge because for me, when I look at something like the value of news, there’s some intangibles to it. There’s these other things around it where for me, ⁓ yeah, it’s not quite as simple as what’s the short-term ROI for that.

I’m curious, do you feel that ⁓ is sponsorship the model that makes the most sense for The Repository? I’m assuming that you do because it’s what you’ve been focused on. But I can see some of the vulnerability attached to that. ⁓ Yeah, how do you think about that?

Rae:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I’ve thought about this a lot, you know, since starting, starting the newsletter in 2019 and then, you know, expanding it more in the past 18 months.

Um, sponsorship makes the most sense to get backing from the community. And I purposefully have around 10 sponsor slots because I don’t want to just have one company that I go to for sponsorship that is dictating everything. If I spread that out, you know, that’s, there’s a bit more space.

Um, you know, for me to, you know, have community backing and, and, you know, not, you know, spread out the influence. ⁓ I also have ⁓ a supporter community, people who contribute monthly or yearly who support The Repository and have access to our private Slack. ⁓ But I’ve thought about financial models a lot and what I’ve got at the moment seems to make the most sense. Because we, the WordPress community, it’s not big enough to rely just on readers like a lot of news organizations like the Guardian or 404 media or some of those other publications, tech publications that rely on readers because the readership is just not that huge. So yeah, it’s a tough one. always thinking about if anyone’s got the answers, I’d love to chat.

Jonathan:
Well, one thing that I think will be important is I’d love to see all these new folks coming in from like college campus, et cetera, Campus Connect, hearing like, hey, you want to know what’s going on in the space is WordPress thing, go read The Repository. That’s what I continue to tell folks. It’s like, if you want to know what’s going on in the space, check out The Repository. You just need a lot more people doing that.

Last thing I’m curious about, at least for now, from your vantage point, like you made reference to some of the negative stories for 2025. And Luke’s probably right, it’ll all be positive in 26. But that aside, like, how are you currently like feeling about the ecosystem? I think you’re a vantage point where you get this pulse and I think in a way that’s fairly unique, just having all these stories flow through you. But what’s your feeling about this ecosystem?

Luke:
I’ll just add on to that too, that you also have the benefit of maybe like having some inside access, things that you don’t necessarily publish or can’t you know, off the books sort of conversations. Off the record, is that what journalists say? That’s what they say in the movies.

Rae:
Hmm yeah off the record. Yeah, yeah I do hear things. How am I feeling about the ecosystem? How do I answer that one?

Luke:
Valence. What’s the valence?

Rae:
It’s an interesting one because you know, I got involved with WPMU Dev and more involved in the ecosystem in 2013. That’s when I started working with WordPress professionally. So I’ve been kind of like, well, I wasn’t covering the ecosystem. I was still part of it and seeing what was going on and still, you know, poking into all the different things, looking at what was going on. I can’t help myself. I need to know what’s going on.

So it’s been a long time that I’ve been watching this space and we have seen, know, we do, know, Matt Mullenweg’s right, we do see things like issues come in waves. And, you know, we might have more of a better year this year, as far as drama goes. At the same time, we’re seeing the convergence of the business landscape and layoffs with what’s happening with AI. That’s a really interesting story that I’m looking to dig into a bit more in the next few weeks. ⁓ You know, as far as the… We can talk about that all day. My god, you’re covering that a lot lately. It keeps coming up. Yeah, it’s an interesting one with AI. Yeah, yeah. Which I’ll be covering too soon.

Luke:
Man, we could talk about AI and the WordPress plugin directory. Yeah, it was a thing this week, right? Yeah.

Rae:
But yeah, it’s, it’ll be interesting to see how that kind of unpacks this year, businesses figuring out how to deal with AI, how to, approach their workforces and productivity. I think that’ll be an interesting story that we see unpacking this year.

We’ll also see a lot more people get involved with the project, I think, because of WordPress, Campus Connect and Credits this year. It’d be interesting to see what happens with the AI team as they do a lot more in this space over the next 12 months.

Luke:
Okay. So sorry, little focus aside on AI, because I was thinking about this for myself this morning on where I stand and you have your AI dooms. I’m not into that. Like AI is here to stay, I believe it. Then you have, it seems like we have some sort of like group of people who are just like everything AI. “AI is the best. I want all my emails to be written by AI. I’m fully in and everybody’s going to get, you know, nobody’s going to have a job anymore because AI is going to take over and it’s going to be wonderful.” You have the people like that. And I, I’m not really in either camp. I’m a programmer. I want to keep programming and I enjoy programming. I hope programming is around for a while yet. And also I use AI tools, you know, as assistance quite a lot in my programming.

