Welcome

The WordPress Training Team helps people learn to use, extend, and contribute to WordPress through learn.wordpress.org.

Are you new to the team?

Getting Started – Join the team through this self-guided onboarding program
Current Focus Areas – What we’re currently focusing on

Already onboarded and ready to get involved?

See How we use GitHub to get started on one of our 6 project boards

Meetings (Calendar)

You can join these meetings from the #training Slack channel:

Weekly meeting: Thursdays 00:00 UTC

You can join this meeting from the #meta-learn Slack channel:

Dev-squad GitHubGitHub GitHub 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 be the repository owner. https://github.com/ triage: Thursdays 07:00 UTC

See Meeting Details for more information.

Home / Training Handbook / Faculty Program / Reviewing Faculty Applications

Reviewing Faculty Applications

When new people apply to join the Faculty program, its existing volunteers need to review their applications to help determine if they would be valuable members of the team and represent WordPress well.

Faculty members have the same requirements as workshop presenters with some additional criteria around experience, depending on the area they wish to contribute. Check the eligibility criteria for more information. Follow these processes when reviewing an application:

Check the applicant’s 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/ profile: Look for activity in the support forums, any contributor badges, and how long the applicant has been a member. This will give you an indication of their experience with the WordPress community. Verify that they have earned the Training Contributor Badge, which gives an indication of consistent contribution to the Training Team.
Check the applicant’s presence online: Look for how long they have worked with WordPress, what their knowledge of the workshop topic appears to be, and if they have any trademark or GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples. violations. Check all social media that you are able to access publicly including LinkedIn, MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area., Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, About.me, and personal blogs (you don’t need to send friend or connection requests – just look for what is available to you already). Especially be on the lookout for anything that indicates bigoted or discriminatory behaviour.

The Community team has provided some useful information on how the GPL works, as well as this vetting checklist.

When recording this information, only use the private notes in Help Scout and do not share any of it elsewhere. This is to ensure the privacy of applicants.

Check any background you can in Help Scout:
- Look for unusual email conversations, lack of response, and anything else that might indicate that they could be unreliable. Feel free to ask in the #training channel if there’s any history you should be aware of.
- In addition, check if they had previously applied for another Training Team role (e.g., Facilitator, Tutorial, etc.) — if they have been vetted by the Training Team in the past year, you can refer to the previous vetting notes, which should save you some time!
Check if they have existing content on Learn WordPress: If they have existing content on Learn WordPress then there’s a good chance they have already been vetted in the past – have a look at their past workshops to see any vetting notes left behind.

Here is an Online Workshop recording explaining what GPL is, and why it’s important to the WordPress project. You’ll also see a demonstration of how to vet applications from 31:30.

Leave all vetting notes as a private note in the Help Scout thread where you are communicating with the applicant. If you are unsure of the outcome of a review, then please ask in the #training channel for more input.

If an application requires more information, reply to them using the “FACULTY: More info requested” saved reply and modify it to be as specific as you need for the situation. Make sure to add a note to the Help Scout ticket with your vetting notes.

If an application must be declined, reply to them using the “FACULTY: Declined” saved reply and edit it to explain the reason. Make sure to add a note to the Help Scout ticket with your vetting notes.

If an application is successful:

Add a note to the Help Scout ticket with your vetting notes.
Add their information to the Faculty Spreadsheet
Reply to them using the “FACULTY: Accepted” saved reply and provide more information about aspects you particularly liked in their application.
Add their information to the Training Team Outreach sheet’s Faculty Program tab in the Training Team Outreach spreadsheet.
The next step would be to schedule an orientation with the applicant.

Last updated: September 26, 2023