Proposal: Restructure the Community Team Handbooks  🔗 **Source:** [Proposal: Restructure the Community Team Handbooks](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2026/07/03/proposal-restructure-the-community-team-handbooks/) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: [wordpress-community-team, documentation, handbooks, information-architecture, contributor-onboarding, single-source-of-truth] > author: [MISSING] > source: Make WordPress Community blog > reference: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2026/07/03/proposal-restructure-the-community-team-handbooks/ > date created: {{date:YYYY-MM-DD}} {{time:HH:mm}} > > # 🏷️ Title: Proposal: Restructure the Community Team handbooks > <!-- deep-read:sections start --> ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - [Proposal post — Make WordPress Community](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2026/07/03/proposal-restructure-the-community-team-handbooks/) - [Community Team Handbook landing page](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/) - [WordCamp Organizer Handbook](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/wordcamp-organizer/) - [learn.wordpress.org — self-training courses](https://learn.wordpress.org/) - [WordPress Meta Trac (for a "handbook MCP" ticket)](https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/) ## 📝 Summary - **What happened.** A Community Team contributor posted a two-part proposal on the Make WordPress Community blog to restructure the team's handbooks. Part 1 regroups today's flat list of nine handbooks into three audience-based sections and spins out standalone Sponsor, Speaker, and Volunteer handbooks. Part 2 restructures the chapters of the most-used Community Team Handbook. The author asks for ~3 Event Supporters to form a working group; the call for volunteers closes **17 July 2026**. - **Why it matters.** The handbooks landing page is one of the most-linked-to pages the team has — Slack and email conversations constantly point at it. A flat nine-item list with a missing Education handbook and mismatched chapter names is hard to navigate, especially for new contributors. This is a documentation-as-product and contributor-onboarding problem, squarely in DevRel/Community territory. - **Key stakeholders.** Community Team leads, Event Supporters / Program Supports / Program Managers, meetup and WordCamp organizers, the Training team (learn.wordpress.org tie-ins), the Documentation team (docs practice), the Meta team (a possible "handbook MCP" Trac ticket), and — per the comments — first-time event attendees, an audience currently served by nobody. - **Risks and tradeoffs.** Ship-fast-then-iterate can leave broken links and half-migrated content mid-flight. Restructuring URLs risks SEO and inbound-link decay for a heavily-linked page. Audience-based grouping can fossilize duplication if the team stops at regrouping instead of deduplicating to a single source of truth (the sharpest comment). Timeline is 6–8 weeks, 12 as a hard ceiling. - **Bottom line.** Solid, actionable proposal with an unusually strong comment thread. The two ideas worth Courtney weighing in on before 17 July: (1) collapse near-duplicate event handbooks into one source-of-truth event handbook with per-subject exceptions, and (2) add a first-time-attendee handbook — plus a low-cost win: get the page structure right for accessibility, SEO, and AI while everything's being rewritten anyway. ## 📖 Main Content - **The core problem is navigation, not content quality.** The current landing page is a flat list of nine handbooks with no grouping and no per-item description, so readers can't tell which handbook applies to them before clicking. The Education handbook is missing from the list entirely. New contributors bear the worst of this — they don't yet have the mental model to map a task to the right handbook. - **Part 1 — regroup the landing page into three audience sections**, each with a short "are you in the right place?" description: - *Make Community Team* (people who run/support the team itself): Community Team Handbook; Incident Response Team Handbook; Education Program Team Handbook. - *Local Events Organizers* (anyone planning a WordPress event): Meetup Organizer; WordCamp Organizer; WordPress Campus Connect; Online Events; KidsCamp. - *Resource Handbooks* (reference for people supporting events): Sponsor; Speaker; Volunteer. - **The Sponsor and Speaker handbooks don't exist as standalone documents today** — that content is buried inside the WordCamp Organizer Handbook. Extracting them is itself an act of deduplication, because that content would otherwise be copied into every event type. A one-page Volunteer handbook is proposed so any organizer can hand it to accepted volunteers. - **Part 2 — restructure the Community Team Handbook chapters**, because the current chapter list is flat and the names don't always match the contents. Proposed outline: Event Vetting; Event Orientations; Setting Up Meetups; Setting Up Events; Team Chats; Team Goals; Community Team Dir; Tools (Google Apps Email, HelpScout, Finance Tools/QuickBooks); Trademark FAQs. Each handbook's first page would invite readers to take the relevant learn.wordpress.org course for self-training. - **The ask and the plan.