Daniel James 8:37 am on February 15, 2018

Potential addition of a new Onboarding Team

Hi Community Team!

Recently I proposed an addition of a new ‘Make WordPress Team‘, currently there’s well over 15 different teams from CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., Polyglots, Mobile and even Marketing. However I feel like there’s one team that is missing and is a huge part of what makes WordPress, WordPress. The new team would be focused around on-boarding new contributors to the WordPress project and also help in steering them where they need to go depending on how they want to get involved. Sort of like a hotel concierge service (sort of).

Now, whilst the community team does a great job at the community side of things such as WordCamps and 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. events to name a couple of things and getting people involved – this new team would reach beyond what the community team does and also cover every other team in WordPress as well. I’ve heard first hand from others (myself being one!) that getting involved with WordPress is incredibly difficult. There’s so many moving parts and all kinds of things happening that it’s very hard to make that first contribution. Even so, once you’ve made the first contribution, it’s hard to find out where to go next.

Here’s the low-down of what (I think) the team would do:

Liaise with other team leads on ‘good first bugs’-esque contributions for things like Core & Design.
Work with the training team and marketing teams for producing help guides and tutorials.
Quick start help with getting involved with the PluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party and Theme contributions.
Talk with the community team on how to get involved with WordCamps and meetups.
Other outreach work with the Make/Teams.

And my favourite of all points:

Mentorship programme with on-going support for people who might not be as confident contributing or for people who want to try their hand at all sorts of things. Giving insights into the WordPress philosophies, community and code of conduct.

So, what do I need from you guys?

Help. Please discuss this, let me know what you think and raise any points for concern or potential ideas we can include. Whilst I appreciate this isn’t strictly community related, and I’d like to ensure that this team is separate from the community as a whole – this new team will overlap in some form or anything with every other team in 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/ community.

Also, some more food for thought, some team names!

Welcoming Team
Concierge Team (Hotel WordPress anyone?)
Onboarding Team

Thank you!

Hugh Lashbrooke 8:40 am on February 15, 2018

Cross-posting this to +make.wordpress.org/meta as it is a 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. discussion, just not code related. Also, probably +make.wordpress.org/summit as onboarding was a topic that came up at the Summit in almost all of the teams.
Josepha 9:32 am on February 15, 2018
This is a very interesting thought, @danieltj, and one that comes up regularly around the project.

As Hugh mentioned, onboarding was a concern voiced by almost every team this past summer. Since then I’ve been having conversations in general about the best way to do it. Beyond the basics of “what would this team do” there are a few other items that have been raised for consideration:
- Is it best to have a standalone team or to have a few people per team who are dedicated to welcoming newcomers?
- Related question, if there is a single team then how do we choose who is on the team? Is it self-selected? Does this add too much hierarchy and admin time?
- Are project-wide liaising tasks something that is achievable with large groups of volunteers each giving small increments of time?
- If a peer-to-peer mentoring network can be supported, then does that make the project more or less open (ie do mentors become inadvertent gatekeepers/blockers)?
For what it’s worth, I am a major supporter of lowering our barriers to entry on every part of the project. Just trying to make sure we always do things in a helpful and sustainable way. 🙂
- Daniel James 9:53 am on February 15, 2018
  Thanks, I’ll try and work through your points as best I can!
  - To continue your point about nearly every team voicing a concern, this is why I think consolidating that focus into one team lets the other teams focus on their specific purposes, and this new team with the task of getting new people to join in with them. Whilst a team (CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. as it’s an easy example) can focus solely on developing core, the new team can focus on helping people make patches and how TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. works. Similar to Marketing and letting them focus on the marketing and the new team support newbies on what the best thing to get involved is.
  - I’d like to head up the team as this is something that I wish was a lot easier when I first started out. As for other team members, I guess it’d be the same as other teams? Perhaps get a few existing people from other teams to help but also reach out to the community as I’m sure there’s lots of people out there would feel the same way about wanting to join in.
  - I’ll be realistic here, I don’t know. I think there’s a huge benefit to trying. Of course how much involvement this new team has with other teams will vary depending on a number of factors. Particularly being; 1. general interest, 2. activity of the other team 3. amount of time available to dedicate for both the new team and the person wanting to contribute.
  - Very interesting point, and possible needs to be tightly managed. Just a thought off the top of my head; mentor roles could shift. Have a set programme length and then after that circle round and get new mentors so everyone can get involved and no one is ‘king of the hill’ so to speak.
  This team is very interesting though because it relies on a lot of self contribution to then get others contributing to the wider teams/projects so it’d need to have a large team. I also think it’s important to ensure that everyone has a chance to help out in this team if they want to. One challenge is ensuring that if people need to, they are able to see this team first so visibility is a fundamental necessity which is something that needs to finely tuned for sure.
Bet Hannon 3:41 pm on February 15, 2018

