Truth, Lies & Fuzzy Logic in WordPress

A fantastic piece was recently published in the WordPress newsletter MasterWP called, "Is WordPress bigger than Wal-Mart?" The article was a commentary about a report published a couple of years ago by WP-Engine, which was brought back to the collective consciousness of the WordPress community by a post in Post Status, "Market Size and Market Shares: Thinking Bigger About the WordPress Economy."

This genuinely rubbish report tried to make out that WordPress was bigger than Wal-Mart!

So, why do I bring all this up? Well, in my mind, it's indicative in some way of a much bigger problem: people making bold declarations and supporting their statements with "fuzzy logic." This condition can affect all groups and individuals, from the most stupid to those who are seen as the most educated and brilliant in our society, who should know better.

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It's linked to ideology, a particular way a group or individual sees or thinks about a specific industry or economic system. Because of this, some people are subconsciously or intentionally prepared to ignore or dismiss facts that don't fit their particular individual global ideology. But, again, you can see this at work in many scenarios.

Usually, these people, the so-called providers of "facts" (excluding actual scientists), are researchers, journalists, commentators, PR people, or worse, politicians who present their ideas to the general public in a misleading manner. They frame the data, either unconsciously or consciously, for their own needs.

Obviously, individuals or groups of experts can honestly get things wrong, but the general structure of this particular Wal-Mart report is based on "fuzzy logic" of such a high level to make the whole document written nonsense!

The WordPress economy is significant, being it drives at the present moment 43% of all websites in the world, and the real growth in the near and foreseeable future is going to be clearly outside North America and Europe. Since it is an open source project with a low initial cost of entry, it is well placed to grow even more over the next 5 to 10 years in these types of developing world markets.

However, there are some real problems, mainly in the more mature markets of North America and Europe, where proprietary SaaS-based software like Wix, Squarespace, and Elementor (hybrid), is offering serious competition, along with the professional agency market entities such as Elementor, Webflow, and Shopify.

Much of the growth has, in my opinion, been given to these proprietary SaaS-based software competitors on a platter because of the time and resources the Gutenberg project has taken up inside the WordPress community, and I'm not just talking about Automattic here. The Gutenberg project is now in its fourth year, and the progress has been slow, too slow. The good news is the Gutenberg project has got to the stage where you can now see the clear possibilities as a page editor or whole website builder.

But the extended development process of this particular critical project has led to increased fragmentation of the whole WordPress ecosystem.

This has led to increasing confusion for the typical (nontech) new or existing WordPress user and a high level of frustration and annoyance from the extensive digital professional marketing industry, which is only interested in WordPress as a professional tool.

I have a prediction here. Basically, the next 18 months are going to be the making or breaking of the whole WordPress project, so we are in for a really exciting ride if you are or see yourself as part of the WordPress tribe!