** ~3 Event Supporters join as a working group. Work splits into four chunks: **Audit** (what's outdated, missing, duplicated, and what should move) → **Restructure** (finalize outline, migrate content) → **Publish** (write and ship the missing Sponsor/Speaker handbooks) → **Maintain** (lightweight review process, possibly a rotating Docs Working Group with a quarterly cycle). Timeline: Weeks 1–2 Audit, 3–5 Restructure, 6–7 Publish, Week 8 Launch, Week 9+ Docs Working Group. Explicit ethos: ship solid and iterate rather than perfect-in-one-go. - **The comment thread carries the sharpest thinking** (treat as first-class): - **Naming (contested):** rename "Local Events Organizers" → **"Event organizers"** — dropping "local" — because online meetups and some regional WordCamps are events but not local. Also: don't single out meetups; a meetup is a type of event, so fold "Setting Up Meetups" into "Setting Up Events." - **Deduplication / single source of truth (the big idea):** go further than extracting three resource handbooks. Investigate collapsing the separate per-event-type handbooks into **one event handbook that lists special cases/exceptions per subject.** Worked example: the Meetup Handbook's *Event Formats* section overlaps with good WordCamp content — instead of duplicating, have a single *Event Formats* page noting which formats suit which event type. - **The unserved audience:** add a **first-time-attendee** handbook/section so newcomers know what to expect at an event — which would also cut duplicate onboarding copy scattered across individual WordCamp websites. - **Tooling:** a NotebookLM-style assistant to help organizers get into the info fast; and a **"handbook MCP"** — flagged as beyond this proposal's scope, but worth a Meta Trac ticket if none exists. Same commenter: while rewriting, spend the few extra minutes to get page structure right for accessibility, SEO, and AI. - **Uncertainties / contested claims.** The three-vs-two-section framing is stated inconsistently in the source ("two-section grouping" appears in the open questions though three sections are proposed). The "Innovative WordPress Events Handbook (temporary)" from 2023 is still live and may become a one-page "Other types of WP events" handbook (Do_Action, WP Women Days, etc.). Whether prior Sponsor/Speaker handbook work exists to pick up is an open question. ### 🗒️ Notes - Landing page is one of the most-linked-to pages the team owns; Slack/email routinely point at it → any URL change has real link-equity and SEO cost. - Current list = nine handbooks, flat, no descriptions, Education handbook missing. - Nine current handbooks: Community Team; Community Team Supporter and Manager; Meetup Organizer; WordCamp Organizer; Innovative WordPress Events (temporary); Contributor Events Organizer; KidsCamp Organizer; Online Events; Incident Response Team. - Proposed grouping is by **audience and purpose**, with a short description per section — the description is the actual navigation fix, not just the grouping. - Sponsor + Speaker content currently buried in WordCamp Organizer Handbook → extraction = deduplication by construction. - Part 2 chapter rename fixes a "names don't match contents" mismatch — a findability/labeling problem. - learn.wordpress.org invitation on each handbook's first page = Training-team integration point; docs pointing at courses. - Working group = ~3 Event Supporters. Four chunks: Audit → Restructure → Publish → Maintain. - Timeline 6–8 wks, 12 hard ceiling. "I'd rather we ship something solid than let this drag through a long unstructured stretch." - Maintenance = lightweight review + possible rotating Docs Working Group, quarterly review from Week 9. - Comment 1: positive, availability blocked (leading WordCamp Valencia 2026). - Comment 2 (Marcus, most substantive): naming "Event organizers" not "Local"; push deduplication to a single source of truth; single Event Formats page as the worked example; fold meetups into "Setting up events"; add first-time-attendee handbook to save duplicate copy across WordCamp sites. - Comment 3: NotebookLM to help organizers find info fast. - Comment 4: handbook MCP → file a Meta Trac ticket; get page structure right for accessibility, SEO, and AI. - Several "count me in" volunteers already stepping forward. - Call for volunteers closes **17 July 2026.