Welcome to the official home of the WordPress documentation team.
This team is responsible for all things documentation, including the Codex (moving to HelpHub), handbooks, developer.wordpress.org, admin help, inline docs, and other general wordsmithing across the WordPress project.
Want to get involved?
We need your help keeping content current with each WordPress release and adding new content and screenshots to:
@valentinbora to post DevHub migration cross-check code to GitHub [update: done]
@milana_cap to update workflow for facilitating a meeting by including a step to review prior meeting notes
@milana_cap@kenshino to confirm usage of CrowdSignal or another service for hosting the survey
@atachibana to coordinate survey review before it goes live
@leogermani to review and update the Handbook and welcome box to attract new contributors
@leogermani to reach out to the #meta team to ask for stats to help highlight how important, popular and relevant docs are, as well as stats to support the survey (most viewed pages, devices used, referrals, searches etc.)
@valentinbora updated the team about a quick tool he’s written to cross-check migration status for Functions as he found quite a few pages out of sync in the Sheet vs. their actual live status. Before automated corrections there were 480/1069 Functions done (44.9%), after corrections we’ve won some and lost some, tallying to 374/1069 (35%)
@leogermani reminded everyone that the purpose of the survey is to learn: “How complete is our documentation and how can we improve our user docs?”
@themiked considered the survey to be asking some questions that could be inferred by statistics instead
@mkaz asked whether the survey was to be taken from a user’s or a developer’s standpoint. @leogermani clarified that it’s both
@themiked mentioned that the question “How complete is our documentation” is a difficult one to answer for end-users but we could still give it a try
@leogermani encouraged feedback for the survey to go to the p2 post linked above in order to have it all in one place but would like to hear from @bph in terms of the roadmap for the survey, with WordCamp Asia in mind.
Comments for the survey should be added by February 12th in order to prepare the survey well enough in advance before WordCamp Asia happening on February 21st, 2020.
@mkaz considers open ended questions to be difficult for end-users to answer and is wondering whether end-users get their answers from official documentation or elsewhere
@bph, @leogermani, @milana_cap discussed where to publish the survey, be it CrowdSignal or Pollbuddy vs. Google Forms. @kenshino should have something to say about that
@kenshino@milana_cap agreed to first focus on gathering the right questions to survey for before February 12th
@leogermani would like to attract more people to contribute to Docs and wants to review the Welcome box on the handbook page and bring documentation up to date to make it easier for newcomers.
@atachibana mentioned @estelaris‘ suggestion to reorganize the documentation tree with categories and subcategories.
@valentinbora suggested reviewing barriers to entry alongside motivational efforts for new contributors
@kenshino suggested to simplify the docs badge tracking Sheet to just two tabs. Any project leads can add contributors and they’ll be awarded a badge without question.
Open Floor
@valentinbora posted some tickets regarding DevHub and Explanation post types to help with Codex to DevHub migration (see more)
@leogermani@milana_cap mentioned @netweb was working on making it easier for setting up a local HelpHub environment for new code contributors to join in
@sukafia would like to know how to suggest edits to the HelpHub (user documentation) and @milana_cap suggested to ask in the #docs channel directly on Slack
@felipeloureirosantos posted an update regarding Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR) docs. They have 5 new translated pages, 1 page in progress and a new contributor over the past week
@leogermani and @valentinbora conferred about the migration process, specifically that there’s little room for automation regarding redirection, but the redirect itself could be taken care of by an automated script once marked Ready for redirect
Now with DevHub and HelpHub migration in full swing, we are ready to survey WordPress users about the usefulness of our documentation.
In preparation, we’d like to collect topic suggestions from WordPress documentation team members and people who pay attention to the Make / WordPress blogs. Ideally, the questions can be reused yearly to gather information that will help inform our team’s work in the future.
The goal of this specific survey is to learn “How complete is our documentation and how can we improve our user docs?”
Example: Where were you able to find End User documentation on wordpress.org?
Yes, after searching and looking at a few pages.
Yes, right away via the Support pages
No, I couldn’t find them and gave up
No, I read about the Block editor on someone else’s blog
Didn’t know there was documentation
In this example, we want to learn how hard it is for those taking the survey to find the documentation for the block editor, the big change to how end users work with WordPress.
This survey, of course, is not just about the block editor, but all documentation.
Please add your comments by February 12th, and we will be able to prepare the survey in time for launch at WordCamp Asia, February 21st.
We also need volunteers for the team to create the survey. Please leave your name in the comments if you would be available to work on the survey between now and Feb 19th, 2020.
