Opt-in Usage Tracking in Gutenberg

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The WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development team builds WordPress! Follow this site for general updates, status reports, and the occasional code debate. There’s lots of ways to contribute:

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Starting in last Friday’s version 0.7.0, the GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party contains a mechanism to count how often specific actions occur over time. Before anything is tracked, each WordPress user on each site must opt in to the tracking via an opt-in screen shown when loading the new version of the plugin. Here is what that screen looks like:

Whether a user clicks “Yes” or “No”, this preference is remembered as a user option.

If the user has previously clicked “Yes” on this screen, and an event occurs that has an associated bumpStat call in the Gutenberg code, then this event is sent to WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ servers by loading a special “pixel” image. The following data is stored for future analysis:

The “group” and “name” sent with the bumpStat call (short strings of text)
The time the event was recorded.

We’ll use this data to look at usage patterns and make the editor experience better over time.

As Gutenberg is an open-source community project, we view this data as belonging to the WordPress community, so we also plan to make this data available via a public dashboard. In the meantime, here is a preview of the number and type of blocks added to posts in the editor over the few days since the 0.7.0 release:

Finally, for more details about the technical implementation of this feature, see the GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ pull requests where it was developed: 2140, 2205, and 2217.

#gutenberg

Drivingralle 11:22 am on August 7, 2017

If the data belonging to the WordPress community why are they send to WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/?
- Pascal Birchler 8:02 pm on August 8, 2017
  
  In this case, we should probably think of WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ more as an analytics provider like Google Analytics, not the hosting platform. Many contributors to GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ work for Automattic and thus were able to easily and quickly set up the tracking using the infrastructure they already knew. Setting up something similar on WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ infrastructure would have taken ages. See also #38418.
  
  As mentioned in the post, using WordPress.com as an analytics service doesn’t mean the data won’t be public.
James Nylen 8:07 am on August 10, 2017

There’s been quite a lot of discussion on this topic across the community, much of which stems from earlier discussions like #38418, which I wasn’t aware of.

Usage tracking in CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and feature projects is a much bigger topic than fits into the scope of GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ right now, so I’ve removed it from the GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repo, and it will be removed in the 0.8 Gutenberg release.

The data that it was tracking, while interesting, probably wouldn’t have been a significant factor in the long-term growth and development of Gutenberg. The discussion surrounding the data collection, however, would take up a disproportionate amount of the team’s time.

The data that was collected will be deleted after 0.8 rolls out. Because it’s still so early in Gutenberg’s development, there was not enough collected to provide any sort of picture of usage.
- zakkath 7:39 pm on August 11, 2017
  
  I have to say that I strongly disagree with the decision to yank the telemetry functionality out of the GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. It seems antithetical to remove it when it would literally hand its developers vital data on a silver platter that it needs right now.
  
  I’ve been lurking around discussions of fields, blocks, etc. and it seems to me that data collected would show what blocks/embeds were being used, how they were being used, which ones were not, etc. It would then provide a means to look deeper into questions like “Why isn’t anyone using the X blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.?” Without any data, the team is either restricted to people who run the beta plugin and provide the level of feedback the team needs or they’re just simply flying blind.
  
  If you’ve seen my avatarAvatar An avatar is an image or illustration that specifically refers to a character that represents an online user. It’s usually a square box that appears next to the user’s name. in the WP SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., it’s pretty obvious that I play Blizzard games. Everything I do in any game I play made by them is logged right down to what I say in chat channels. They USE that data to great advantage in their development and they will openly attribute decisions to certain things. I can go on and on about what’s popped into their games and evolved specifically from data collection. And sometimes those features get refined further.
  
  More importantly, and this speaks directly to Morton Rand-Hendrickson’s tracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. on the issue, putting it and keeping it in Gutenberg provides guidance on a) how useful the data collected is, and b) how to integrate the capability into coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. for 5.0 or beyond.
  
  The issue of informed consent is twice taken care of by the fact that a) one has to enable it to begin with and b) Gutenberg is a beta plugin that one has to actively seek out and install anyways. The same model could be used for core with just notification that the plug-in exists that shows once per install and then an addition to the dashboard that shows status of telemetry (enabled/disabled).

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