Request for feedback: Review for the dedicated deputy communication channel

After the discussion on my proposal about a dedicated communication place for deputies, we agreed to experiment with a private #community-deputies channel in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. In the discussion, we also agreed to do a public review after three and six months to see how the channel has worked and decide its continuation. The channel was created in December, so it’s time for the first review.

The purpose of the channel is to be a safe place for all deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. to discuss sensitive and private aspects of our work, get peer-support when needed and ask second opinions for event applications. It’s not meant for discussions that could take place in public forums like this blog, #community-team or #community-events channel.

Guidelines for the channel are:

  • As we all are busy and have an abundance of unread notifications, please avoid irrelevant chatter.
  • Help to create a safe and welcoming space for all deputies. Be empathetic and help answer questions when you can!
  • If you feel that the discussion should take place in a public forum, say it and help to move the discussion to the #community-team channel or Community Team blog.
  • Any decision making that will affect the broader community will be made in public. Help others be aware of when they might be making a decision that should happen after public discussion.

As this year has continued being really strange, I think we really can’t use many numeric metrics while reviewing the channel. That’s why I’d like us to have an open, free form, discussion. Here are some questions to help start that discussion:

  1. Has there been discussion about topics that should have been taken place in public forums instead?
  2. Have you got help with some issue in the channel, which you’d normally handled by yourself or asked help from another deputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. in a private message?
  3. Has the channel helped you feel more connected to the team?
  4. In general, what is your feeling about the discussion that has taken place on the channel?
  5. Should we continue to keep using a private deputy channel?

Active deputies, please share your thoughts and raise new important questions to the discussion. This is also an open invitation for all community members to ask questions about the channel, which could help us with the review.

Discussion is open until 2021-03-29. If the result of the review looks like there’s no justification for private working space for deputies, the channel will be shut off at the beginning of April. In case the experiment continues, we will do another public review in three months.

Thanks to @angelasjin, @andreamiddleton and @kcristiano who helped with this post.

#slack

Community Team Rep Nominations for 2021

At the end of last year, @camikaos and myself (@mariaojob) were voted in as reps for 2020. It has been an insightful & fulfilling experience, and we are happy to pass the baton on to the next team reps for 2021 💯.

This post kicks off the election process with nominations to replace @camikaos and myself (@mariaojob) as Community Team Reps.

The Role

In the WordPress open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project, each team has one or two (or more!) representatives, abbreviated as “reps”. On the Community team, we ask reps to commit to the role for a full calendar year.

Team reps are responsible for communicating on behalf of the group to the other contributor groups via weekly updates, as well as occasional chats. 

As a reminder, it is not called “team lead” for a reason. While the people elected as team reps will generally come from the pool of folks that people think of as experienced leaders, the team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. role is designed to change hands regularly.

This role does have a time commitment attached to it, at least one hour a week. The main tasks include:

  • Writing the agenda for the biweekly chat (example)
  • Run the chat (example)
  • Write the recap and post it in Updates
  • Keep an eye on the moving parts of the team and provide reports for quarterly updates (example).

Over the year, the team can decide to add one or two people to help, depending on how much work there is. For now, let’s get us two new reps!

How Community Team Rep elections work

Following our election process last year, the Community team is planning on these key steps: 

  1. Call for Nominations: Anyone can nominate a Community team rep! The deadline is Wednesday, November 25.
  2. Voting for Team Reps: We will open a poll for voting on Tuesday, December 1. The poll will stay open for three weeks, and close on Tuesday, December 22. We will then be able to announce our new team reps before the end of 2020! 

Call for Community Team Rep nominations!

Please nominate people for Community team rep in the comments of this post by Wednesday, November 25. Self-nominations are welcome. 

If you would like to nominate someone in private, please reach out to @mariaojob, @camikaos, or @angelasjin

If you get nominated, you do not have to say yes! We will only add people who respond positively to a nomination to the poll, so feel free to decline a nomination if you don’t feel like this is the right fit for any reason.

Finally, if you have any questions, please also feel free to ask in the comments.

#community-team, #team-reps

Proposal follow-up: Dedicated communication place for deputies – forming the guidelines

Months ago, I posted a proposal on creating a new dedicated SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel for deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook.. After a long and really good discussion, the deputies reached a consensus and would like to give the channel a try, after a set of guidelines have been formed. If you don’t have an idea what I’m talking about, and the idea of a private channel sounds bad to you, I suggest reading the original proposal and discussion that followed that.

It’s now (finally) time to form those guidelines and embark on this experiment together!

These guidelines aspire to be encouraging and not discouraging. These are more to give an idea on the purpose of the channel, rather than creating an uncertain feeling around whether something can be raised to the discussion in the channel. My hope is to keep these as short and clear as possible.

To provide extra clarity on who will be in the channel, and how it will be used:

  • All deputies with “Active” status in this sheet will be invited to the channel.
  • The main purpose of the channel is to provide a safe space, and to improve peer support for all deputies, especially those new to the role. In this channel, deputies who are uncertain or hesitant can raise issues or ask questions with a smaller group first before doing so publicly. The channel can also be a place to discuss applications that need a second opinion, or for discussions about financial issues that require confidentiality. If some discussion that takes place could be public, it will be moved to a public forum (#community-team channel or this team blog).
  • No decisions that affect Community Team, event organisers or the greater WordPress project will be made in the private channel.
  • We’ll do a public review on the Community Team’s blog on how the channel has worked after three and six months

My proposal for the deputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. channel guidelines are:

  • As we all are busy and have an abundance of unread notifications, please avoid irrelevant chatter.
  • Help to create a safe and welcoming space for all deputies. Be empathetic and help answer questions when you can!
  • If you feel that the discussion should take place in a public forum, say it and help to move the discussion to the #community-team channel or Community Team blog.
  • Any decision making that will affect the broader community will be made in public. Help others be aware when they might be making a decision that should happen after public discussion.