This is an interesting idea. The Support team has begun a more intentional effort to periodically offer some onboarding and orientation sessions in our 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/. channel aimed at helping newcomers find tools and support/encouragement. I know some of the other teams of been doing similar things. How do you see what you are proposing here connecting with those sorts of team efforts?
- Daniel James 3:57 pm on February 15, 2018
  
  Hi, thank you. To follow on from what I mentioned in a comment just above, I’d ideally like to see ‘representatives’ from other teams helping out, but don’t mistake that as ‘official’ role in anyway, simple that some people from other teams wanting to help out, so for example, someone who is on the Polyglots teamPolyglots Team Polyglots Team is a group of multilingual translators who work on translating plugins, themes, documentation, and front-facing marketing copy. https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/. or WP-CliWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ team occasionally jumping in and helping with the on-boarding process.
  
  Whilst individual teams don’t need to stop, or not focus on onboarding, I think this new team would serve as a better place for that process to happen and alleviate the pressure from them. As I said though, individual teams wouldn’t need to stop any onboarding efforts, but they could be supported by the new team and the new team could take a lot of their workload on.
  
  It all depends on communication which is a fundamental requirement for this new team to work properly, so in that regard, if we’re not communicating then something is wrong. I think as long as ties are strengthened with other teams, I don’t see there being a clash of any kind. Many people take part in various teams so they’ll definitely be an overlap for sure. We just need to manage that effectively.
- mcdwayne 4:01 pm on February 15, 2018
  
  Absolutely love this idea. This is something the Marketing team has been working at independently.
  We are even making copy for guides for other teams, like a ‘Beginners quick start guide to TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/.’ and a recently published ‘Jargon Glossary’ we are collaborating with Design on: https://trello.com/c/kpXnCGls/96-wp-jargon-glossary-for-new-people
  The biggest stumbling blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. we have hit with oboarding isn’t that it is particularly difficult to get people set up, most people are handling the setup pretty easy thanks to our guide and onboarding tutorial: https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2017/07/05/welcome-to-the-marketing-team-heres-what-you-need-to-know/ .The biggest stumbling block is getting involved with indiviudal ongoing efforts and feeling empowered to actually suggest or volunteer for specific tasks.
  
  The largest component here is going to be the cross team coordination. I can pretty straightforward get someone set up and understanding trac, but getting a contributor to simply pick a ticket and then work on it, well that is another kind of challenge. Having a dedicated person to guide you through that process would require a deeper level of knowledge of the ins and outs of a particular team and especially what specific tasks a new person could do to get a ‘quick win’ feeling and still do something that meaningfully contributes. As one person at WCUS Contrib Day said: “The onboarding was easy, but I was spoon fed the steps. After that I had no idea what I was allowed to do”
  
  Point here is Marketing team would be happy to coordinate with this effort and provide our feedback and copywriting hours to make it easier to get going with make.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/.
  
  Hit me (mcdwayne) or Bridget (@gidgey) up in 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/. anytime.
  
