[wp-docs] Joining Forces: Support

Tue May 15 19:22:44 UTC 2012

This is so exciting. The Docs team has been walking on egg shells for years
over the confusion of the WordPress Handbook, and I'm eager to see new
energy being sent in this direction.

The close ties between the Forum and Codex have been there since the
beginning. However, time and skills serving the Forum and the time and
skills serving documentation are distinctive, as several people mentioned.
I agree that there needs to be one or two people overseeing the
organizational structure, management, and maintenance of the Codex.

Having a site of our own has been essential and lacking, which is why we
created the unofficial docs task list not long ago. It was critical that we
find a better way of communicating and keeping our community connected than
the mailing list. As it was "unofficial," we haven't done much to promote
it or work with it, but it was a start. We need to have a place to support
and educate each other on how to write for the Codex and offer task lists
beyond those we've had in the past on the Codex, so I'm excited about
having our own space or making the current blog on WordPress.com official.

The mailing list has not been the sole line of communication either. As
many do, I work with many people one on one to help them write and edit for
the Codex and assign tasks, communicating with the mailing list when
necessary for edits and such.

As we struggled to understand the role the WordPress Handbook and WordPress
Lessons played in the role of documentation in the WordPress Community,
we've come to realize the Codex best serves the WordPress Community by
providing support for issues found within the Forums, expanding upon Learn
WordPress instructions for the WordPress Lessons section, and developing
more extensive documentation and guides beyond the basics found within the
help files, especially servicing developers and programmers.

While melding together Forum and Codex sounds great on the surface, I agree
with Andrea and others that we need to have one or more people focused on
the bigger picture overseeing the Codex, thus supporting the overall
WordPress Community better.

Thanks for the survey, Jane, and for helping with all of this.

Lorelle

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 8:28 AM, Andrea Rennick <andrea at ronandandrea.com>wrote:

> It makes totally sense, because Support & Docs are two sides of the same
> coin. :) If users can't understanding docs or can't find them, they post in
> the forums. ;P
>
> Better docs mean less support issues, because people don't scale. And the
> people answering questions are the first ones who see the need for new
> docs. Because they answer the same questions over and over (and over) again.
>
> Getting people to read docs is a separate issue, but having support and
> docs work hand in hand in tandem is a big first step.
>
> I think half the people overlap anyway, yes?
>
> a.
>
>
> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:51 AM, Chip Bennett <chip at chipbennett.net>wrote:
>
>> Personally, I love the idea. Speaking as a contributor group member who
>> tries to keep in the loop regarding support and/or Codex issues that impact
>> our group (or issues where our contributor group can be helpful), such
>> consolidation is welcome.
>>
>> Chip
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 7:09 AM, Jane Wells <jane at automattic.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everyone. The results of the recent surveys to identify active
>>> contributors and elect team reps made it pretty clear that the docs team is
>>> in a bit of a slump, organizationally speaking. Only 5 people from the
>>> wp-docs post responded, and of those, 2 were new or not yet contributing,
>>> and there was no consensus re reps among the remaining 3 respondents. It
>>> got me thinking about how we organize contributors, what has worked well
>>> elsewhere in the WP ecosystem and in other free software projects, and
>>> leads me to this proposal: what if we combined forums and docs into one
>>> Support team?
>>>
>>> Looking back at the Codex activity from the past six months or year,
>>> chunks of it have been tied to forum mods (like Ipstenu and Andrea_r),
>>> other contributor groups (like Chip on the Theme Review Team), and new
>>> releases. Not that how Automattic/WordPress.com organizes itself should
>>> decide anything, but their support team manages forums, email support, and
>>> docs, and it seems to work pretty well. They have a schedule for reviewing
>>> existing documentation so it never gets too far out of date, and the people
>>> on the front lines with users in the forums and via email can see very
>>> clearly where they need to beef up documentation. I'm thinking this could
>>> work well for .org, too. Those who are strong writers and just want to
>>> contribute to documentation could still do so, but within a context of what
>>> our user support needs are at any given time based on the actual support
>>> requests.
>>>
>>> What I'm envisioning is less siloing of contributor personnel, with one
>>> group blog at make.wordpress.org/support that uses tags like forums and
>>> codex to organize posts, and has pages to help orient new contributors and
>>> get them started. These mailing lists could fade away in favor of email
>>> subscriptions from the blog, which are more easily searchable and would be
>>> more visible to potential contributors. Within the uber-group, some people
>>> would naturally gravitate toward specific tasks while others would
>>> multi-task as they have been doing.
>>>
>>> Over time we could expand the purview of the group to include things
>>> like moderating instructional videos and comments at wordpress.tv (and
>>> start embedding appropriate videos into codex), possibly helping to staff
>>> in-person help desks in local communities and/or at events like WordCamps
>>> and Meetups, etc. I think the prospects are pretty exciting, and I could
>>> see this becoming the biggest and most active of all the contributor
>>> groups, which would be awesome.
>>>
>>> If there are any strong objections to this approach, please reply to
>>> this thread today so we can discuss. If not, and everyone is willing to
>>> give this a shot and all work together (at least as an experiment for, say,
>>> the next release cycle or two), I'll go ahead and set up the group blog
>>> tomorrow.
>>>
>>> Jane
>>> ______________________________**_________________
>>> wp-docs mailing list
>>> wp-docs at lists.automattic.com
>>> http://lists.automattic.com/**mailman/listinfo/wp-docs<http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-docs>
>>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> --
> Andrea Rennick, http://wpebooks.com and http://ronandandrea.com
> Co-author of WordPress All-In-One For Dummies http://rml.me/aio
>
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