We’re still working on the update to the Support Guidelines, we’re working on them over at GitHub and feedback on issues/suggestions and Pull Requests are encouraged, as we don’t want this to be a one horse show, and the more participation, the broader an audience we hope will be able to digest the guidelines.
On the mention of time, last year we chose not to change our meeting time when daylight savings ended, and we’ve stuck with it when they began again. In light of this we plan on keeping the weekly meetings at 17:00 UTC.
The agenda post will be able to translate the time into your local time when you view it, so we hope this won’t be a major issue.
Checking in with international liaisons
Representatives of the Brazilian, Swedish, Urdu, Russian, Dutch, Serbian and German communities took part in this weeks discussions.
At-mentions
At-mentions trigger notifications on the forum (as the network wide notification system for WordPress.org parses posts), and not everyone is a fan of this.
That’s perfectly fine, but they do serve a purpose to identify which user you may be interacting with in a topic if there’s more than two users speaking. It is also a common pattern of internet use these days to use @<user>when addressing someone, popularized by services such as twitter etc. Because of this, completely removing them isn’t a likely option, and hiding usernames means users will end up using display names instead, inadvertently pinging unrelated third parties.
If you wish, you can control what notifications you get, and where they are delivered, at https://profiles.wordpress.org/me/profile/notifications/
There’s also a Meta ticket set up for this at https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/3899 with some proposed changes.
Please give the ticket a read, and think over potential pros and cons of various changes here, and we’ll have a quick re-visit at our next gathering.
tl;dr: let’s increase the number of companies that dedicate employee time to WordPress by building a tool that allows companies to make public pledges of dedicated time.
Background
In 2014, @matt launched the Five for the Future initiative, saying that “organizations that want to grow the WordPress pie (and not just their piece of it) should dedicate 5% of their people to working on something to do with Core — be it development, documentation, security, support forums, theme reviews, training, testing, translation or whatever it might be that helps move WordPress’ mission forward.” WordPress-based organizations responded by contributing more dedicated time to the open source project, which has helped WordPress grow to power 31% of the Web.
A discussion was held at the 2017 WordPress Community Summit about how we could encourage more companies to contribute more dedicated employee time. @liljimmi suggested that if there were a page where all companies participating in Five for the Future were listed, then smaller companies would see that they could have an impact too. This got a lot of people thinking about outreach to companies of all sizes, and how we could encourage participation in Five for the Future.
Props to Tracy for the idea that sparked this, and thanks to the many people who gave early candid feedback.
Exceptionally long proposal after the jump!
Project goals
Acknowledge companies that sponsor volunteers to work on the WordPress project.
Motivate more companies to sponsor more volunteers.
Potential challenges
Defining the kind of contribution that would “qualify” for this.
Identifying what contributions come from people whose work is being sponsored by a company.
Deciding what qualifies a company to appear on the page (minimum number of hours, licensing practice, company size, etc).
Holding companies accountable, if we think that’s important.
Defining how we treat companies and sponsored employees on WordPress.org.
How do other projects do this?
How do other open source and/or volunteer organizations acknowledge and recruit contributors, specifically support from companies? We looked at the following organizations in a comparative analysis:
Nearly all of these organizations make an appeal to contributors with the promises that their contributions will have a powerful impact, that they will be recognized for their work, and that their work will help the project/organization thrive for years to come.
Most open source projects place more emphasis on individual contributors, and don’t directly acknowledge companies that support the project by sponsoring contributors. Drupal is a notable exception to this practice.
Gamification is common. Badges are very popular, as well as being able to filter by the most commits (Github is a very common tool for this). Python even gives cash awards to noteworthy contributors.
Possible approaches
Option 1: The activity stream firehose
One option would be a completely automated system. All volunteers would share what company, if any, sponsored their contributions. Contributions could be shown in an activity stream, in which activities are grouped by company, and sorted by the most recent contribution. Additional sorting and filtering options would be available.
Advantages: No administrative work/moderation needed. Disadvantages: Information overload; company visibility is low.
Option 2: Curated case studies
Another option would be a page that shares the goal and vision of the 5ftF program. Included would be rotating examples of participating contributors, like case studies curated from a broad cross-section of the open source project.
Advantages: compelling content, lots of useful information. Disadvantages: selecting contributors to highlight could be contentious; limited number of companies acknowledged; lots of administrative work to maintain content.
Option 3: Pledged contributions
Companies make a public pledge to dedicate a certain amount of time to the open source project. Then their employees complete and confirm the information about intended team and intended time. All pledges would be public and listed on WordPress.org.