  Side note: I personally would love to earn an Onboarding team badge 🙂
  - Daniel James 4:11 pm on February 15, 2018
    
    That’s great news! I imagined marketing and training teams working very closely with this new team and that’s one of the things this new team must do, is as you said; continue to provide that support. Not just say, this is this and that is that and then stop. It’d be a continuous process.
    
    Like I said, this team is kind of a ‘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. meta team’, in a sense that it’s sole focus is getting people involved with other teams, so there is a huge focus on talking to each of the teams and making sure that the communication never breaks down.
    
    Like I said, and I’m using the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Team here because it’s an easy example; this new team can focus on onboarding new people to Core so the people in Core can focus on actually getting involved. So it would allow teams to still onboard if they wish, but with a lot of additional support.
    
    As for the badge, we need the team to be approved, named and then setup first 😉
    
    I think the idea for this new team has had some positive comments from people, I’m not sure what milestone or quota we need for it to happen, but I sense this is a welcome change for sure. Would be great to find out potential next steps but please keep leaving thoughts as this would be a huge community lead initiative.
Evan Mullins 7:02 pm on February 16, 2018

Amen!

I feel that I personally would benefit from such a group and I wholeheartedly love and absolutely support this idea. Where do I sign up? =)
- Daniel James 7:08 pm on February 16, 2018
  
  Hi Evan, thanks for the kind feedback. I’m still collecting feedback although it seems the overall impression is positive. Keep a close watch on this space and we should hopefully have a final decision soon-ish, although I need to find out who to speak to to make it happen!
Michele Mizejewski 11:10 pm on February 16, 2018

I like this idea, because it would bring some consistency to the onboarding experience, and the project would lose fewer interested contributors due to frustration or confusion. However, it seems that to be effective, members of the new team would have to be thoroughly familiar with all the other teams, projects, and workflows. That may not be realistic/possible, as noted above by @chanthaboune. Maybe it could work if there were an expectation that members of every other team would create a standard update periodically that the onboarding team could rely upon and use.
- Daniel James 12:18 pm on February 18, 2018
  
  Hi Michele, that’s a good idea because I do think that it’s not realistic to have representatives from every team get involved with this new team, at least not all the time. So it would rely somewhat on ensuring that teams ‘check-in’ or at least communicate with the new team on what is happening. I think generally it comes down to making sure people keep talking and keep each other up to date. I can see some teams being better connected than others, but that’s something to work towards and improve upon. It will take a lot of effort to ensure things work out smoothly but what’s the point if there isn’t a challenge, right? 🙂
Xenos (xkon) Konstantinos 1:16 pm on February 18, 2018

At the last WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. in Athens, there where some lovely fellows that wanted to contribute to the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., some of them were already contributing to GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ but, they were facing a huge wall of difficulty to understand even what ‘Milestone’ means on tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. and what are you supposed to understand by it. I have to mention here that all of the 7 guys had read the Codex + Handbooks required but still they where at a loss as the information is too much to take in and they where afraid to take the first step.

Instead of ‘contributing’ with code that day the whole idea was to make them contributors for when they go back home. That meant that we had to explain all the simple steps of what ‘core.svn’ vs ‘develop.svn’ + git is, how everything is synced, how to actually make patches through the various ways (vvv / svn / git) and explain them the whole process and especially that there is no mistake on whatever they where about to contribute as there will always be somebody to take care of their patch either if it is correct or guide them to make it correct.

If you actually think about it, the process of contributing is pretty much 3 steps, but since the information of those 3 steps is huge it becomes scary some times.

To the point of this post as the above example was a bit long sorry but I felt I had to write it to explain why I feel that this is super important.

