WordPress Test Team contributor Manuel Camargo has published a first-of-its-kind report analyzing quality practices in WordPress Core — and raising important questions about how the project handles testing.

The First WordPress Quality Analysis Report, shared on the Make WordPress Test blog yesterday, reviews all commits made during the WordPress 6.8 release cycle, from 15 April 2025 to 15 July 2025. Of the 217 commits made during that period, only 52 were classified as “improvements” such as bug fixes or enhancements. Just 29 of those included any form of testing, and none reached the highest “quality score” rating.

The quality score is calculated based on the presence of automated tests, code reviews, and the amount of manual testing submitted before a commit is merged. The average score across all improvement commits was 2.47 out of 5 — a modest result that reflects both the limited use of automated testing and the inconsistent application of manual test reports.

Camargo, who contributes under the username SirLouen, is a graduate of the 2024 WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program. He has been leading the Testing Team’s efforts to take a more holistic approach to quality assurance this year. With more than 50 active members, the team submitted 366 test reports over the three-month review period, but only around 8% of those reports appear to be reflected in Core commits.

“The data suggests there’s a massive chasm between the efforts of the Test team and the extent to which those efforts are being utilised by the Core team,” Camargo writes.

“This gap highlights a significant underutilization of the Test team’s efforts, and this is what intuitively brought the attention of the Test Team for several months until it was decided to generate such a report with real data to confirm the concerns.”

The report also notes that only eight of the project’s 87 core committers made more than three commits during the review period, suggesting just 9% of the committer base is actively contributing to Core.

Camargo calls for clearer communication between the Test and Core teams and invites core contributors to share feedback to help align testing efforts with areas of real need.

“Without some sort of guidance it seems that all efforts are being misdirected and, unfortunately, are providing minimal to no value,” he writes.

“A poor communication line exists between Core and Test teams, and this translates to this disconnection we have found in the present analysis.”

Gutenberg, where much of the project’s current development activity is happening, was excluded from the analysis, prompting a question in the comments from Automattic’s Anne McCarthy. Camargo responded that including Gutenberg, the CLI, or Performance Lab would have made the report difficult to manage. But he acknowledged the gap.

“I started to become increasingly discouraged in Core,” he wrote. “But I hope that Gutenberg is not the sole priority and some attention returns to Core one day.”

While the report focuses on Core, it’s part of a broader effort by the Testing Team to improve quality across the project, and to make sure their contributions are landing where they’re most needed.

Camargo said other testing initiatives are already in the works and hinted that a similar analysis for Gutenberg may follow.

Image: Chris Clarke.

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