** Peer review props: @_dorsvenabili, @unintended8. ## 📚 References - [Proposal: Restructure the Community Team handbooks — Make WordPress Community](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2026/07/03/proposal-restructure-the-community-team-handbooks/) - [Make WordPress Community Team Handbook](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/) - [WordCamp Organizer Handbook (current home of Sponsor/Speaker content)](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/wordcamp-organizer/) - [learn.wordpress.org](https://learn.wordpress.org/) - [WordPress Meta Trac](https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/) - [Google's NotebookLM](https://notebooklm.google.com/) - [Model Context Protocol (MCP)](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - The handbooks landing page gets linked to constantly, but it's a flat list of nine handbooks with no descriptions and a missing Education handbook, so people — especially new contributors — struggle to find the right one. The proposal groups the nine into three audience-based sections, each with a short orienting description, and pulls Sponsor/Speaker/Volunteer content out into standalone handbooks instead of leaving it buried in the WordCamp Organizer Handbook. - The second part re-chapters the most-used Community Team Handbook so section names match their contents, and adds a first-page nudge toward matching learn.wordpress.org courses. The author wants ~3 Event Supporters for a 6–8-week (12 max) working group running Audit → Restructure → Publish → Maintain, shipping fast and iterating rather than perfecting in one pass. - The comments sharpen it: rename the section to "Event organizers" since not all events are local; go past extracting three handbooks toward a single source-of-truth event handbook that lists per-subject exceptions (one Event Formats page, not two); and serve an audience nobody currently does — first-time attendees — which would also cut duplicate copy across WordCamp sites. Tooling ideas include a NotebookLM helper and a handbook MCP (worth a Meta Trac ticket), plus getting page structure right for accessibility, SEO, and AI during the rewrite. ## 📰 Newsletter - **The WordPress Community Team wants to fix its handbooks — and it's asking for hands.** A new proposal on the Make Community blog would regroup today's flat list of nine handbooks into three audience-based sections, finally give the Sponsor and Speaker handbooks their own pages (right now they're buried inside the WordCamp Organizer Handbook), and re-chapter the most-used Community Team Handbook so the names actually match what's inside. - **The comment thread is where it gets good.** One contributor argues for going past regrouping into real deduplication — a single source-of-truth event handbook with per-subject exceptions instead of near-duplicate handbooks (imagine one *Event Formats* page instead of copy-pasting between Meetup and WordCamp docs). Another spots the audience nobody serves: **first-time attendees.** A first-time-attendee handbook could replace the duplicate "what to expect" copy scattered across dozens of individual WordCamp sites. - **Low-cost win worth stealing:** while everything's being rewritten, get the page structure right for accessibility, SEO, and AI. And yes, someone floated a "handbook MCP" — file a Meta Trac ticket if you want it. - **Want in?** ~3 Event Supporters are needed for a 6–8-week working group. The call for volunteers closes **17 July 2026.** Read the proposal and comment on the [Make Community post](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2026/07/03/proposal-restructure-the-community-team-handbooks/). ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Developer advocacy: draft a short comment on the proposal before 17 July championing the single-source-of-truth structure and the first-time-attendee handbook; both are on-message for reducing contributor friction. - Education: map each proposed handbook to an existing learn.wordpress.org course so the "take the relevant course" first-page invitation ships with real links, not placeholders. - Developer experience: treat the handbooks as a product — propose per-section descriptions, consistent chapter naming, and a redirect map so the most-linked-to page doesn't shed inbound links on restructure. - Developer marketing: coordinate an announcement cadence so organizers know handbooks moved (avoid silent URL changes on a heavily-referenced page). - Community management: offer to take the Maintain chunk — define the lightweight review process and the rotating Docs Working Group quarterly cycle. - Internal/external/cross-project: align the Community, Training, Documentation, and Meta touchpoints this proposal spans into one coordination thread. #### OSPO - Policy & Governance: encode a "single source of truth per subject" documentation principle so future handbooks can't re-duplicate. - License Compliance: n/a for this proposal. - Security Management: keep the Incident Response Team Handbook cross-linked and discoverable in the new "Make Community Team" section. - Software Inventory: n/a. - Developer Support: a NotebookLM/handbook-MCP assistant is a support-surface question — scope who maintains it before committing. - Community Engagement: fold the volunteer working group into existing contributor onboarding paths. - Strategic Alignment: tie the handbook restructure to a measurable "time-to-find-the-right-handbook" outcome. #### Community - Maintainers: define release hygiene for docs — a publish checklist (redirects, link-check, accessibility pass) for the Week 8 launch. - Contributors: use this as a "first issue" onboarding path; the Audit chunk is a low-barrier entry for new contributors. - Sponsors: ship the standalone Sponsor Handbook with clear deliverables and expectations extracted from the WordCamp Organizer Handbook. - Ecosystem: coordinate with anyone already doing related handbook cleanup (an open question in the post). #### WordPress - Core: n/a. - Core Performance: n/a. - Core AI: n/a. - **Core Program Team:** borrow the Audit→Restructure→Publish→Maintain chunking as a reusable docs-project ritual. - Mobile: n/a. - Playground: n/a. - Community: **primary owner.