What is missing in WordPress

In this post, I explain why I find it important to contribute to the WordPress Governance project. But first, a little background.

Create impact and unlock growth opportunities

As a team, we find it important to grow impact and unlock collaborative opportunities. This is part of our annual strategy. So we choose special projects to contribute to. Sometimes we do this as a team, sometimes as an individual.

Finding time to contribute

Occasionally I have gaps in my contract work, but time is limited. That’s why I need to make strategic decisions. These are based on the work I want to teach, the tools I want to experiment with, and the teams I want to collaborate with.
Also, I am sometimes fortunate to have sponsored time to contribute. Here’s a big thank you to companies like XWP and others. They make it possible to make an impact contributing back and working together to build a better web.

My contributions in recent years

In recent years, my contributions supported teams in building learning management programs (LMS). I also worked on local town bike and safety projects and I supported precious land trust organizations.
Lately, I contributed to open source projects like AMP and WordPress. This was done through UX contributions, visual design work, product design, and illustration.

Motivations to contribute back

I started contributing to open source and to WordPress as a responsibility to my clients. Besides that, I sensed vulnerability for my own business and financial stability. As a result, I started the process of understanding how to contribute back to the project.
At WCUS in 2017, where Jackie and I met Monique, we stayed for contributor day. Somehow, it was easier to meet in person and to learn what’s involved with being a contributor.

2019 contributions to WPGovernance

Early in 2019, I experienced a significant gap in contract work. So I found myself in a unique position to be able to contribute my time without a sponsor. I conducted UX research and understanding of the lack of Governance in WordPress.
Diversity was also a priority for the people working on this project. Thus, I joined a committee within the WPGovernance Project and then facilitated there.

Pushed outside the project

The WordPress foundation or project kicked the work on missing governance policies outside of the project. The contributors were denied a team status in the project. This is why WPGovernance is now self-hosted.

To this day, I still do not know why a board or any team are not required to be responsible for good governance for an open source project. Especially when this project runs over one third of the web.

The community branch of WordPress -meaning the WordCamps- has some governance policies in place. But the project itself and the volunteers who maintain it do not. The WPGovernance website has more details about the important work that started there.

What is missing in WordPress Governance?

Aside from our ongoing research and governance hypothesis, WPGovernance has other focusses.

The WordPress Governance Project focusses to create working examples of the following policies:

• Code of Conduct for Project and Contributors (A policy exists for WordCamps / Community)
• Diversity and Inclusion Policy
• Code of Ethics
• Privacy Policy
• Conflict of Interest Policy
• Accessibility Policy

Honorable efforts

At the moment, there’s no clear process for proposing and ratifying these types of policies. Considering this, the goal is to create a starting point for future official discussions within WordPress.

Identifying the stakeholders of WordPress & journey mapping to surface the evidence

That brings us to the UX work we started. We unlocked specific scenarios, defined stakeholder groups, conducted interviews. We researched pain points, carefully mapped it all, and provided some analysis too. These are living documents that WordPress teams can use and continue to maintain.

Giving back

The next logical step in the UX process is to bring the work we have started back into the project. It can be used for official discussions and ratification.
So we uploaded these living documents with the hope that this important work becomes part of the WordPress Project itself. The health of the ecosystem would improve from foundational governance policies. Most healthy open source projects are proud to care for the safety of the people who contribute.

Drafting of policies within the WordPress Project

Can we set a goal for 2020 to improve the health and transparency of our ecosystem? For instance, starting with the adoption and ratification of these much-needed policies?

WordPress can not expect to be leading the way to democratize publishing without basic governance in place.

Open source is not a charity, it is a business plan. And ultimately, it is people. We can always take better care of people in WordPress, both those who maintain it, and those who use and rely on it.

As we, UX All the Things, deliver this work back into the project, we have hope. We hope that some of the large enterprise stakeholders will support this effort towards a healthy ecosystem. Because we are all stakeholders and our users, employees, and our communities actually rely on it for food and shelter. If you want advice on how to make a difference, please reach out to one of us.

The work we’ve done to this point has been a compilation of honorable efforts. The next step is the drafting of policies from within the project. Some of our diagrams are in progress – notice the diagram of the project from 20,000 feet. So please use and help facilitate our documentation inside the official repo. If WordPress wants to be successful long term, it must have the following governance policies in place:

• Code of Conduct for Project and Contributors (A policy exists for WordCamps / Community)
• Diversity and Inclusion Policy
• Code of Ethics
• Privacy Policy
• Conflict of Interest Policy
• Accessibility Policy

The next step is the drafting of policies from within the project.

The UX work from WPGovernance is available on GitHub. From there, it can be forked into the WordPress GitHub repo via the Training Team. Their repos house a variety of content that are not specifically code-based. This means they can make it accessible for all teams. Thanks to the Training Team and meeting with Julie Kuehl at WCUS 2019 contributor day!

-> Visit the UXATT GitHub Repository

Visit the Training team Documentation on GitHub

• Identifying the Stakeholders
  You can currently read through UX work (Personas and Scenarios) on the WP Governance site.
• Journey Maps: The Case for Governance
  (A journey map is a diagram that visualizes the journey of stakeholders as they interact or accomplish tasks within the WordPress project.)
• Project Structure and Channels Map
  This map illustrating where and by whom work is happening.

All documentation is on GitHub and available to the public via our repo and soon from the Training team repo.

Visit the UXATT GitHub Repository

Props to:
Rian Kinney, Rachel Cherry, Pat Lockley, Alex Sirota, Raffaella Isodori, Molly Dodge, Renee Johnson, Sally Gradle, Sara Dunn, Tara Claeys, Rene Morozowich, Rene Johnson, Jackie D’Elia, Monique Dubbelman, Julie Kuehl, Morten Rand-Hendriksen, Elaine Shannon, Justin Maurer, Sé Reed, Jennifer Ecker and many more individuals that gave interviews or participated by sharing their experiences for UX analysis.

Many others contributed to the larger WPGovernance project through research, organizing, and policy draft writing too. Their work and presence can be seen in the WPGovernance Slack channels (login required).