Triage Squad GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner. https://github.com/ triage: Biweekly on Thursdays 07:00 UTC
Five contributors attended, and a single question ended up carrying the entire session: what are the Office Hours actually for? The answer we arrived at is that each session should center on one topic announced in advance, rather than a walk through open tickets. A second theme emerged from that discussion and proved to be the most valuable part of the hour: what keeps contributors without a technical background from becoming active on GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner. https://github.com/?
No note-taker had been designated beforehand, so Sumit Singh wrote this recap. A note-taker will be named ahead of the next session. Everything listed under Decisions was agreed in the meeting; the Recommendations are proposals that still require the team’s confirmation. Feedback is welcome before the next Tuesday meeting, either as a comment on this post or in the #trainingSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ channel.
Participants
Name
WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/ profile
Saidul Islam Bokul attended the Office Hours for the first time. He works as a Full Stack Digital Marketer, has been active on WordPress.org since 2023, contributes to the Bengali translations, and wrote the recap of the Tuesday meeting on July 21. His outside perspective shaped the session. Andrew Ssanya is a Digital Skills Facilitator at Edutech Club in Kampala and contributes as a note-taker. Vasantsinh Rajput is a freelance WordPress developer who mentors the team’s note-takers.
Topics
1. What the Office Hours are for
Sumit opened with a candid observation: a good number of people commit to attending during the Tuesday meeting, yet few of them appear in the session itself. That observation quickly became a question of purpose. The common ground we reached is that the Office Hours depend on a topic that is known in advance and draws in the people who care about it. Reviewing and clearing open tickets is organizational work, and it belongs in the TT-Admins meeting. This carries forward the separation of formats set in motion on June 27 (Write and publish the meeting-formats proposal, #3536). As a compromise, roughly 15 minutes of each session remain reserved for tickets that have clearly gone stale.
The discussion also revealed that two distinct problems had been folded into one: the purpose of the Office Hours, and the lack of commitment within the TT-Admins group. Each calls for its own remedy.
2. How the topic gets chosen
The process we settled on: propose three clearly distinct topics from the topic list, put them to the weekly Tuesday meeting for selection, and confirm the winner before the session. Those three should address questions that genuinely move the team, such as the status of credits or badges, rather than fine-grained organizational matters. To keep the selection from reflecting only the organizers’ vantage point, Saidul was asked directly for his read as a newcomer. His choice: Note-taking and publication workflow: who does what, and how? (#3565). Vasant should be in the room for it, since he mentors the note-takers. A ticket for prioritizing topics is already on file (Set up prioritization for Office Hours topics, #3538).
3. Getting started on GitHub without a technical background
The most valuable stretch of the session, and it came from Saidul. He described plainly how the standard advice, go find yourself an issue on GitHub, stops him in his tracks: his background is marketing, and he has never worked with the platform. Note-taking, by contrast, comes naturally to him, because it aligns with how he already works.
Asked which would help more, a workshop on GitHub or a weekly guided session in which the group works through tickets together, his answer was unequivocal. The basics first, the guided work second. Without a foundation, even guided work remains disorienting, and the same holds for other contributors arriving from marketing and content roles.
Sumit then demonstrated live what an entry point without technical prerequisites looks like: in the WordPress/Learn repository, filterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. for translation tickets, select a Bengali one, volunteer as a reviewer, examine the linked document, and comment on the outcome. Contributions of this kind also surface on the WordPress.org profile. Verifying reported problems, broken links among them, counts as a contribution in its own right, even when the fix comes from someone else. Saidul committed to taking on a first ticket the following day; Andrew intends to join after his next note-taking assignment.
4. The issue backlog and the target of 100
As of July 26, the WordPress/Learn repository held 545 open issues. At that volume, a newcomer has no way of telling which ticket matters. The target for the next six months is no more than roughly 100 open issues, and Sumit confirmed it as the team’s principal goal.
Vasant made the arithmetic plain: five people meeting once a month will not clear 500 tickets. Sumit therefore sketched a lightweight alternative, namely selecting five to ten tickets per week, working through them in 15 to 30 minutes, commenting, and closing them after a short grace period if no one responds. That is essentially the former Thursday triage session, which has not convened in a long time. Its real value never lay in the triage itself, but in following along and asking questions, which is precisely what new contributors need. A restart hinges on three or four people being dependably available, so that the work does not settle back onto the same few shoulders. How triage and the TT-Admins meeting relate to one another is already tracked in TT-Admins meeting and Triage: separate or merge (#3476).
5. Local language groups
Sumit placed the purpose of the Office Hours in a broader frame: part of the point is to include people who speak neither English nor German, and to let them contribute in their own language. In the German-speaking region, a Training Team subgroup of roughly 15 people has taken shape. What remains unresolved is the connection between the international team and local groups: translation, visibility for local work, and a discernible path from a local group into the wider project. The subject goes on the topic list in its own right.
