In the WordPress project, multiple teams (#meta, #core, #polyglots, etc.) make use of Slack notifications to surface new, interesting changes in their team’s respective channel. This includes notifications on new commits, trac issue updates, new translation strings availability, etc.
(Screenshot of a commit notification)These notifications serve at least two purposes:
1. People interested in following these teams have a very convenient way to look at recent and ongoing activities.
2. It provides a way to acknowledge contributors.
In the WordPress community channels, we don’t currently use this tool, but there may be some cases where having these notifications would add lot of value for us.
These include:
- Someone sends a new application for a WordCamp
- Someone sends a new application for a WordPress chapter meetup
- A new WordCamp is set to Scheduled status
- A new WordPress meetup group is now active in the chapter
- A WordCamp application is declined
- A Meetup application is declined
For reference, you can see status of some active WordCamp applications here.
These notifications could include whether the event is a WordPress or a Meetup, city and country of the event, description of the update, and WordPress.org usernames of people who were involved in vetting the event application.
I have written some initial code for this, and it could look like:
(screenshot for when a new WordCamp application is submitted)
(screenshot when a WordCamp application is scheduled)
(screenshot when a WordCamp application is declined)
A few more things to note and discuss here:
- We can perhaps send these notifications to #community-events, #community-team, or both of these channels.
- The props section will include usernames of everyone who added notes to the application listing and/or changed the listing’s status.
- We would also want to send notifications when an application is declined, and not just when it is received or scheduled, in order to credit the deputies who nevertheless did the work to vet and respond to it. It could normalize the process of declining the application, because it is not uncommon for subsequent applications to be approved.
What do you think? Should we have these notifications? If we have them, then should they be more granular, or less granular? What changes in language or overall appearance would you suggest? Leave your thoughts in a comment on this post!