Having a ‘team’ that could at least point new people that want to get involved which of our plentiful Handbooks they should read, which are the 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/. channels of interest to them or anything else on this ‘vast for newcomers ecosystem’ that 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/ offers to not get lost and reassure them that there is no right or wrong on any kind of question when you want to give your free time contributing, it will be a huge step and make more people wanting to get on board.
- Daniel James 2:37 pm on February 18, 2018
  
  Interesting you mentioned that the people decided to learn how to contribute instead of actually contributing on the day. Like you mentioned, there’s a lot of things to go through to make sure you’re ready to get going.
  
  I also see the team helping old contributors as well as new ones as not every team works in the same way so trying to figure out how to transition from one team to another repeats the process again. Thanks for sharing!
Pascal Casier 3:51 pm on February 18, 2018
Really great idea! I see teams creating pages on how to run a contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. and explanations for new contributors, but there is no overall governance on this.

I however also have some concerns (some similar to @chanthaboune ):
- Should this become a separate team? The whole knowledge on how to mentor and do the on-boarding is in the teams.
- Can this be a horizontal concept? Like mainly exchanging experiences and especially documentation. Making sure all teams have an onboarding strategy.
- How to bring this to the places where it’s needed (Contributor Days, meetups, etc)?
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be your biggest fan for this 🙂 but I would love to see how to proceed with this and clarify some of the above doubts before continuing.

FYI, I created a page in the community handbook for WordCamps that wanted to organise a ‘get-involved’ table, you might find it useful here too https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/wordcamp-organizer/planning-details/banners-and-flyers/
- Daniel James 4:17 pm on February 18, 2018
  Thanks for your input @casiepa – great points to being up too.
  - I see this working well as a new, separate team because the reason I thought of this to begin with is that current teams do seem to be having an issue with focusing on their specific areas and making sure on boarding is easy. Of course this new team wouldn’t prevent teams from giving guidance and helping out, but the idea is to take the pressure off of them and provide a consistent experience across the project.
  - It will be a huge task to undertake and will rely on many teams at least providing a base for how to get involved, but something that team members of the new team can help out and stay on top of. The idea is that the new team would kind of act as a gateway to filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. people to where they want to go, sort of like a welcoming face to pass onto the right teams so they can get straight into doing what they want. I want to put empthasis on supportive, rather than managing.
  - This is something I’m still thinking of and need some help with. There needs to be a place to go to get started, and whilst the Make pages are great, I think we need something a bit closer to the front for new people coming in. As for contributor days and meetups, I think making sure a strong presence is visible will be the key. Spreading the word will be important to ensuring that people come to the team first if they have any queries. It will also require the team to reach out to meetups too, so a conversation can open up. I think that’s the key here, visibility.
  Again, there’s lots to figure out but I think if we can get at least a broad team of people together who want to assist, I think the issue revolving around how the different teams work will be solved be pooling information together. It’s just a case of sharing information, being supportive and communicating all the time.
Stephen Edgar 2:56 am on February 20, 2018

I think this role should be within the umbrella of the #marketing team personally, there would be significant overlap with what they are already doing to help the other teams per there team vision:

Marketing Team Vision: Our vision for the Marketing Team is to be the go-to resource on strategy and content for other WordPress teams.

As @casiepa noted in his reply above Can this be a horizontal concept?, I think this would slot in perfectly with what the marketing team have set out to achieve.

Cross posting this to the #markting team to bring them into this discussion: +make.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//marketing
- bridgetwillard 5:15 am on February 20, 2018
  
  Thanks for pinging us in 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/., Stephen.
bridgetwillard 5:15 am on February 20, 2018

It was brought up in our 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/. (https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C0GKJ7TFA/p1519095545000172) that maybe this team is duplicitous (my word), but as Dwayne said, we as the Marketing Team are definitely interested in helping people onboard. We’re currently working on a TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. Onboarding Doc.

https://trello.com/c/g3z2GbSX/47-navigating-trac-guide-for-new-people-coretracwordpressorg

Though I’d generally agree that onboarding is a Marketing thing, I’m not aware enough of the reasons why a new team is proposed, so it’s hard for me to comment.

