Attendance
- Milana Cap
- Jon Ang
- Yui ゆい
- Denis Žoljom
- Prashant Baldha
- Chris Van Patten
- theMikeD
- Jb Audras
- Akira Tachibana
- Estela Rueda
- Birgit Pauli-Haack
- Jono Alderson
- John Blackbourn
Actionable Points
- Jon to await Matt’s response to his questions about licensing of content on w.org.
- JB to ask about proposing changes to recommendations in the next core meeting (not docs specific).
- Jon to investigate cross-posting the announcement of the start of the meeting in #core.
- Estela to propose further discussion of the docs reclassification for next week’s meeting.
Next Meeting
Monday, March 9, 2020, 15:00 UTC on Slack #docs
Documentation Licenses
Jon has spoken with Shiobhan McKeown and Sam Sidler who’ve informed him that the Codex is licensed under GPL v2. Much of the content on HelpHub originated from the Codex, therefore relicensing the content would likely involve getting explicit permission from every author involved for every line of documentation.
Jon is waiting for Matt Mullenweg to confirm about the existing licensing of the Codex, there is currently no license declaration on the Codex.
It was pointed out that many handbook pages were written from scratch, but there’s a good chance that they contain derivative content from the Codex anyway. This means they may need to remain GPL licensed.
Chris van Patten pointed out that Gutenberg’s documentation is part of the Gutenberg repo and therefore falls under its same GPL license.
The REST API documentation is currently unlicensed.
WP-CLI documentation is MIT licensed.
Jon will follow up with further discussion on this topic in a post on the Docs P2
Policy for External Linking
Jon pointed out that various docs on w.org link to external resources that might not be correct and might not have been audited. Akira confirmed that dead links and some links with heavy advertising were removed during the migration to HelpHub.
Jon posed whether such links should be audited, removed, or left, what kind of links should get in or not, and what kind of links are appropriate, and what to do about links whose content changes over time.
A few people expressed interest in discouraging external linking at all, but there was no consensus. Further discussion needed.
Jono mentioned that the general policy of the forums is that linking out is bad, because links break, and because the motivations and value of external resources can’t be trusted, but noted that this can mean users miss out from accessing otherwise valuable external resources.
Open Floor
JB asked what is the best way to propose changes to the “abbreviation best practices” section of the Core Handbook. He’s going to mention it during the next core chat as this isn’t specific to the docs team.
Estela mentioned that she’s unsure about how to proceed with the documentation reclassification. Jon suggested bringing this up for further discussion next week, Estela agreed.
John (myself) pointed out that the starting of the #docs meeting doesn’t get automatically cross-posted into the #core channel like other meetings do. Jon will investigate.