Now, like within WordPress, you also have a lot of these AI lovers who just want to apply AI everywhere into everything. And sometimes I feel maybe it’s like going a little overboard with AI. Are we rushing it? you think? Do you think that our WordPress AI team is, do you think that jumping in before we really, before the dust has settled, before the bubble has burst?

Rae:
I don’t know know if they’re rushing it. I think they’re just conscious of not being left behind, you know, trying to lay some of this infrastructure now so that people can make the most of tools. And, you know, a lot of things have, you know, for example, the AI experiments plugin, what the team is looking to include in that plugin, as far as, know, automating title creation and adding excerpts and all kinds of things.

Rae:
You know, 10up had already developed that two or three, four years ago. I’ve been using it on The Repository website for a couple of years now. And they’re looking to the 10up teams been advising and contributing to that experiments plugin. So a lot of this stuff has already been happening for a while. It’s just coming to WordPress now. And, know, and then we’re seeing people like, ⁓ it’s Felix Arntz who’s working on their PHP AI SDK. That’s an effort that’s been going on for a while. I don’t know. It feels…

Jonathan:
Didn’t he just move to Vercel?

Rae:
Yeah, he did. That’ll be interesting to see how he brings that experience over to WordPress if he continues to… Yeah. Yeah, there’s been a lot of changes, Mm.

Luke:
Is that another Googler who’s left?

Rae:
Mm-hmm. He’s gone to WP Engine. Yeah. ⁓

Luke:
Really? Wow. yeah. Well, Thierry’s left, right? And, obviously Weston.

Rae:
Yeah, there’s been a lot of changes in recent weeks. But yeah, with AI, it feels like a bit of rush. But at the same time, there’s a sense of keeping up and and laying infrastructure. But I think it’s very valid to have these conversations about, you know, whether we’re doing too much. Everybody should get involved in those conversations.

Luke:
I want to read you an email that I got today. I’ve been getting these emails to the Plugin Review channel. And I reckon I read this same email, know, variations of it four or five times a day. And here’s what it says.

“Thank you very much for your detailed message and for the time and effort the volunteer review team dedicates to helping plugin authors improve their work.

I sincerely apologize for the issues identified in my initial submission and for any inconvenience they may have caused. I have carefully read your entire email, reviewed the relevant guidelines, and addressed all the points raised.

Thank you again for your patience, guidance, and support throughout this process. I truly appreciate the valuable work done by the volunteers and look forward to your feedback.”

You know, Rae, that makes me so angry.

Rae:
Oh my God, that’s a template. If I got that four or five times a day, I would just delete it. I wouldn’t want to read that every day.

Luke:
Yeah, it’s obviously, it’s AI generated. It’s never exactly the same, but it’s basically the same. And I’ve been getting a lot of these in addition to the AI generated plugins, which I can deal with. I can sort of have some time for that, but the AI generated responses to my emails, they get under my skin.

Rae:
Yeah. It feels lazy, doesn’t it? I think also, it’s worth keeping in mind that a lot of people who speak English as a second language would lean hard on AI to help with writing some of those emails. So there’s that. ⁓ but at the same time, when you’re reading that and you’re thinking this person hasn’t really taken in what I’ve said, they haven’t really processed it. Yeah.

Luke:
Yep, they’re not listening. It’s disingenuine. And that’s when we talk about allowing AI plugins in the plugin directory. ⁓ they are allowed. There’s, no rule preventing it, but I think, you know, maybe half or more than half of AI generated plugins, they don’t get through a review because they’re not capable of the AI agents that are using aren’t able to listen to the feedback and implement it.

Jonathan:
One of the things that.. so Rae, I rarely ever find mistakes in The Repository every now and then. Like I’ll find like a typo or something here and there. But as I’m listening to the, the both of you, it’s occurring to me that part of the reason why I love the newsletter each week, I read the stories on the blog occasionally, but it’s mostly the newsletter is that I get a one stop, like human written snapshot of what was going on. And it occurred to me if someone went, if someone went in and was like, I can just like automate all of this.

There could certainly be some value in using tools to aggregate and sort of bring things together and have some summaries. But ultimately to me, the reason why I stop what I’m doing most of the time and read it is the effort that went into it and the confidence it gives me in the stories that like I can go through, which one of these like sort of piques my interest.

