Matt Mullenweg overruled several core committers on Tuesday, ordering the registration of Automattic’s Akismet spam filter on the new Connectors screen that ships with WordPress 7.0. The directive appeared in Trac ticket #65012, opened on April 1 by core committer Jorge Costa after a private chat with release lead Matias Ventura. Within 36 minutes the ticket was merged, placing Akismet alongside OpenAI, Anthropic and Google before the plugin is activated.

Peter Wilson, a Fueled‑sponsored committer, filed a revert the same day, arguing that any plugin should register its own connector via the standard API and that Akismet’s own development branch already adds one, risking duplicate entries. Other contributors—Jonathan Desrosiers, John Blackbourn and Aaron Jorbin—questioned the lack of public discussion, the timing during the release‑candidate window, and the absence of published guidelines for future connectors.

Mullenweg replied in the #core‑committers channel, calling the episode “a microcosm” of cultural drift that makes contribution painful and yields mediocre output. He reminded participants that Akismet has blocked billions of spam attempts free of charge for two decades, while AI services with no WordPress contributions sit unchallenged. The broader policy on non‑AI connectors will be revisited in the 7.1 cycle, leaving the current implementation intact.