In reply to djsteveb.

Jan I hear hear what you are saying.

That's good and I appreciate you writing that. Thanks. ;)

This has become a continuation of issues I started to get vocal about in the recent posts about the new upcoming default theme, and it’s a very similar situation with the recent post and comments about killing xmlrpc.

Those really are separate items but I can see that you're concerned.

People here are at least offering compromise ideas.

I'm sorry, but I don't see that. Not at all.

The core team follows a well stated philosophy and every single feature that is being added can be turned off.

What seems to be in dispute is that how that can be accomplished. Some insist that that happens via a check box and that the default for new features is to be "off".

Regarding the check box, there is agreement. A plugin is a type of admin check box. It really is trivial to implement that. As designers and developers everyone here knows or can find out how simple that is. Just look at the code as I'm sure you may have done already.

What's not in agreement is the insistence to do that the admin pages. It's not a compromise when the core team reverse a decision about that. The middle ground already exists in the API and yes, that's a plugin.

The API isn't that hard and those plugins show you exactly how that works.

Seeing this many statements recently from the “Voices of the ‘Elite’ People” that are so terse, non-listening, and discounting of the many that are out there selling others on wordpress.. I guess the writings on the wall – it is indeed time for us to do something different.

I just finished attending WordCamp NYC (and it was great) and I can tell you this: there's no elites in the community. Honest. It's all regular folks working together to make WordPress better for everyone.

The core team is transparent and you can see that via their blog.

Visit https://make.wordpress.org/core/ and read the transcripts of the Slack sessions. It's good reading and provides real insight to the whole development process.

There are ways to get involved with that team, but please keep in mind again: sometimes the other people involved won't see it your way. That doesn't mean they're arrogant, mean or even obtuse. It just means they're following a design or goal that has already been established.