PROPOSAL: Ensuring high-quality video contributions to Learn WordPress

The Training Team is incredibly grateful to everyone who helped to launch Learn WordPress and has contributed valuable and solid content. Not least because Learn WordPress is going to be the first place that many people encounter in the WordPress project. Indeed, it may be the only part of 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/ network that they ever engage with. This is due to the fact that many users will come looking for training on how to do something with WordPress and won’t have any interest in the community beyond that. If people come to Learn WordPress without any knowledge of how the WordPress community works as an open-source project, they will be expecting to find videos that match the quality they could find elsewhere.

A proposal

Learn WordPress content needs to be of high quality, but most people don’t have access to expensive recording equipment and it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to match the video quality of those who do. Production quality must not be a blocker for people contributing their skills and knowledge to the platform, so what can be done about it?

After thinking about this for a while, I have a proposal for how we can proceed that involves two areas of focus:

Distinguish between video types

The idea would be to distinguish between the highly produced videos and the community contributed ones in a similar way to how TED and TEDx talks are different from each other. This would mean there would be a separate taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. that clearly identifies which videos are produced with high-quality equipment and which ones are not. The visual distinction here would need to be discussed before we move forward with anything. My initial thinking is that there would be a section titled “Community Content” or similar that would feature the videos contributed by the community that are not of the production quality standards that are set. These production standards would need to be discussed and finalised before we implement anything here.

Collaborate on planning, but limit who can produce

The other area of focus to complement the separate video types would be to allow anyone to get involved in planning and scripting videos, but only allow approved people to actually record/produce the ones that are not included in the “Community Content” section. In practice, this could look something like this:

  1. Certain people are selected (through a public application process that anyone can submit themselves) to be approved as presenters & producers – this would have a few requirements along the lines of having access to high-quality recording equipment, being able to present well, etc. – this would need to be clearly defined and formalised with a vetting process for new applications. There would be a strong focus on building up a diverse set of voices for this group.
  2. Multiple people collaborate on outlining a video and writing a script for it – this would include anyone who would like to be involved.
  3. The finished outline and script is given to one of the approved presenters to record – this could be one of the people who wrote the script or it could be someone else.
  4. If the video is a screencast with a voiceover, we could even have a subject matter expert record the screencast and one of the approved presenters record the voiceover in order to ensure content can be written to cater to all skillsets.

The advantage of this is that anyone can get involved in creating content, even if they aren’t able (or don’t want to!) actually present/produce it, with the end result being that we have high-quality content produced to a high standard. All contributors would still be credited on the workshop video page regardless of their role in creating the video.

Feedback

Please provide feedback along the following lines:

  • Do you feel this proposal is a good way to ensure that Learn WordPress videos remain high-quality while also encouraging contributors to get involved?
  • Is there anything you would change about this proposal?
  • Do you have a different proposal to suggest?

This discussion on this post will be open until the end of the day on Wedensday, 6 October and then the comments will be summarised with a decision being made based on what is discussed.

#learn-wordpress, #proposal, #videos

Notes on January 3, 2019 Meeting

Slack Log (Requires 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/. login to view. Set one up if you don’t have a Slack account)

Welcome and Meeting Outline

  1. Handbook Updates
    1. Revising the Style Guide
      1. Examples displayed should be relevant to 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/ formatting
      2. Slides style guide wasn’t functional as the slide display tool was discontinued. Suggest moving to https://pages.github.com/ . 
      3. @juliekuehl will update this page.
    2. Add tasks for semi-annual handbook updates to our team TrelloTrello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing. board.
      1. 2 weeks before time changes begin, communicate about if the meeting moves times.
      2. Update a few places on the handbook displaying meeting times
      3. Update annual team goals
  2. Videos
    1. @jessecowens has been working on editing the atom video with some updates. He expects both the atom video and the one on slides to be complete by end of January
  3. Learn.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/
    1. The Design Team is still working on re-doing the design based on the recommendations of the 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. team.
  4. Lesson Plans
    1. Regrouping about what lesson plans are in process next week to get more ready for the relaunch of the Learn siteLearn site The Training Team publishes its completed lesson plans at https://learn.wordpress.org/ which is often referred to as the "Learn" site.
    2. Possibly conduct a video meeting to brainstorm regrouping on lesson plans.
    3. Work with Kids Camps for workshop plans
    4. Repo Maintenance Labels for tagging lesson plans
      1. @courane01 will brainstorm ideas this week to be reviewed next week (January 10) and finalized on January 17.
      2. These will be part of the lesson plan submission process
    5. Meeting Wrap Up and Next Meeting Next meeting on 10 Jan 2019

#handbook, #slides, #videos