Timi Wahalahti 9:13 am on February 23, 2019
Tags: community-events ( 8 ), community-team, discussion ( 4 ), Office Hours ( 12 )

Discussion: continuity of Community Office Hours

Office hours are usually quite quiet, people ask their questions when it’s convenient for them and deputies forgot to open or close those (regardless of the bot we have to remind us). There is almost always deputy to answer questions or if there isn’t, the question will be caught up later when some deputy sees it.

So, I’d like to question if community hours are really needed and propose their retirement. In exchange there are few things we could do to encourage people to ask questions freely.

During the last community team meetings, few good ideas were conducted from the discussion:

replace the office hours sidebar and welcome box text with something more general about #community-events channel and encouraging to ask questions at all times
having a random empathy bot that reminds #community-team that we should post something encouraging to #community-events if the channel has been quiet for some time

Some concerns were also raised:

some people are waiting for the office hours before asking their questions
we don’t want to loose a human touch so having a bot in #community-events opening/closing office hours, sending random reminder messages or auto-replying is not an option
we need to be very clear that people can ask their questions any time, but know that they may not get an immediate answer

Please share your thoughts about retiring office hours or ideas on how to evolve those! Comments will close 10.4., please leave your comment before that.

#discussion, #office-hours

Francesca Marano 3:26 pm on January 7, 2019
Tags: community-team

WordPress Governance Project: change of venue

Concerns have been raised about the posting of news about the WordPress Governance Project on make.wordpress.org and use of the #community-team Slack channel giving the impression the project is sanctioned as an official WordPress project. It has not received such sanctions from WordPress leadership.

For this reason, all further work of the WordPress Governance Project will take place on the dedicated site at wpgovernance.com and asynchronous chat will happen at twgp.slack.com.

To allow everyone interested to sign up to the New Slack channel, and get acquainted with the new site, the first meeting will be postponed by one week to January 15, 1600 UTC.

Timi Wahalahti 4:29 pm on January 1, 2019
Tags: community-team

Meetup Application Vetting Sprint – January 3rd

Looks like were going to skip our next team meeting, since people are still enjoying their holidays on January 3rd. For those who are back from the holidays and have scheduled Community team meeting in their calendars – let’s have Meetup application vetting sprint!

What is a vetting sprint?

A vetting sprint for meetup applications is a 1 hour session where all available deputies meet together in the #community-team channel in the WordPress Slack group. Over the course of the hour, we will all work on vetting meetup applications and use the Slack channel as a central place to discuss what we’re working on and support each other.

Who can take part?

Any deputies who have access to the Meetup Tracker can take part. That means people who have completed the deputy training, signed the agreement and been given access to the tracker (details about the tracker here).

If you are a deputy who has been active in the last 6 months, then you would have been added to the tracker already, but if you don’t have access and still want to take part then please comment here and we can give you access.

When is this happening?

Currently, we have one planned sprint. It would be awesome to have a sprint also on the later community team meeting, so please tell us in #community-team if you can lead that sprint!

Thursday, January 3rd, 11:00 UTC – lead by @sippis
Thursday, January 3rd, 20:00 UTC – lead by ?

All deputies are welcome to join in meetup vetting sprints and do the vetting by themselves at any time 🙂

How does it work?

As explained above, we will meet in the #community-team channel on Slack at the times listed and dive into vetting meetup applications. Here are some handy links that you will need on the day:

Rachel Cherry 3:27 pm on December 29, 2018
Tags: community-team

WordPress Governance Project Launch

~~The WordPress Governance Project kicks off on Asia-Pac / EMEA friendly Tuesday January 8 2019, 1600 UTC with a one hour meeting in the #community-team Slack channel.~~ The meeting will be conducted and moderated by provisionary team leads @bamadesigner and @mor10.

Meeting moved to twgp.slack.com and postponed to January 15. See announcement and update your calendars. Thanks!

What is the WordPress Governance Project?

First announced at WordCamp US 2018, the WordPress Governance Project is an initiative spearheaded by @bamadesigner and @mor10.

The purpose of this project is to explore:

the governance of the WordPress open source project and its various community components, and
WordPress’ role in the governance of the open web including representation in forums where decisions about the web platform and the Internet are made.

The scope of stage 1 of the WordPress Governance Project is WordPress and its communities. Stage 2 of the project will focus on how WordPress can take part in the governance and evolution of the wider web through policy and representation.

Why is this necessary?

The WordPress Governance Project will aim to answer who “we” are and who “we” represent.

WordPress powers +32.7% of the web. Every decision made by WordPress is a decision made on behalf of those users and has a significant impact on the web as a whole. Because of this footprint, the onus is on WordPress and its contributors to ensure decisions are made in a transparent and accessible way and that governance structures are concrete, transparent, and understandable. In short, it has to be possible for anyone to find an answer to the question “who are the deciders”.