Advantages: Company/volunteer reported & verified; would not require much ongoing moderation. Disadvantages: Potential for abuse/misrepresentation.
Proposed approach
After considering these three possible structures for a Five for the Future program, I think the most effective method is a pledge program: allowing companies to publicly declare how much dedicated employee time they plan to donate to the WordPress project.
This approach would work towards key goals for the Five for the Future initiative:
Recognize the companies that sponsor volunteers to regularly work on the WordPress project.
Ensure a stable contributor base, by motivating more companies to sponsor more volunteers.
The program would allow companies of any size to submit a pledge
indicating the number of hours they intend to commit to the WordPress
project. After making the pledge, the company notifies its contributing
employees, who then edit their WordPress.org profiles to indicate the
company that is sponsoring their time. This will allow a contributor’s
sponsored time to be credited to the company that is enabling them to
contribute much more time than they (presumably) could give, if
unsupported.
On their profiles, all contributors will be able to share how many hours a week they dedicate to the project, and on which team(s). If a contributor’s work is part of Five for the Future, they will be able to link to their company’s pledge on their individual profile.
Privacy note: The intent here is that a contributor must intentionally link their individual profile to a published pledge. No matter what a company pledges, the individual contributor won’t show up on that pledge unless they link to the pledge and save. Then the company contact associated with that pledge will have to accept the link — active consent should be required on both sides.
This will help contributor teams identify what people have been pledged to work on their projects, which should help with recruiting people to work on specific, possibly longer-term, team projects. Once a pledge has been made, companies and individuals will be encouraged to keep their details up to date as needed.
Historically, we have recognized individuals for their contributions
to WordPress, without connecting that work to their companies, even if
their time has been sponsored. By asking companies to make a pledge of
time, we hope to offer increased recognition to all parties who actively
participate in the Five for the Future initiative.
Companies that have made a pledge will be listed in a public, searchable, and filterable archive that displays:
company name & logo
company size
number of contributing employees
number of hours pledged
teams contributed to
Here’s an example:
As we receive more information from Five for the Future companies, we
can consider whether we recognize companies further by publishing
individual company pages. We hope that this will also encourage
additional companies to make their own pledges and commit employee time
to the WordPress project.
Companies and sponsored contributors will be expected to update and resubmit their pledge after a period of time – this will make sure that the page remains current at all times. For privacy reasons, individual contributors won’t be listed on a pledge unless they choose to link to the pledge. Companies that wish to make a Five for the Future pledge will be asked to agree to follow project etiquette and meet our expectations for promotion on WordPress.org.
And another thing…
Despite the disadvantages of the curated case studies idea, that’s still a great way to show organizations what kind of impact their participation in Five for the Future can have. If possible, we’d like to include a case study or two on the Five for the Future landing page on WordPress.org, which would also include some persistent content like: “Why donate employee time to the WordPress project?” and/or “Convince your boss to donate your time to WordPress.org.” For case studies, we’d want to rotate the content at least every 6 months. We may want to feature contributors who are doing some of the less “glamorous” or visible work that nevertheless has a strong positive impact on WordPress.
Measuring Success
How will we know this is making a difference — what can we count?
number of people whose paid time was pledged to the project
number of companies participating
percentage of teams with at least 1 sponsored contributor
number of pledged hours
number of people sponsored at least 20 hours/week ; number of people sponsored for 40 hours/week
Feedback!
We’d love your thoughts on this approach to Five for the Future
acknowledgement! Here are some specific questions, but please ask about
anything that concerns you, in a comment on this post.
Should we require users to be logged in to wordpress.org to be able pledge? (This would stop spam and make editing easier in the futur.e)
Should we auto-publish pledge submissions, or should a moderator review them first?
Should we set a minimum company size for participation in this pledge program?
Do you think this might help teams find people to work on less “glamorous” contributions?
The post was published after last month discussion. There are quite a lot of comments right now, with different points of view. We discussed this at length also during the chat but we haven’t reached a conclusion yet. Main points brought up:
Sponsors want ROI and branded content could help out
Added burden for organisers in terms of editorial control
Sponsor interviews instead of sponsored posts
We should have guidelines and make this absolutely optional
We all want to set up sponsors for success, and content that seems like “paid content” isn’t going to help them (or WordCamp) much at all
We could write a page for sponsors, to help them understand what kind of approach is most effective with our audience
People might think less of the event because of the sponsored posts
Conversation is ongoing if you want to add your opinion!
We are accepting ideas for what should go in the next newsletter for Meetup organisers. One point raised: content shouldn’t be behind a wall (no need to sign-up to get the content).
