Remove LiveJournal from importer recommendations

[dd32]

The LiveJournal importer has seemingly been broken for quite some time, but is still recommended on the Importers screen.

After reviewing some data, including the support threads and plugin directory install metrics, I recommend that we retire the LiveJournal plugin from being recommended on the Importer screen.

See also #47243 and ​#meta5550

The importer list is pulled from WordPress.org, but a fallback list is included in core: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/src/wp-admin/includes/import.php#L187

[costdev]

After reviewing some data, including the support threads and plugin directory install metrics, I recommend that we retire the LiveJournal plugin from being recommended on the Importer screen.

What did the plugin directory install metrics show?

From what I can see, there is:

• A deprecation notice for screen_icon()/get_screen_icon().
  • Can probably just be removed.
• A deprecation notice for wpdb::escape().
  • e.g. esc_sql().
• Undefined array offset for 0 == $matches[1].
  • e.g. if ( empty( $matches ) || '0' === $matches[1] ) (still needs to run if empty).

Were there any (other) significant and verified bugs that you came across?

We could certainly fix the above in an update, but there's a bigger question of maintenance - and this component doesn't have any maintainers. This might be raised in the next devchat to see if anyone wants to take on maintenance of this plugin.

While I'm personally not up for maintaining the plugin, I'd be happy to resolve the three issues above and bring the plugin up to Core coding standards, if there was a desire to keep the plugin available and someone else willing to maintain it in the long term. Otherwise, I'd support retiring the plugin.

[dd32]

Replying to costdev:

After reviewing some data, including the support threads and plugin directory install metrics, I recommend that we retire the LiveJournal plugin from being recommended on the Importer screen.

What did the plugin directory install metrics show?

The metrics I looked at included:

• Active install growth: Declining
• Number of "new installs" (an internal wordpress.org number, counting the number of 'new' sites it's seen it be used on), which suggests there's been no new sites installing it in the last year
• Support Forum activity: Last thread 5 years ago

Were there any (other) significant and verified bugs that you came across?

I didn't test the importer myself, I deferred to @vishnugopal for that.

Looking at some private notes, it appears that I may have misread - The importer isn't entirely broken, it just doesn't migrate comments.

However, It's usage on WordPress.com appears to be negligible, combined with seemingly no WordPress.org usage, suggests it's not the most important importer to suggest be used / for the limited hours people have for importers to dedicate to.

there's a bigger question of maintenance - and this component doesn't have any maintainers. This might be raised in the next devchat to see if anyone wants to take on maintenance of this plugin.

​#meta5550 covers some of that, tl;dr I've imported a bunch of seemingly active plugins to GitHub and some of the WordPress.com Importer team are going to donate some time to cleanup and collate any fixes/bugs/etc needed on those repo's.