** Volunteer ~3 Event Supporters; run the four chunks; adopt "Event organizers" naming; investigate the single-handbook-with-exceptions structure; add a first-time-attendee handbook. - Training: wire learn.wordpress.org course invitations into each handbook's first page; consider a self-training path per audience section. - Marketing: announce the restructure and the new Sponsor/Speaker/Volunteer handbooks. - Support: retire or repurpose the still-active "Innovative WordPress Events Handbook (temporary)" from 2023. - Design: apply information-architecture review to the three-section grouping and per-section descriptions. - Documentation: lead on docs-as-product practice — style guide, examples-first patterns, dedup principle, and a maintainable review cadence. - Photos / TV / Polyglots: coordinate translation/locale coverage once the structure stabilizes (don't translate mid-migration). - Accessibility: run a WCAG 2.2 AA pass on the rewritten handbook pages — correct heading order, landmarks, link text — while the content is already being touched. - Meta: file a Meta Trac ticket for a "handbook MCP" if none exists; own any .org-side URL/redirect and search changes. - CLI / Hosting / Tide / Openverse / Themes / Plugins: n/a. #### The WPCC - Programs: the WordPress Campus Connect Handbook sits in the "Local Events Organizers" section — verify its placement survives the "Event organizers" rename. - Projects: offer a documentation sprint as a WPCC-style contribution track. - Funding experiments: n/a. ### FAIR - Technical independence: n/a for this proposal. - Policies and covenants: n/a. - Productized governance artifacts: the rotating Docs Working Group charter + quarterly review cycle is a reusable governance artifact worth templating. ## 🧪 Hypotheses - Grouping the nine handbooks into audience sections **with per-section descriptions** reduces the time a new contributor needs to reach the correct handbook, more than grouping alone would. - Collapsing per-event-type handbooks into a single event handbook with per-subject exceptions reduces total maintained words and cuts contradictions between near-duplicate pages. - A standalone first-time-attendee handbook reduces duplicate "what to expect" content across individual WordCamp websites. - Extracting Sponsor/Speaker/Volunteer content into standalone handbooks reduces update lag (one edit propagates instead of N copies drifting). - Getting page structure right (headings, landmarks, semantic order) during the rewrite measurably improves accessibility, search ranking, and AI-assistant retrieval of handbook content. - Shipping fast and iterating, with a redirect map, avoids a net loss of inbound link equity on the most-linked-to page. ### 📊 Methodology - **Audit (Weeks 1–2):** inventory every handbook page; tag each section outdated / missing / duplicated / misplaced; produce a move-map. Baseline metric: count of duplicated sections and broken/mismatched chapter names. - **Card-sort / tree-test** the proposed three-section grouping and the "Event organizers" rename with a handful of new contributors before committing — cheap validation of the navigation hypothesis. - **Restructure (Weeks 3–5):** finalize the outline; migrate content; build a redirect map for every changed URL; run a link-checker against the most-linked-to landing page. - **Publish (Weeks 6–7):** write the standalone Sponsor/Speaker/Volunteer handbooks from the extracted WordCamp content; accessibility + SEO structure pass per page. - **Launch (Week 8):** measure inbound-link breakage (should be ~zero with redirects) and post-launch "can you find X handbook?" task success. - **Maintain (Week 9+):** rotating Docs Working Group; quarterly review; track edit-lag and duplication-count as ongoing health metrics. ### ❓ Questions - Should the team stop at audience-based grouping, or commit now to the single-source-of-truth event handbook the comments argue for? (The two paths diverge in the Audit; deciding late means rework.) - Is "Event organizers" the right rename, and does it force a rethink of which handbooks belong in that section (online/regional events)? - Who owns and maintains any NotebookLM assistant or handbook MCP — and does that create a support surface the team can't sustain? - What's the redirect and canonical-URL plan for the most-linked-to page before any URL changes ship? - Is there prior Sponsor/Speaker handbook work to pick up rather than starting fresh? - What becomes of the still-active "Innovative WordPress Events Handbook (temporary)" from 2023 — one-page "Other types of WP events" or retirement? - Should meetups be folded into "Setting up events" (per the comment), collapsing a chapter? ### 🔮 Future Research - A reusable