Upon returning from a WordPress Congress last week (namely WordCamp Europe 2025 in Basel, Switzerland), I had some reservations concerning in the WordPress community’s evolving cultural norms.
This week, these reservations became even more rampant as I became aware of signs that some of my own views may be being censored. Censorship is always a problem, but I feel that open source projects may be particularly severely damaged if and when an aspiring censor steps into the arena. Since open source projects rely heavily on the contributions of people who share ideas freely, any attempts to stifle that sharing of information can quickly and easily bring contributions to a standstill.
During the congress, I raised a question during a Q&A period. The speaker asked me to ask the question at another time, in another setting. I was open to the request and agreed to avoid postponing the discussion any further, as the speaker had already gone overtime with his talk. Yet when I had later written up my ideas (see “Google can’t answer question about using Google (or NOT)“), I noticed that I was unable to share these on the post dedicated to the talk. Even if I left the corresponding link absent from my comment, the comment was simply not published. I began to wonder if perhaps I was being censored.
It has already been an entire week since the original post was published. My comment is nowhere to be seen. The repercussions of such an action (of censorship) would indeed be dire. I am shocked to be even considering this possibility. I find my trust has been gravely impacted, and it is causing me to worry about the associated questionable future of the entire project.
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