Open Bug 1148146 Opened 9 years ago Updated 9 years ago

Someone needs to make a decision about Guides

Categories

(Community Building :: Contribute, task)

Product:
Community Building
Component:
Contribute
Platform:
x86
macOS
Type:
task
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: emma.irwin, Unassigned)

Details

Guides is a project of CBT launched with the Get Involved Page.

It has not had an owner since December, and is causing some confusion among functional areas (if it's still a thing), and probably not a great idea for new contributors if they don't have a community manager there.

I'm not sure who should make that decision, but trying a bug.
lots of unanswered requests to get involved

https://guides.mozilla-community.org/t/helping-users-introductions/209/59

Adding Lucy because I believe there is some evaluation of existing assets for community - and this shoudl be considered as a decision-to-be-made
Hmm this is an interesting one. Clearly without someone designated to answering these requests or a system for having already-involved volunteers responding to these requests it's just a discouraging dead-end for people interested in getting involved. 

I think there's good info here but there's nothing worse than a dead forum. 

My strong vote would be to shut-down Guides following the process below: 

1. Pull out the recurring questions into a contributor FAQ for the contribute wiki page
2. Put a message on it indicating it's last day and pointing people towards: the contribute wiki pages if they want to find projects to contribute to, mozilla.org/contribute if they're completely new, SUMO if they have a question about getting involved with a specific project and the new discourse topic if they have a general questions about contributing.

Thoughts? Who else needs to be consulted?
Flags: needinfo?(emma.irwin)
Thanks Lucy - I agree.

The one gotcha is that Guides is linked from the 'Get Involved Page' auto-responders, so we would need to update those as well.   I'm not sure how many responders that would be .  @Larissa do you know?
Flags: needinfo?(lshapiro)
Hey Emma. I know that there is work currently happening to re-boot the Contribute/Get-Involved page (mozilla.org/contribute) so we can let them know when we decide on a date for shutting down guides. 

I have a meeting with some of the people working on the get-involved page on Thursday and I can ask them about their timelines. Perhaps we can sync closing the Guides with the launch of the improved Get Involved page. Would be a nice positive transition for people on the Guides. 

Also besides coordinating with the get involved page and posting a notice on the Guides page in advance of the shut-down what other pathways do we need to communicate this on. 

Do we need to write a blog post? Tell the reps? etc. Is there anyone who is using it/relies on it in any way right now?
Flags: needinfo?(emma.irwin)
I think the steps to closing are
1) Post to Guides moderator group (I have the role to do that) with a date, and other opportunities to mentor
2) Post a message on Guides (with a similar message, but how to find help elsewhere )

I wouldn't write a blog post at this point, it's fairly inactive, so it's more about respect for who is still there than there being a huge community impacted.
Hey Emma 

Just a point I thinking about the guides it seem the framework at-least could work with what were running with Youth Mozilla
I just deleted a spam post and since there haven't been much usage over the last few months, I would vote for a speedy shutdown.
Thanks @jsx  it is likely on our list for the next heartbeat. 
I know it feels a little disheartening to see it go unused but the problem is much higher up the pipe, people are not clicking beyond the intial page, and almost never coming from email links (which is the only current way to find guides).   I still think providing early mentorship and guidance is a good goal, we can also use this thread to talk about what we learned, or envision for that.
Amy (Marketplace) is setting up a new  onboarding for marketpulse and has asked this:

I'm not sure who the moderators are for Guides, and how you recruited them, but I wonder if they can move over to the Add-ons and Marketplace forums at https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/ once Guides goes away?


putting here so we don't lose the request.
Could I take over the guides project if possible 

I have got some ideas for this
I am 100% for community leadership of projects like this, but there is one catch:  Previously the forums were linked from the Get Involved auto-responders.  For us to continue a link there needs to be a strategy (which includes sustainably) in place.   We can talk more,
Flags: needinfo?(lshapiro)
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