This is a YouTube video titled "Matt Mullenweg is the CEO of Automattic and Co-founder of WordPress" featuring Matt Mullenweg discussing his experiences with criticism and community engagement related to WordPress development. The content is a monologue or talk given by Matt Mullenweg, focusing on his perspective about open source contributions, online criticism, and maintaining optimism in software development.
If you were kind of inside baseball with WordPress, there's actually a lot of people who have been unhappy with me over the years. How I would describe it is previously like 1% of the world thought I was terrible. And now I feel like it's up to like 4 or 5%. So it's still not the majority, but as you know, something negative, you feel seven times more than something positive. And when people are angry with you, it's kind of like restaurant reviews or whatever, they're more likely to leave a bad review than a good review. You know, WordPress, 98% of all the core developers, have stayed and contribute and are working on the next version and are supportive. Part of the reason these folks are so good is they don't spend all their time on Twitter and Reddit arguing with folks. And also the arguments can be very frustrating because people don't engage in good faith. They don't really change their mind when new facts are introduced. I've done my best actually from the open source side. I'm really used to engaging with things. And I think that's been one thing I've learned from this is in some forums it doesn't matter how you engage. And especially if you have bots or other things running there, I'd leave comments on Reddit. it immediately get like 40 down votes. Now the good news is I've had lots of credibility weighted, you know, support from people like Mark Benioff or, you know, other open source leaders. I feel like that's been a good balance as well for me because there are days where I'm like, gosh, am I an idiot? Or, you know, it could be really down, like reading all these things. That is part of what allows me to balance and get back to that sort of positive, optimistic space that I think you need to be in to do great software and great work.