Facilitator: @kenshino Note taker: @milana_cap Next meeting facilitator: still don’t have one, feel free to apply.
Function reference redirect status
Thanks to @marcio-zebedeu and @stevenlinx, we have re-routed 447 (of 1069) pages, which is 41.8% in total. They re-routed 125 pages within just two weeks. Thank you so much!
Next week Facilitator: @kenshino (but invite for other meeting facilitator is open, please comment below if interested)
Team workflow and badges
@felipeelia: workflow docs are being constructed on Trello. @milana_cap is the one to ask for access if needed.
Badges are being discussed in this P2 post. The contributor badge has been discussed for a while now, trying to reach a number of X micro contributions. On his last comment there, @felipeelia suggested to give the badge right away, just as in Core and Meta. @bph added that there is precedent on other teams and make the contributor badge seen right away: it’s the best onboarding tool we have.
@kenshino shared some worries about relevancy: “if we say that fixing a typo is fine – we’ll have a rush of requests to do that to farm badges”. Indeed, Core and Meta have automated system to give props to people who contribute on Trac, based on commit messages. There is no such system for Docs.
@felipeelia argued that 1) People receive core/meta badges sending a 1-line patch ; 2) Coming in to Docs Slack team and reporting a small typo does require some effort. @bph added that working out how to communicate a fix to the Docs team is a significant step. even if the contribution is just a typo fix. @kenshino agreed, but the team must keep an eye on abuse to tighten those rules if needed.
Regarding Team Badges, @kenshino proposed to set up a sheet and to give edit access to people that are running projects within the Docs Team.
HelpHub Survey
Reminder from previous meeting discussions: The goal is to build the questions of the survey with the general theme being “How do you think we can improve the WordPress documentation?”. Some questions using the likert scale to track how good it is now so the Team can repeat the survey in the future. Some open fields to get proper feedback so it’s possible to define future projects better. That would be great for this survey to be ready for WordCamp Asia, in less than one month.
@atachibana is coordinating the effort. @bph proposed to assist on this task.
Step 1 is to start a Google Doc in the team’s shared folder.
This survey and the Docs team focus for WordCamp Asia are set to be the next meeting focus.
@bph proposed to draft a P2 post to ask for questions proposals. @kenshino proposed to review this draft.
@atachibana shared some stats about this project: 322 of 1069 pages were re-routed from Codex to Code Reference, which is 30.1% of all.
This is one of the ongoing efforts of the Documentation team. If anybody wants to help, they can contact @atachibana via DM or via #docs Slack channel.
New contributors are encouraged to read this handbook page to learn more about contributing to HelpHub articles.
Discussion on the Docs team organization in general
As WordCamp Asia is coming, it would be nice to reach an agreement on two items: Team Workflows and Badges distribution.
Team workflow
It refers to reporting an issue about WordPress documentation. There is a Trello board for that. Most workflows are covered, if not all.
@milana_cap hopes to have the Workflows page published in the first week of February.
@felipeelia pointed out the example of someone who noted an error on one of the available docs and asked if they would be elligible to receive the docs contributor badge. @bph noted that it’s a micro-contribution. Several micro-contributions could lead people to receive a contributor badge. @felipeelia pointed out that it would need to keep track of each contribution in a document. @bph added that normally each contributor could keep track of it and let the Team know, when the threshold is reached.
@estalris noted that the design team do triages and people who participate on triages don’t receive a badge, because that is a micro-contribution. Only members with a specific project or role in the team are the ones that receive badges. Note: it’s for the Team badge.
Support team has a 400 replies goal to receive the contributor badge. Becoming a moderator comes with the team badge.
HelpHub
@atachibana is working on the progress and will prepare something for the next meeting.
@kenshino said he would love for that Survey to be ready to be distributed at WC Asia, in one month.
The goal is to build the questions of the survey with the general theme being “How do you think we can improve the WordPress documentation?”. Some questions using the likert scale to track how good it is now so the Team can repeat the survey in the future. Some open fields to get proper feedback so it’s possible to define future projects better.
A discussion started about the relevancy of categorization, but the Team agreed categorization makes sense when there is a lot of content as users would be able to filter what they want to look for. @kenshino noted that we’re trying to solve a discovery issue and those won’t be solved with one method. Categorizing them is a start. But a proper search system is also necessary.
@carike noted that the Core Privacy team discussed the proposed headers for readme.txt files. There is some debate about whether external calls need to be one item or split into three. Everyone agrees with the headers in general though. Next step is a meta ticket. They cannot update the readme.txt before the new headers are added, as this would lead to confusion.