As I’ve been listening, to the both of you, one of the things that’s occurring to me, it’s like there’s probably a lot of stories that you’re developing at any given time. And what I’m curious about is what are the types of stories that you start on that you don’t actually ever finish or that don’t make it out? Like, what does that look like?

Rae:
Oh, interesting question. There are.. I’m always working on several stories at the same time. Some days I’ll publish nothing because I’m working on other things or just working on sponsorship. Other days I’ll publish three or four stories in a day because things have just come together and I just need to get, you know, just need to hit publish. Stories that I haven’t published are usually because I’ve hit a wall with confirming details or getting quotes or, you know, or someone’s just taken six weeks to get back to me. For God’s sake, people reply in a timely manner.

You know, in a new cycle, especially online, if you don’t publish something within 24 hours or 48 hours or 72 hours at the latest, that story’s dead. There’s no point publishing it. No one cares. You know, and something that I find, ⁓

There are some other certain sites that publish in this space who don’t have the same attention to quality that I do. I’m not naming names, but they publish before me because I’m waiting to get quotes and to confirm details from people. And then everybody eyeballs their article and doesn’t click on mine. And so that’s really infuriating when I read someone else’s article about something happening in WordPress and it is a really bad article that has not done any, any research has not that the person who’s written it has not bothered to contact anybody, you know, the people involved to, to check details or to get new quotes. Their story is rubbish. And then I spend the time to do something properly and I might take an extra day and everyone’s already, everyone’s already read their article and they don’t click mine. It’s really infuriating.

Jonathan:
Yeah, it doesn’t have the details.

Luke:
Do you find that there’s a lot of people publishing articles that maybe skirt the boundaries of what is actually true?

Rae:
Yes! S many times I’ve, there’s one or two sites in particular, but yeah, I’ve read stories about certain things, about certain topics over the past year where I’ve just read it I’ve been like, my God. There’ve been a couple of cases where I’ve actually reached out and said, look, that story’s incorrect. I’ve been in touch with so-and-so and what you’ve published is just not true. And I’ve had a couple of stories taken down from other sites because it’s just…

Luke:
Name names, right?

Rae:
No, I’m not going to. ⁓

Luke:
If not here, you should publish it on The Repository saying so-and-so publishes false article about,

Rae:
Not false, but just lazy. It’s not false. It’s usually just lazy where they have, they’ve just been like, Ooh, you know, this is going to get a lot of clicks. I’ve read it, published something really quickly and they’ll get something out within a few hours and it will just be rubbish.

Jonathan:
Well, and oftentimes it does, which is what rewards the behavior, right? Because we humans like, and one of the things I’ve consistently noticed as I read the stories in The Repository is that you have those details. So I’m like, oh, wait a minute. She’s got a quote from the person, like right here. that’s, I, what more could I ask for than the person themselves either confirming or denying that? I thought you did a great job of that with the, the 10up story.. Fueled story where you actually had like a quote from Jake.

Rae:
Hmm. That was a tough one.

Jonathan:
Yeah, I could see how difficult that’d be and I thought you navigated that really well. Yeah, so I appreciate all that goes into it. I can see the somewhat thanklessness of the work at times. It’s extra credit to reach out to another site to help correct something in theirs. ⁓

Rae:
Ha! Yeah, some stories there are just no winners, no winners. And I publish it anyway because it’s like, well, everybody’s talking about it. I might as well get what I can out there. ⁓ sometimes I just hate contacting people for comments because you know, they’re just going to hate me getting in touch. Or they’re just going to not bother replying. And that happens. A lot of people just don’t reply to me sometimes because they know that it doesn’t matter what they’re going to say. It’s, it’s a really tough one. Yeah.

Jonathan:
Right.We appreciate the work that you’ve been doing. We’re betting on the longevity. Yes. We’re betting on the longevity and appreciate you sharing your perspective. If anyone does want to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do so?

Luke:
We think you’re a winner, Rae.

Rae:
Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Well, the website is TheRepository.email, which is probably the worst. I do own repository.news. I’ll migrate one day, but geez, I don’t really want to migrate. yes, The Repository dot email. ⁓ you can also find The Repository on, X, also on Mastadon, LinkedIn, Bluesky. If you want to DM me, I’m on Post Status Slack, WordPress Slack, all of the slacks. I’m very accessible. And always open to story ideas and sponsorship and all of that.

Jonathan:
Awesome. Excellent. Thank you so much, Rae.

Rae:
Thank you.