WTD community blog? (original title Read The Blogs)

[theletterf]

This idea originated from a conversation with @KyleBlankRollins in the WtD Slack (#general), as a comment to my post Let’s blog more about technical writing. Kyle wrote:

I have wondered if the WTD community could create a platform for blog posts. Take on the distribution side of things.

We then developed the idea further and identified several benefits of having a WtD sponsored community of blogs (or a common WtD blog):

—It’d bolster the sense of community, allowing for long form content to be shared and curated.
— It’d be an excellent testing ground or brewery for WtD conference topics.
—It’d give more visibility to the community and revitalize the WtD domain and brand.

This ReadTheBlogs (pun intended) initiative could take two main forms:

—Either a centralized blog under WtD domain, with contributors drawn from the community and a certain level of editorial curation (WtD Blog),
—or a WtD blog community, with subdomains such as remoquete.writethedocs.org, where each blogger would be free to contribute after editorial approval.

Both approaches are compatible and could be done concurrently. The latter would require a more complex technical development though.

[mjang]

I love the idea. More than once, I've had posts in our Slack where people have suggested that I go further.

We have an incredible collective expertise that we should document -- and we have the skills!

To start (with the simpler option)

a centralized blog under WtD domain, with contributors drawn from the community and a certain level of editorial curation (WtD Blog)

I think all we'd need to "get started" is a "Blog" subdirectory, published under writethedocs.org/blog

[plaindocs]

Thanks for kicking off this discussion @theletterf

I think all we'd need to "get started" is a "Blog" subdirectory, published under writethedocs.org/blog

@mjang, you mean, like https://www.writethedocs.org/blog/ :-D

I think before getting stuck into technical details we need to figure out what need we're solving here. I think firing up your own blogging site isn't too hard in this day and age, so the community aspect of centralizing posts by different authors would be the benefit here.

Then again, nobody who isn't blogging because of the overhead wants someone else standing between them and publish.

I'd certainly be happy with an expanded Community Content section of the existing "blog", but we could also split them out entirely I think.

@ericholscher thoughts?

[plaindocs]

Oh, and the name almost certainly needs to change. Writing about writing the docs is still light hearted.

[mjang]

For me personally, we're "solving" the impostor syndrome associated with blogging.

I can see a benefit to Write the Docs as well, as it could serve as a source of collective community intelligence.

[plaindocs]

@mjang thanks for replying specifically. I think that's the needle I'm trying to thread, is that a "WTD blog" can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, so the more specific folks are about what would be helpful, the easier it will be.

[flicstar]

Following with interest, and tagging @ryanmacklin as well.

Over at The Good Docs Project, we recently launched a blog with the aim of tech writing advocacy, and we intended for it to be a platform where tech writers from the community could be published...

I love the idea of a Write the Docs community blog, and if/when it gets off the ground, it may be that our project adjusts the vision for our blog (to be more project-centric, to be more template specific 🤷).

[theletterf]

JetBrains just launched their tech writing blog: https://blog.jetbrains.com/writerside/

[ericholscher]

I'm 👍 on having more community-contributed content on our site in some fashion. I'm generally -1 on hosting some kind of blogging platform. Tooling isn't what is stopping people from writing, but distribution & branding is valuable, and that's what we can provide.

I have some questions on cadence, editorial aims, payment, and many other things, but I think overall this is definitely something worth doing. I think the big thing that would be required to start is a small group of people to write up a WEP that proposes the process we'd follow to evaluate incoming content. I'd imagine it being similar to our talk selection process, and with a defined cadence? I'd imagine something monthly, and have it get promotion in the newsletter as well?

Another option that this could start with is a "community highlight" section of the newsletter, if we wanted to lower the barrier to shipping it, and tie it to an existing process that we already know works. Promoting existing content people already wrote is much easier than trying to get them to publish it on our domain, I'm guessing.

[ryanmacklin]

Following with interest, and tagging @ryanmacklin as well.

Over at The Good Docs Project, we recently launched a blog with the aim of tech writing advocacy, and we intended for it to be a platform where tech writers from the community could be published...

I love the idea of ways of WTD having community-contributed material! This is a quality group of thought leadership.

We decided on a blog for Good Docs Project because, while our core mission is to help devs and new writers with quality templates and supporting material, there's other advice that would help people accomplish their documentation goals. Basically, what can we share to help those interested learn to think like writers? That's the question and overall jam of the blog we're very slowly) rolling out. We're allowing for other topics, because we're all volunteers and the project also covers other side objectives, but that's our main thrust.

I say that to say: whatever WTD creates, consider the core theme and mission of it. A blog that works like a scattergun will serve most people once, but might not have the "do one thing well" approach this group hits well when it comes to the conferences.

I dunno if that makes sense, but hopefully to some it does. I worked in periodical publishing for years, and saw how an org (that was paid for their jobs, so not the same as volunteers managing extracurricular energy) can create a curated content pipeline. It's not easy—which is why GDP's blog has been slow to get going—but I believe it has promise.

If anyone would like to chat publication pipelines with me sometime, I'm happy to hang! I'm @macklin on WTD and GDP Slacks. (And I'd definitely love to talk with anyone who has pub pipeline experiences, to learn from you!)

[ryanmacklin]

Also (as a separate comment): some sort of platform for showcasing blog posts or whatever—whether or not it's an internal blog system or as links in a newsletter or whatever—could also work to elevate some local WTD Meetup communities. Like "Check out what Rose WIlliams from WTD Florida & Boston has to say about 'Getting Stakeholders on your side.'"

Since WTD already does that in a sense with Meetup talks (notably the Quorums), this could be great for other ways to showcase the community. And maybe that's all that's needed for now: a way to submit "hey maybe share my post" that your newsletter and social media can promote. That's less work (but not zero work) that having a publishing pipeline with QA/moderation, and doesn't bring into question things like "do we have a commenting system?" or "what's our tag architecture?" or "what's our review and acceptance policies?" and other logistics you'd want to think about if you set up your own system.

(I saw that as someone who had to, and still has to, answer those questions and more.)

[djwfyi]

Wordpress and https://writefreely.org are two options for creating a blogging community. Both can integrate into the Fediverse moment currently happening, too.

[CBID2]

I think Hashnode could be a good site. They have a team blog option and it looks pretty good.

[CBID2]

Has the platform been finalized yet?