September 5th Support Team Meeting Summary

The weekly support meeting was held on Thursday, September tth, 2024, 17:00 UTC in #forums on 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/.. Read the transcript at your own pace (a Slack account is required)

The 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//support page

Currently, if you visit https://WordPress.org/support, you are redirected to the documentation page, this also goes for https://WordPress.org/forums.

The quick fix to this would be to just move everything on wordpress.org/support/forums up one level, but that leaves the forum listing duplicated as well.

There is a desire from the team to be able to do more with a proper landing page, so we will create a collaborative outline of what we wish such a page to include, so that those unable to attend the meeting are able to participate asynchronously as well, the team will make a dedicated make/support post for this purpose.

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 2024

We do not at this time have ad dedicated table lead, but know that there will be participants available who may be able to help newcomers in a more “unofficial” manner.

Checking in with international liaisons

None of the teams international liaisons had any concerns or special events/news to share at this time.

#weekly-chat

Support Team Meeting – September 5th

The weekly support meeting will be held on Thursday, September 5th 2024, 17:00 UTC in #forums on 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/.. (a Slack account is required)

The 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//support page

Currently, if you visit https://WordPress.org/support, you are redirected to the documentation page.

The team are aware this has been the source of some contention from many, and are looking to remedy it, to do so we need to make some decisions;

  • Is there a wish to have a proper landing page here?
  • Should the current page from https://WordPress.org/support/forums be used and display it here?
  • Is there anything missing from the forum landing page if it is the chosen way forward
  • What wishes are there for a landing page if that is the route decided on

If there is a desire to do something more with it, some wire-frames or mock-ups and ideas for what that is will be required, this may prolong the process somewhat, but may allow the team to do more with the page long term?

There is an existing ticket for reclaiming the top level directory at https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6841, if the team chooses to do more with it, another ticket will be created as a pre-requisite for 6841 so that things happen in the correct order 🙂

And let’s not forget the rosetta sites in all of this, who currently display the forums page as the landing page.

Checking in with international liaisons

This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.

There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!

Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, or just to let us know you’re doing OK!

We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.

For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.

#weekly-chat

X-post: WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program Cohort #3 (2024 Q4): Call for Mentees & Mentors

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/project: WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program Cohort #3 (2024 Q4): Call for Mentees & Mentors

22nd August Support Team Meeting

The next Support Meeting will be held on Thursday, August 22nd 2024, 20:00 UTC in #forums on 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/.. (a Slack account is required)

PluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party/Theme Rep Topic Lock Ability

Plugin/Theme support/authors have the option to sticky their own topics if they wish to, but they do not have control over closing topics. There is a case to be made for announcement posts and special situations needing a sticky topic and similar, and having them sticky, but not closed, is often counter productive.

The ticket at https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5722 proposes extending the ability to close topics to plugin/theme support/authors, but only if it’s their own topic, AND there are no replies to the topic already.

How does that sound?

WCUS Support Lead Needed!

Will anyone at WCUS be willing to lead the Support table on Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/., please?

Stale MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. Tickets

(more of a request than an agenda item, but will be mentioned during the meeting for extra reach)

Please take some time to go through https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=accepted&status=assigned&status=new&status=reopened&status=reviewing&component=Support+Forums&order=priority

If you can add to any ticket (whether that’s with code or with comments), please do so!

If you close them (whether with code or if they’re simply no longer relevant), even better!

Meeting Time

Let’s take the opportunity to discuss the meeting time. Currently, it’s every other Thursday at 20:00 UTC, previously it was every Thursday at 17:00 UTC.

Do we want to stay with the same schedule? Do we want to move back to the previous? Do we want to try something new?

Happy Hour?

Docs hosts a monthly informal hour-long Slack huddle, just to hang out, chat, etc.

Do we want to try something similar?

Checking in with international liaisons

This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.

There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!

Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, or just to let us know you’re doing OK!

We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.

For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.

#forums

X-post: Training Team Update – August 2024

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X-post: Meet the new Learn WordPress

X-comment from +make.wordpress.org/training: Comment on Meet the new Learn WordPress

25th July Support Team meeting

It’s been a minute since our last team meeting – so it’s time for us to catch up. Just a couple of specific things that would be good to talk about.

Next Steps for DSA Changes

In March we started discussing any changes that might be needed in the forums to adhere to the new Digital Services Act. That conversation lapsed after that and, given there are legal requirements we need to meet, we need to turn this into some actionable items to move things forward. If you’re able to review the post (and comments) before the meeting that would be very valuable.

Support 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.

It’s been a while since we considered the Team Rep role. I’ve checked in with Marius – and he is happy for us to have a chat about whether we should nominate a new rep.

Checking in with international liaisons

This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.

There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!

Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, or just to let us know you’re doing OK!

We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.

For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.

#forums

Proposed updates to the Support Handbook

It’s been a little while since the Support Handbook had been reviewed and updated – so I thought maybe it was a time to give it a bit of a refresh.

As a start – I’ve gone through and reviewed the handbook (and associated pages) and drafted some proposed recommendations. I’d appreciate all and any feedback on these proposed changes (and suggestions of others) from the community before we move ahead with making any changes.

Please take some time to review the changes in this document – and offer comments and feedback. I’ll leave the feedback open for 2 weeks – wrapping it up on August 1st to prepare for making the actual changes.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zBsYOwzoFyHYHv0AsvTCJDh0HIU8FKYqgZAKkZhpEqE/edit

Thanks in advance!

X-post: The Theme Directory gets a refresh and is now powered by blocks

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/meta: The Theme Directory gets a refresh and is now powered by blocks

20th June Support Team meeting

The support meeting will be held on Thursday, June 20 2024, 20:00 UTC (20:00 UTC, June 20) in #forums on 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/. (a Slack account is required) or at https://make.wordpress.org/support/chat/.

In Matt’s post about WP’s 21st birthday, and also at the WCEU keynote, the Forums were called out specifically as an area to improve and focus on.

“Forums should be front and center in the community.”

This fits well with discussions we’ve been having over the past month or two regarding challenges and opportunities in the Support Forums/Team. In this week’s meeting I’d suggest we try and organise these thoughts into some proposed actions we can publish publicly to address the proposed focus on improvement.

This can probably be a pretty free-flowing discussion – but I’m keen for us to come up with a concrete list of actions. A few thoughts as starting points…

  • How can we address the issues we’ve discussed previously? dwindling volunteers, entitled users, how to make sure we unflag as much as we flag, continued improvement in handling sockpuppets.
  • What ways could we encourage more people to search for answers, and ask questions, in the forums?
  • What tooling improvements should we prioritise asking MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. for help with?

Checking in with international liaisons

This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.

There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!

Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, or just to let us know you’re doing OK!

We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.

For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.

#forums