6. Visibility: recordings and a channel of our own
Vasant proposed recording recurring tasks as short videos and sharing them with the group, so that anyone who misses a meeting can still pick up the work. The GitHub demo from this session is the first candidate. This intersects with the note-taking workshop that has been pending for some time (Host the Block Editor workshop for Note Takers, #3478 and Record the screencast tutorial for Note Takers, #3479): the sensible sequence is to demonstrate the process first and derive a written guide from it. Sumit expanded the idea into a dedicated YouTube channel for Learn WordPress, along with additional social media accounts, on the grounds that not every kind of content belongs on WordPress.tv. Vasant then set a clear order of priority: recruit new admins and distribute the existing workload first, social media after that. Sumit concurred. This subject, too, goes on the topic list.
7. Organization
The Office Hours topic list currently resides in a personal repository. It belongs in the Learn repository, together with a template that allows anyone to propose a topic; the ticket for this already exists (Migrate the Office Hours topic list into the Learn GitHub, #3537). Sumit takes on the template, with the existing list and the current topic template available as a starting point.
On admitting new contributors the principle is straightforward: anyone willing to help should be able to take part. Saidul and Andrew are to be added without delay. In practice this runs into a constraint. A dedicated private Slack channel for the TT-Admins was not approved, so the group relies on a private group conversation that Slack caps at nine people, and those nine seats are taken. The existing private channel #training-guides was raised as a possible way around this, a space where guides and TT-Admins could convene. That remains a suggestion rather than a decision: the guides need a room of their own in which to support one another. The venue for the TT-Admins conversation is therefore still open, and the request to the MetaMetaMeta 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. team will be filed again, this time with the obstacle documented.
Props
Andrew did outstanding work on the lesson thumbnails, and everyone present congratulated him during the session.
Decisions
#
Decision
1
Every Office Hours session gets one main topic, announced in advance; reviewing and clearing open tickets belongs in the TT-Admins meeting
2
Topic selection: three distinct topics from the topic list, a vote in the Tuesday meeting, confirmation before the session
Roughly 15 minutes per session for old tickets; whatever is no longer relevant gets closed
5
Six-month goal: reduce open issues in WordPress/Learn from 545 to approximately 100
6
The topic list moves into the Learn repository (#3537); Sumit creates a template
7
Saidul and Andrew join the TT-Admins conversation without delay; the venue for that conversation still has to be settled
8
Next meeting: Saturday, August 22, 2026, 14:00 UTC (#3535)
What comes out of this session
New issues, with numbers to be added once they are created:
A foundational GitHub introduction for contributors without a technical background, delivered as a concise written guide or a recording of 20 to 30 minutes, linked from the onboarding page and the handbook. Owner still to be named.
A closing rule and a plan for reducing the backlog: put the rule in writing, report the count monthly in the Tuesday meeting, and revisit the target after three months.
File the request for a private TT-Admins channel again, with the obstacle documented and an interim arrangement recorded.
To be added as comments on existing issues rather than as new tickets:
New subjects for the topic list: connecting local language groups with the international team, a video and social media presence for the Training Team, and onboarding new TT-Admins.
Action Items
Task
Owner
Due
Write and publish this recap
sumitsingh
2026-08-02
Select three topics and put them to a vote in the Tuesday meeting
team-reps
2026-08-11
Create the topic template in the Learn repository (#3537)
sumitsingh
2026-08-22
Post notes and a revised agenda for the TT-Admins meeting
sumitsingh
2026-07-27
Set and announce a fixed day and time for the TT-Admins meeting
sumitsingh
2026-08-22
Settle the venue for the TT-Admins conversation and add sibokul and andrewssanya
sumitsingh
2026-08-02
File the channel request with the Meta team again
team-reps
2026-08-22
Prepare the guided triage session and confirm availability (#3476)
team-reps
2026-08-22
Take on a first ticket: comment on a Bengali translation review
sibokul
2026-07-27
Record short walkthroughs of recurring tasks and share them
sumitsingh, vasantrajput
open
Draft a proposal for a YouTube and social media channel
sumitsingh
2026-08-22
Join the GitHub sessions after the next note-taking assignment
andrewssanya
open
Design the foundational GitHub introduction
to be determined
open
Recommendations (for the team to confirm)
#
Recommendation
1
Announce the main topic at least two weeks ahead, in Slack and in the Tuesday meeting
2
Place the 15-minute ticket round at the end of the session, so that it cannot crowd out the main topic
3
Put the closing rule in writing: no activity for a year, a comment setting a two-week notice, then closure, with reopening on objection
4
Give the foundational GitHub introduction a named owner instead of leaving it as an idea
5
Before launching a YouTube and social media channel, establish who will maintain it over the long term
Next meeting
Saturday, August 22, 2026, 14:00 UTC (local time), issue #3535. Moderation and note-taking will be assigned in advance.
Main topic:Note-taking and publication workflow: who does what, and how? (#3565). The aim is a written workflow with named responsibilities for turning meeting notes into published posts. The documented path runs from a GitHub draft through a review of roughly 48 hours to a post on Make WordPress, though it has yet to be confirmed in practice. Guiding questions: who takes notes during the meeting, and how are those notes structured? How does the review work in practice, and who gets notified? Who holds editor access for make.wordpress.org/training? Could we assemble a pool of rotating note-takers, as we do for moderation? And what is the smallest note that still merits publication?
Get involved
You are welcome to contribute, whether or not you attend the Office Hours. If you are new and unsure where to begin, translation reviews in the Learn repository are an entry point that requires no technical background.