Feel free to share your ideas, thoughts, additions and changes to these proposed guidelines before 2020-11-19. After that, I’ll move forward and ask Slack admins to create the new channel for us.

Thank you @angelasjin, @harishanker, @andreamiddleton and @courtneypk for helping with this post!

#community-deputies, #slack

Proposal: Dedicated communication place for deputies

For some time I’ve personally have felt that deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. would need another place than #community-team SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel to discuss some topics. Mary’s proposal about monthly virtual calls is a great one to create a place for deputies to see each other and share how they are, though it has a slightly different function than I’m proposing here.

To keep it short, my few arguments why deputies would need dedicated channel:

1) We have 51 active deputies and the #community-team channel has over 1 500 members

2) During exceptional situations, like recent COVID-19 response and things caused by that, deputies needed to communicate realtime a lot while working with fast actions to help organisers. And in other hand, deputies stepping in to help with the response work needed to get (at that point) internal instructions. Sharing and creating internal instructions on a channel that has over 1 500 members, means that community members will see an incomplete and in some cases information that is subject to change. This means that #community-team channel is not space place for deputies to draft some posts, changes and guidelines in urgent or controversial situations.

3) Currently, some discussion that is internal for deputies for a reason or another (like how to respond in sudden situations/cases, how to handle this thing we haven’t faced before or issues that are delicate) are hepping in small(ish) deputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. DM groups. For transparency this is bad.

4) The dedicated channel could encourage deputies to ask help when they need it during their work.

This is why I’m proposing: creating a new private channel for active deputies. Active deputies would be defined based on this deputy sheet we have.

Yes, the private channel is somewhat against the transparency we as a team and as a project in general cherish. At the same time, it should be remembered that some discussions that could involve all deputies happen in smaller DM groups. Creating a private channel for all deputies would hopefully reduce the need for that kind of DM groups and add transparency amongst deputies.

Also, the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team has a private channel for some discussions mainly related to releasing new versions, because it’s more convenient to have a smaller channel instead of trying to have the discussion in the public channel where a lot of conversation happens. (Someone who is more familiar with the Core team can correct me if I’m wrong).

And the last argument in favour of the private channel is that we are already good in directing discussion from Slack to P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. when needed, so why we wouldn’t be good on moving some discussion from a private channel to public #community-team if the topic is something that can be discussed publicly.

When pitching this idea to some members of our deputy team, it got objections and a counter-proposal of creating new public channel for this purpose.

Please leave your feedback on the topic and particularly in the following questions:

  1. Should deputies have another place than the #community-team channel to discuss among themselves if needed?
  2. If deputies should have a dedicated channel, should it be private or public?

Leave your feedback on 2020-07-31 latest.

WordCamp and Meetup application vetting sprint (January 2020)

We currently have a backlog of WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. and MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. applications. We would like to request the help of all deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. to help us stay responsive to community members, and to help keep our queues moving forward. To that end, we’ll be holding few vetting sprints 🙂

Each sprint will last for two hours, and we will collectively vet as many WordCamp and Meetup applications in that time as possible. If you are a deputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. and would like to coordinate a sprint at another time, then please comment on this post and I’ll add it to the list.

All deputies are welcome and encouraged to join! Please comment on this post if you think you can take part.

What is a Vetting Sprint?

A vetting sprint for WordCamp or Meetup applications is a scheduled session where all available deputies meet together in the #community-team channel in the WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. group. Over the course of the sprint, we will all work on vetting 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 WordCamp centralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each. listings and/or the Meetup central listings can take part. That means people who have completed the deputy training, signed the deputy agreement and been given access to the dashboard.

If you are a deputy who has been active in the last year, then you should have access to this. If you don’t have access and still want to take part, please comment here or ask in #community-team and we’ll sort out your access.

How Does it Work?

We will be going through the open WordCamp and Meetup applications that still need vetting – you can find WordCamp listings here and Meetup listings here. We also have some handy notes to help you with the vetting process.

As always, deputies can work on these things at any time that suits them, but these dedicated sprints help to provide some direct, focused time for it.

#vetting-sprint

Discussion: continuity of Community Office Hours

Office hoursOffice Hours Defined times when the Global Community Team are in the #community-events Slack channel. If there is anything you would like to discuss – you do not need to inform them in advance.You are very welcome to drop into any of the Community Team Slack channels at any time. are usually quite quiet, people ask their questions when it’s convenient for them and deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. forgot to open or close those (regardless of the bot we have to remind us). There is almost always deputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. 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 sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. 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

WordPress Governance Project: change of venue

Concerns have been raised about the posting of news about the WordPress Governance Project on make.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ and use of the #community-team SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. 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.

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 MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. application vetting sprint!

What is a vetting sprint?

A vetting sprint for meetup applications is a 1 hour session where all available deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. 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 SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. 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 deputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. 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!

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:

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 SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. 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 WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US 2018, the WordPress Governance Project is an initiative spearheaded by @bamadesigner and @mor10.

The purpose of this project is to explore:

  1. the governance of the WordPress open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project and its various community components, and
  2. 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 W3CW3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.https://www.w3.org/., 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 coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. 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.

Meetup Application Vetting Sprint – 26 & 27 September

In order to get through the large backlog of meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. applications that are currently in need of vetting, we are going to be joining together in two 1-hour vetting sprints next week!

What is a vetting sprint?

A vetting sprint for meetup applications is a 1 hour session where all available deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. 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 SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. 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 deputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. 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?

We have two sprints planned for next week, so we can accommodate as many time zones as possible. The two times are:

These times have been added to the Deputy Calendar for easy reference.

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: