Volunteers in Waiting

[damned_colonial]

The Volunteers in Waiting page doesn't seem to be very useful. People have mentioned that they put their names there and never had any further contact. I'm wondering if we can get rid of the page to avoid further trouble, after contacting everyone currently on it?

Pretty much everyone's provided an email address. What we would need to do is:

a) collate everyone's email addresses, removing spam-traps etc (obviously not on the wiki itself)
b) put together a list of places people can follow up on volunteering
c) write an email including said list
d) send that email to the list of people

For bonus points: team leads from eg. styles, support, etc, could contact those with particular interests in those areas pointing them at more specific resources.

Thoughts?

ETA: Item A was done over the weekend (thanks to wychwood for much of the work), and I've got it in a google spreadsheet. We have everyone listed including information on whether they seem suitable for/interested in support/styles/docs/coding/accessibility.

Comments

[pauamma]

IMO, it would be good to also have a "what they're interested in working on" list somewhere. (Some people put that on their entry in the ViW page, and I used that info to pimp my project to someone, so it would be useful to me, if to no one else.) I'm unsure whether those other places you're referring to are fine-grained enough for that.

[damned_colonial]

I'm not sure I'm clear on what you mean. My idea is to get *rid* of the list of people, pointing the ones currently on it at specific places they can go or people they can talk to if they are still interested in volunteering.

[pauamma]

Specifically, will I (off-and-on project tech lead) be able to find who is interested in working on DW stats stuff (or whatever else I happen to be working on at the time)? Alternatively, will people who come in and are interested in working on stats know to talk to me?

[damned_colonial]

OK, so there's a two-parter there:

1) if anyone on the list currently is interested in stats, you should drop them a line.

2) going forward, you should set up a page on the wiki like "Stats getting started" so that anyone who's interested can find out who to talk to, what to read, where to go, etc. See eg. http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Volunteer_Opportunities for a very rough first draft of this.

[pauamma]

1) if anyone on the list currently is interested in stats, you should drop them a line.

I've done that already (as mentioned in my first comment), but if that page goes away, will I have another way to do it again? That is, will there still be a place for new would-be volunteers to say "I'm interested in foo and I'm proficient/fair/an absolute beginner in bar"? Your item 2 is a good idea, but I'm concerned that it alone isn't enough, just as relying on the ViW page only isn't, because they both tackle one direction only.

[damned_colonial]

OK, places to send people who are interested in volunteering:

GENERAL
IRC #dw
Volunteering page on wiki -- under construction?

SUPPORT
zarhooie (she said to get them to talk to her; perhaps she could simply send the emails for this batch?)
http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Support_process
http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Support_guide

DOCS
dw_docs

STYLES
dw_styles
http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Styles

DEVELOPMENT
dw_dev and dw_dev_training
http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Development
http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Dev_Getting_Started

ACCESSIBILITY
http://lists.dwscoalition.org/mailman/listinfo/dw-accessibility
http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Accessibility

Have I missed anything?

[baggyeyes]

Actually, the Styles Gang did contact those who had listed CSS or web stuff in their repertoire.

[damned_colonial]

OK, cool, so there's no need to do a specific styles-related mailout. Probably wouldn't hurt to put some information in the general mailout, though.