TheUndersigned is throwing another theme competition. I’m trying to get excited, really. he says he’s got $700 in prizes already. being that he’s an organized kinda guy, I’ll assume he has those prizes in hand.

See, you may remember that I entered the previous theme competition. You know the one, the one where the background #fff guy and theundersigned got stiffed because the judges didn’t feel like awarding two of the categories. They listed them as TBD, and then decided not to determine them after all. Which, if you’re talking about awarding prizes, makes sense. But as I can attest, and from talking to other winners, they weren’t. And I know I’m not the only one. Now, I didn’t enter with any intention of winning. And i’m not the sort to think that I should be making money designing on top off open-source software. If you’re not going to award prizes, though, you should at least give people the bragging rights.

Andy’s been on a rant about competitions where companies look to get design work for free. I emailed him about it, because I thought that competitions were valid within the context of a community, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t disagree. Now I’m wondering if it’s really so different. Like wank says, designs will come up to fill perceived gaps, and competitions only draw out more recolored K2’s (which theundersigned has preemptively prohibited). I’ll probably enter theundersigned’s competition anyway, because I said I’d enter the next one, and it’ll get my ass in gear to build the theme that’s been kicking around in my head for a while now. And releasing it is on my 101 list.

It’s probably not the fault of the community, though. I’m willing to put the blame for this squarely on Terry’s shoulders. See, if you read the comments to theundersigned’s post, you’ll note that terry not only ignored the theme designers, he ignored the donors as well. See, for all his puffing (in the theme competition revived thread) about being such a giving member of the community, he’s yet to give anything back. (remember that rather than do the work of displaying the themes himself, he threw all that work into Shadows’ lap.) He spends all his time re-redesigning his own site. Which is the main complaint levelled at wordpress designers, the kind who everyone slammed after the winners were announced

Am I being harsh? yeah. Would this have been better handled in an email? definately. Don’t think that because I bitch a lot, that I haven’t tried to deal with this privately.

UPDATE: Shadows finally speaks his peace.  We can all go home now.