To be able to take part in the larger conversation about the governance of the web platform, the open web, and the Internet, WordPress first needs to clarify its principles through an exploration of what necessary conditions need to be in place for it to meet its goal of “democratizing publishing.” With such principles in place, representatives can be selected and sent to decision makers (governing organizations like W3C, government representatives, etc) to speak on behalf of WordPress and its millions of users.

To claim our seat at the table, we must first know what we stand for and where we want to take the web and the Internet.

For more context, view the announcement of the project as part of @mor10’s session at WordCamp US 2018.

How will this project unfold?

The goal of the WordPress Governance Project is to propose a governance model for WordPress at or before WordCamp Europe 2019 or the 2019 Community Summit (if such an event takes place).

The project will research existing governance models from within the open web community as well as local and international organizations, corporations, and government.

What is the scope of this project?

The scope of the WordPress Governance Project, stage 1, includes:

Propose a set of principles based on, and defining the necessary conditions for, the core philosophy of the WordPress open source project: To democratize publishing through free, open source software.
Propose a leadership and governance model for the WordPress open source project and its communities.
Propose a model for electing or appointing representatives to speak on behalf of WordPress and its users in forums where decisions are made which impact WordPress and its users.

The project will provide a model for policy making, decision making, oversight, and accountability within the WordPress project. This may include solidifying existing governance structures in teams, introducing new governance structures for parts of or the entire project, and / or creating new governance roles and responsibilities.

The scope of the WordPress Governance Project does not include replacing or reducing existing leadership or introducing democratic voting on features and other decisions within the WordPress project or community.

Will WordPress governance mean someone can make decisions about what I can and cannot do with WordPress?

Short answer: No.

Long answer, WordPress is an open source project published under the GPL which grants you the Four Freedoms. This will not change.

The WordPress Governance Project aims to introduce transparent and accountable governance structures to the WordPress project to make it more accessible and bring clarity to decision making processes. It also aims to create the necessary structures for WordPress and its users to be properly represented in the many groups and spaces where decisions are made which directly impact you as a WordPress user.

Can you impose a governance model on WordPress?

Once the WordPress Governance Project puts forward its proposal for governance of the WordPress project, it is up to the current leadership, and the community at large, to decide whether to adopt the new model.

Vedanshu Jain 11:25 am on December 24, 2018
Tags: community ( 11 ), community-events ( 8 ), community-team, Core ( 2 ), meta ( 2 ), polyglots ( 2 ), slack ( 3 )

Slack notifications for WordCamp and Meetup application updates

In the WordPress project, multiple teams (#meta, #core, #polyglots, etc.) make use of Slack notifications to surface new, interesting changes in their team’s respective channel. This includes notifications on new commits, trac issue updates, new translation strings availability, etc.

These notifications serve at least two purposes:

1. People interested in following these teams have a very convenient way to look at recent and ongoing activities.

2. It provides a way to acknowledge contributors.

In the WordPress community channels, we don’t currently use this tool, but there may be some cases where having these notifications would add lot of value for us.

These include:

Someone sends a new application for a WordCamp
Someone sends a new application for a WordPress chapter meetup
A new WordCamp is set to Scheduled status
A new WordPress meetup group is now active in the chapter
A WordCamp application is declined
A Meetup application is declined

For reference, you can see status of some active WordCamp applications here.

These notifications could include whether the event is a WordPress or a Meetup, city and country of the event, description of the update, and WordPress.org usernames of people who were involved in vetting the event application.

I have written some initial code for this, and it could look like:

`(screenshot for when a new WordCamp application is submitted)`

(screenshot for when WordCamp is scheduled) — `(screenshot when a WordCamp application is scheduled)`

(screenshot for when a WordCamp application is declined) — `(screenshot when a WordCamp application is declined)`

A few more things to note and discuss here:

We can perhaps send these notifications to #community-events, #community-team, or both of these channels.
The props section will include usernames of everyone who added notes to the application listing and/or changed the listing’s status.
We would also want to send notifications when an application is declined, and not just when it is received or scheduled, in order to credit the deputies who nevertheless did the work to vet and respond to it. It could normalize the process of declining the application, because it is not uncommon for subsequent applications to be approved.

What do you think? Should we have these notifications? If we have them, then should they be more granular, or less granular? What changes in language or overall appearance would you suggest? Leave your thoughts in a comment on this post!

#community, #slack

Hugh Lashbrooke 7:17 am on September 21, 2018
Tags: community-team

Meetup Application Vetting Sprint – 26 & 27 September

In order to get through the large backlog of meetup applications that are currently in need of vetting, we are going to be joining together in two 1-hour vetting sprints next week!