Onboarding is a marketing issue for sure. If it’s more expedient for an existing team, whose goal it is to provide content and strategy to existing teams, (like Marketing) to help, then pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” us in Slack and @mcdwayne or I will make a 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. Card and get going.
- Daniel James 8:52 am on February 20, 2018
  
  Thanks for weighing in here @bridgetwillard – perhaps this is something marketing can take over perhaps? Whatever happens, I’d really like to help in this area so if this means merging the ideas here and doing on-boarding as part of marketing then I’d definitely like to help. Especially as the marketing team has already begun and got quite far in some documentation that I would have expected this new team to produce. What do you think? We can carry the discussion on in #marketing if you’d like?
Paul Schreiber 10:48 pm on February 23, 2018
The real problem for me isn’t making the first contribution — it’s getting any of your own bugs/tickets/patches accepted.

I have half a dozen small contributions in WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. But they’re fixes for someone else’s bugs.

Whenever I file a bug or feature request, some or all of the following happens:
- Someone will complain because other parts of a file were modified (my editor strips trailing newlines and no one wants to fix core)
- Someone will argue about why this fix isn’t the right approach (but not provide an alternate approach)
- Someone will argue that this doesn’t solve 100% of the problem and we shouldn’t accept any solution that isn’t perfect
- Someone will complain that inline documentation is missing
People don’t step up and say “thanks for your contribution; here’s what to do so this will be accepted.” They just sit around and proclaim “this is wrong, try again.”

Here are some tickets I’ve filed or contributed to:
#29022 (4 years)
#28569 (4 years)
#30847 (3 years, wontfix)
#31215 (3 years)
#36691 (22 months)
#37134 (20 months)
#37443 (marked as a duplicate of a 7-year-old bug)
#39288 (marked as a duplicate of a 3-year-old bug)
#40276 (11 months)
#40590 (10 months)

At this point, I don’t expect them to ever get fixed. It’s super demotivating. I am spending my energies elsewhere.
- Daniel James 8:42 pm on March 1, 2018
  
  Hi Paul, I’ve had a look through the tickets you posted and I don’t think any of the tickets have been brushed aside or your contributions rejected. Sometimes it’s difficult to find pros/cons in suggestions or confirm the impact of a bug so I wouldn’t worry about it. It takes a long time to start getting into the swing of things and it took me a while to even get my first patch committed too. Just keep trying! 🙂
  - Paul Schreiber 3:52 am on March 10, 2018
    
    That’s pretty terrible advice.
    
    I’ve submitted patches to dozens of other open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. projects. They’re generally responded to in days or weeks.
    
    CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. is where ideas go to die.
Uriel1339 8:35 pm on March 1, 2018

I’m looking more and more towards contributing to WordPress and actually have far higher interest in WooCommerce itself, but my biggest personal challenge is that there is no one I can hit up to, to mentor me through the process of clean code.

Just someone I can directly e-mail, text / instant message or maybe even call to make sure of how to identify something where I can help, and that when I attempt to help to contribute in the right way.

The guides for proper coding practices, WordPress standards and such are helpful. But I like to have my hand held the first few times until I feel confident enough to be independent AND useful to the community. Which is why I’m currently more standing on the sideline than actually helping out in the coding.

So I gladly would have a team like this to help people like myself out. I got the know-how, just not the confidence to help in such a gargantuan project like WordPress.
- Daniel James 8:45 pm on March 1, 2018
  
  Thanks for your thoughts Uriel. It is definitely hard to start getting stuck in. Unfortunately, whilst there’s been a lot of positivity with this idea, there has been enough push-back that this team probably won’t become a thing for a variety of reasons – but that doesn’t mean help isn’t available. Usually reaching out to any team lead will be enough to get the help you need or pointers in the right direction. Either way, keep at it because every contribution is very much appreciated! Good luck!

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Getting Involved

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Potential addition of a new Onboarding Team