WordPress-wide documentation IA pattern: audience sections + per-section descriptions + single-source-of-truth-with-exceptions, portable to other Make team handbooks. - Measuring AI-retrieval quality of handbook pages before/after a structure rewrite (does clean heading structure actually improve LLM answers grounded on the docs?). - A cross-team "docs-as-product" playbook: audit → restructure → publish → maintain with a rotating working group, generalized beyond the Community team. - First-time-attendee onboarding as a content pattern that could replace duplicated copy across the WordCamp site network. ### 💡 Implications - **Information architecture:** the real fix is descriptions + audience grouping + consistent naming, not just fewer top-level items. Labels that match contents are a findability intervention. - **Single source of truth:** the highest-leverage move is structural deduplication (one event handbook, per-subject exceptions) — it lowers maintenance cost and kills contradictions between near-duplicate pages. Deciding this early prevents re-duplication. - **Contributor onboarding:** contextual, audience-based navigation and per-handbook course invitations lower the barrier for new contributors — the stated pain point. The Audit chunk itself is a good "first issue." - **Docs-as-product:** treating handbooks as a maintained product (review cadence, rotating working group, quarterly cycle, publish checklist) is the durable win; the restructure is the launch, not the finish. - **Accessibility/SEO/AI:** a rewrite is the cheapest moment to fix heading order, landmarks, and semantic structure — one pass serves screen readers, search, and AI retrieval at once. - **Policy/funding models:** a lightweight, rotating Docs Working Group is a low-cost governance artifact other Make teams could adopt. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - Reading level estimate: Flesch-Kincaid Grade ~10–11 (governance-proposal prose, moderate sentence length, some domain jargon like "Event Supporters," "Program Supports"). #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: none — pure prose list of handbooks. - Improve: a before/after IA diagram of the nine-item flat list vs. three-section grouping; a move-map table showing what migrates where. #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: none. - Improve: a 2–3 minute audio summary of the proposal and the two sharpest comments; this is where the NotebookLM Audio Overview idea fits. #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: clear plain-language framing of the problem and the four chunks. - Improve: define "Event Supporters / Program Supports / Program Managers" inline for newcomers. #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: the four-chunk plan is itself a step-by-step. - Improve: a volunteer checklist and an Audit worksheet template. #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: phased week-by-week timeline; audience→section mapping. - Improve: a RACI for the working group; a decision tree for "which section does this handbook belong in?" #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: strong comment thread; open call for volunteers. - Improve: a scheduled working-group kickoff and a shared Audit doc. #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: readable async proposal. - Improve: reflection prompt — "which handbook did you struggle to find last, and why?" #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: none. - Improve: frame handbook maintenance as an ecosystem/lifecycle (audit → prune → grow → tend) matching the rotating-working-group cadence. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: standard blog post headings. - Improve: the rewrite should enforce correct heading hierarchy and landmarks per page — the comment explicitly names accessibility, so bake it into the Publish checklist. #### Keyboard navigation - Present: standard WordPress.org theme. - Improve: ensure the new landing-page section navigation is keyboard reachable with visible focus. #### Contrast and readability - Present: Make blog defaults (generally AA). - Improve: verify per-section description text meets 4.5:1. #### Text resizing and reflow - Present: responsive Make theme. - Improve: confirm the three-section grouping reflows cleanly at 200% zoom. #### Media and captions - Present: n/a (text proposal). - Improve: caption any future explainer/audio overview of the handbooks. #### Forms and interactions - Present: comment form. - Improve: n/a. #### Standards reference - Map the rewrite's structure pass to WCAG 2.2 AA — 1.3.1 Info and Relationships, 2.4.6 Headings and Labels, 2.4.10 Section Headings. ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: acknowledges regional WordCamps and online/global events (the "not all events are local" point). - Improve: ensure Polyglots can translate the new structure once stable; don't localize mid-migration. #### Inclusive language - Present: plain, welcoming framing aimed at new contributors. - Improve: define insider role names (Event Supporters, Program Supports) so newcomers aren't excluded by jargon. #### Neurodiversity support - Present: chunked four-part plan, predictable phases. - Improve: consistent per-handbook structure and icon+text section labels aid predictability. #### Representation - Present: the first-time-attendee idea explicitly widens who the docs serve — a strong inclusion move. - Improve: consider accessibility/first-language needs of first-time attendees in that new handbook. #### Psychological safety - Present: respectful, collaborative tone; open call for volunteers; ship-and-iterate lowers fear of imperfection. - Improve: make clear that Audit-stage contributions from newcomers are welcome and low-risk. ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - **Inductive, well-grounded:** "the handbooks landing page is one of the most-linked-to pages" → any restructure has outsized impact. The high-traffic premise justifies the effort. - **Constructive deduplication argument (comment):** extracting Sponsor/Speaker/Volunteer *already* deduplicates → generalize to a single source of truth. The Event Formats example is a clean, concrete instance supporting the general claim — strong analogical + inductive move. - **Audience-first reframing (comment):** "who is the handbook valuable for?" surfaces the missing first-time-attendee audience — a strong problem-reframing that the original proposal's insider focus missed. #### Fallacies - **Minor inconsistency (not a fallacy, a slip):** the post says "two-section grouping" in the open questions while proposing three sections — clarify before publishing to avoid confusing reviewers. - **Potential false economy:** "ship fast, iterate" is sound, but without a redirect/link-check gate it risks a hidden cost (broken inbound links) that undercuts the stated goal of helping people find pages. Fix: make redirects a launch gate, not an iteration. #### Tone of voice - Collaborative, pragmatic, and time-boxed ("I'd rather we ship something solid than let this drag"). Comments are constructive and additive, not adversarial — a healthy proposal thread. ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - Deny: none — the author openly names the current state's flaws (flat list, missing Education handbook, mismatched chapter names). - Attack: none — comments critique ideas (naming, dedup) not people; tone stays respectful. - Reverse victim/offender: none. This is a good-faith governance proposal with cooperative discussion; DARVO patterns are absent. ## 🎯 Conclusion - **Bottom line.** A pragmatic, well-scoped proposal to make the Community Team's most-linked-to page navigable — regroup nine handbooks into three audience sections, spin out the buried Sponsor/Speaker/Volunteer handbooks, and re-chapter the flagship Community Team Handbook. The comment thread upgrades it: rename to "Event organizers," pursue a single source of truth instead of near-duplicate handbooks, and serve first-time attendees for the first time. - **Practical next steps for readers.** If you're WordPress DevRel/Community: comment before **17 July 2026** backing the single-source-of-truth structure and the first-time-attendee handbook, and offer to own the Maintain chunk or wire in the learn.wordpress.org course links. Push for a redirect map + accessibility/SEO structure pass as launch gates, and file a Meta Trac ticket if a handbook MCP is worth pursuing. Decide the dedup question in the Audit, not after. ## 🔄 Refactor Appendix — Proposal: Restructure the Community Team handbooks > Density: 2–5 Literature atoms (H3), 0–3 Permanent candidates (H4). > Defaults: 3 Literature, 1 Permanent. Resonance filter: if you can't > articulate in one line why a claim matters, drop it. > > Konik claim-header rules: present tense, declarative, ≤10 words when > possible, searchable, unique, mirrors annotation focus if present. > > Atomicity: one declarative sentence per atom. "and"/"also" → split. > > Tag pool: #bmf · #addendum · #xref · #articleseed · #storystem · #share · #aphorisms ### 📚 Literature Atoms (H3) #### [H1] Flat handbook list blocks new-contributor navigation > [!quote] ID:rw_h1 > It is difficult to learn which handbook is relevant where, especially for new contributors to the community team. **Context & use**: - Opening problem statement of the proposal. - Names the core pain: findability for newcomers, not content quality — the whole restructure hangs on this. **Tags**: #xref **Highlight**: [view highlight](readwise://) <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> #### [H2] Aim for a single source of truth per event type > [!quote] ID:rw_h2 > Ideally, we'd have a single source of truth for all of the types of events. **Context & use**: - Marcus's deduplication comment — the sharpest structural idea in the thread. - Argues past regrouping toward one event handbook with per-subject exceptions; decides the Audit's direction. **Tags**: #xref #share **Highlight**: [view highlight](readwise://) <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> #### [H3] Add a handbook for first-time event attendees > [!quote] ID:rw_h3 > It would be great if we could make a first-time-attendee section aimed at first-time attendees, to help them understand what they can