With the imminent release of Gutenberg, the Meta WordCamp team is planning to convert the WordCamp shortcodes into blocks and we need WordCamp organisers feedback!
It’s that time of the year! We are working on the new package for Global Sponsors. People were asked if they wanted to volunteer for this and we now have a team who is working on assessing the situation and propose changes, if needed. It’s a fun group full of spreadsheets and speculation 🙂
A group is working on the Community Code of Conduct and it will also address unacceptable behaviour in the online space. It was remarked though that toxicity can be very pervasive without breaking any rules.
One resource that can be helpful if folks are struggling with conflict in their communities: https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/guide-to-calling-in/
(Note: I am almost done posting four months of chats after a period of inactivity. Unfortunately we couldn’t find anyone in the team to do this task, so bear with me while I update everything!)
The Community Team meets twice a month, first and third Thursday, at two different times to cover different timezones.
Even busier when the Automatticians are not around 🙂
P2 posts needing review/feedback
This month was quite light in terms of discussion, so we focused again on two posts that were already brought on September 20th Chat
Proposal to Increase the Maximum Ticket Price for WordCamps Note that we are not telling WordCamps to increase their ticket prices, but we are having a (long) conversation about the possibility to raise the maximum possible price that would be allowed to go for if they need to. All Camps are still encouraged to make their prices as affordable as possible.
Most of commenters are up for 5 $/€ increase and emphasize the importance of sponsors – which are bit hard to find for some camps. We maybe should focus and have some effort on how to help camps find sponsors easier.
The issue of branded content from sponsors in WordCamps website was brought up: there are some concerns about the marketing nature of the posts. A post will be published on the Community Team blog to discuss the matter.
(Note: I am almost done posting four months of chats after a period of inactivity. Unfortunately we couldn’t find anyone in the team to do this task, so bear with me while I update everything!)
The Community Team meets twice a month, first and third Thursday, at two different times to cover different timezones.
All good, busy with tons of applications and we are trying to catch up with those!
P2 posts needing feedback/action
Proposal to Increase the Maximum Ticket Price for WordCamps Note that we are not telling WordCamps to increase their ticket prices, but we are having a (long) conversation about the possibility to raise the maximum possible price that would be allowed to go for if they need to. All Camps are still encouraged to make their prices as affordable as possible
New Meetup Tracker Tool – Amazing tool that will help us streamline the vetting and orienting process for Meetups and abandon the multiple spreadsheets we used 🙂
(Note: I am almost done posting four months of chats after a period of inactivity. Unfortunately we couldn’t find anyone in the team to do this task, so bear with me while I update everything!)
The Community Team meets twice a month, first and third Thursday, at two different times to cover different timezones.
We have a large number of Meetup applications, we asked all deputies to go look for threads in Help Scout that needs vetting to speed things along.
It was brought up that sometimes the pages on the handbook still needs some clarifications, which should be addressed in the orientation but organisers don’t always ask questions. A document has been started with some FAQs . It’s an ongoing project and you can see the progress here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zbYYEErMX9Qq-hS1i01eUSZej8tlTGxjOu43Kp-UcAg/edit
A meta ticket was open to add a deadline field to Make blogs: this is something we do in the Community team when we have a time-sensitive discussion: you can see it on the Meta Trac
P2 posts needing feedback/action
Office Hours and Team Chat for first week of October We are looking for volunteers to cover office hours and to run the first chat of October since our friends at Automattic will be at the Grand Meetup. Found them and all went well!
WordPress 5.0-beta1 has been released, please make sure you read the beta post properly, as there are some considerations you may need to take for this beta period.
Checking in with international liaisons
Members of the Swedish, Russian, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, German, Serbian and Greek support communities took part in this weeks support chat.
Links in reviews
Our big ticket item, links in reviews.
We’ve long had a guideline mention that we do not allow links in reviews, but they’ve not always been upheld the same way. Basically, a link in a review to a persons own website is often used as an attempt to get a free link and some free visitors, which is why we’ve drawn a hard line to avoid spam.
There can be nuances here though, so evaluating things on a case by case basis will help in the long run. A link may not always be bad, it may have value in relation to the experience at hand.
Also, when redacting a post or flagging a user, always leave a post explaining what is happening so the user isn’t confused as to why their post has changed.
If in doubt, feel free to ask the rest of the team on Slack, we’re here for each other!
Open floor
Don’t forget about our work on improving the support guidelines, we’re collaborating on GitHub (https://github.com/Clorith/wporg-support-guidelines) for it, but discussions can also happen on Slack. If they do happen on Slack, please someone summarize them on to GitHub as well for visibility.
