Solid project website
Ah, I see (the link in editorial section is broken). The Creators project board.
I gave graphql.org before as a good example site. They have a master and source branch instead of a separate staging repo. Every page has an ‘Edit this page’ link that immediately starts the PR process. You see that they have 335 contributors.
Note that imho it is an illusion to think that any volunteer will write significant parts of the website. For GraphQL the vast majority of pages are written by Lee Byron, the maintainer. Then there are some larger contributions, but most of them are corrections, grammar improvements, clarification and code snippet improvements. But still worthwhile.
You may consider to contract a technical writer to set up and maintain the website. Given the importance of good documentation this money will not be wasted I think.
Wrt templates it depends a bit how the site is set up, and how low you want the barrier to contribute to be. That’s why I suggested removing the process on top of PR’ing. (These procedures may exist, but keep them in the background, out of sight of the contributor).
First of all I suggest somewhere to have a bullet-point list on writing style guidelines (“keep your sentences short”, “use simple understandable language”, “briefly explain new concepts in ways a newbie would understand”, “add a link to more elaborate explanation for the interested reader”, etc.).
Also a good list of terminology that is mandatory to use should be provided. Consistent terminology without synonyms and other confusing ways of describing is key.
Then in the issue / PR templates there can be something of a Definition of Done checklist:
- Did you re-read and edited your sentences several times?
- Did you check spelling and grammar correctness?
- Did you use terminology from our glossary where appropriate?
- Does your text adhere to the writing style guidelines?
You could have issue template for Documentation Request.
- Describe what you want to see included in the documentation
- Explain why it is important to include these aspects. Why is it important to Solid?
- If you have them provide pointers to relevant related information resources.
You could have an issue template for a Terminology Change Request.
- Describe the change you want to make to official terminology
- Why is it important to make this change? What value does it add to the Solid project?
Solid panels
Problem with current spread out panels is that they are not only distant to anyone that is not a very active Solid member, but that they constitute silo’s to the panel teams themselves. Do you check all the panel repo’s regularly to see if issues also apply to certain extent to your panel’s subject?
All in all the total number of issues in all panels is not that large. There are many OSS projects that effectively manage way larger amounts of issues. Click on ‘panel topic’ and ‘priority’ labels and immediately have the list of issue to add to board ToDo backlog.
For people like me, and other interested in Solid, it would be great to just have to follow a single repo to have insight in all that is going on in standards elaboration.
Solid forum
First of all this forum is not as active as it should be. That is because Solid has neglected community-building. That is a pity, as you are missing out on a lot of activity that can help Solid move forward more rapidly. It’s why I posted Proposal: Build a stronger Solid community presence.
The Discourse software is crammed full of features to help make forum content more valuable. But they take a lot of time to be applied appropriately. Time that you or other forum staff may not have (many staff members are not active on the forum, btw).
Pinning important threads (globally and per category), changing categories, adding new categories if needed, tagging topics, splitting tangential posts from a discussion, creating wiki posts, marking answers as solution. There are many of these things that forum regulars may be willing to pick up, and alleviates you of the burden to do it. Facilitating community projects, create teams/groups is then another step further that can be supported.
Finally it is also a way to strengthen the community, if they take part in community forum moderation.