expect from the event. **Context & use**: - Comment thread surfaces an audience the proposal ignored. - Doubles as deduplication — replaces "what to expect" copy scattered across individual WordCamp sites. **Tags**: #xref #articleseed **Highlight**: [view highlight](readwise://) <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> #### [H4] Fix page structure for accessibility, SEO, and AI > [!quote] ID:rw_h4 > in the rewriting, it wouldn't hurt to take a few extra minutes to get the page structure right (for accessibility, SEO, and AI) **Context & use**: - Tooling/structure comment — a low-cost, high-leverage win during any rewrite. - One structure pass serves screen readers, search ranking, and AI retrieval together. **Tags**: #xref #aphorisms **Highlight**: [view highlight](readwise://) <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ### 🧠 Permanent Candidates (H4) #### [P1] Documentation restructure decides dedup at audit, not after **Claim** (one sentence, Courtney's voice): Structural deduplication to a single source of truth must be decided during the audit phase of a docs restructure, because regrouping first and deduplicating later forces rework. **Evidence pointer**: [[#H2]] **Scope & conditions**: Holds when near-duplicate documents share subjects (event formats, sponsor/speaker content); breaks when documents are genuinely independent and share nothing. **Links**: - [[Docs-as-product practice]] — because extends - [[Information architecture — audience-based grouping]] — because contrasts on {regroup vs. deduplicate} - [[WordPress Community Team handbooks]] — because applies-in {Make Community docs} <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ### ✏️ Fleeting Queue - [F1] Watch the proposal comments through 17 July 2026 for the working-group roster and whether the single-source-of-truth path is adopted — https://make.wordpress.org/community/2026/07/03/proposal-restructure-the-community-team-handbooks/ #fleeting #inbox - [F2] Check whether a "handbook MCP" Meta Trac ticket already exists before anyone files one — https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ #fleeting #inbox ### → Things 3 (max 2 actions) - [ ] Draft and post a comment on the Community handbooks proposal before 17 July backing single-source-of-truth + first-time-attendee handbook — #things - [ ] Assemble a redirect/link-check + accessibility-structure launch-gate checklist to offer the working group — #things ``` Processed: Proposal: Restructure the Community Team handbooks - Literature atoms: 4 / 5 cap - Permanent candidates: 1 / 3 cap - Fleeting items: 2 - Things 3 actions: 2 / 2 cap - Konik tags used: [#xref, #share, #articleseed, #aphorisms] - Triage callouts populated: [Cross Reference, Article Ideas, Vocabulary-n/a] - Quality gates: [verbatim ✓, atomicity ✓, link-annotation ✓, YAML-hygiene ✓, konik-triage ✓, version-diff ✓] - Override conditions triggered: [4 Literature atoms — dense comment thread with 4 distinct claims] ``` <!-- deep-read:sections end --> 📄 **Full text:** [[Full Document Contents/Articles/Proposal Restructure the Community Team Handbooks.md|Proposal: Restructure the Community Team Handbooks by make.wordpress.org]] ## Highlights - The current list is a flat list and nine headings or sections. The [education handbook](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/education/) is missing. It is difficult to learn which handbook is relevant where, especially for new contributors to the community team. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kwpxgbz5p16wpx0xbehc30y8)) - Note: The core problem: a flat 9-item handbook list is hard to navigate, especially for new contributors - Tags: atom/literature/h1 - Group the nine handbooks into three sections by audience and purpose. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kwpxgd0ja6nb2g1jhgewzva3)) - Note: The fix: audience-and-purpose grouping (Make Community Team / Event Organizers / Resource Handbooks) with a description per section - Tags: atom/literature/h2 - The Sponsor and Speaker handbooks don’t currently exist as standalone documents. This content lives buried inside the WordCamp Organizer Handbook. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kwpxgfffnw821jng7aja47yp)) - Note: The buried-content gap: Sponsor/Speaker material is trapped inside the WordCamp Organizer Handbook instead of being reusable standalone docs (the dedup case) - Tags: atom/literature/h3 - Six to eight weeks of work, with twelve as a hard ceiling. I’d rather we ship something solid than let this drag through a long unstructured stretch. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kwpxghhbaaqys184gdp14jh5)) - Note: Docs-as-product ethos: time-boxed (6-8wk, 12 hard ceiling), ship-then-iterate rather than perfect-in-one-go - Tags: atom/zettel/z1 ## Links - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/A Project Is the Community Not the Code]] — Handbook structure is governance infrastructure for the people doing the work. - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Commons & Community Governance MOC]] — WordPress community-team governance and documentation design.