Wikimedia technical blog editorial guidelines

This guide is intended to assist you, a member of the Wikimedia technical community, through the process of authoring a post for the Wikimedia technical blog and working with the blog administrators to review, edit, and publish your post.

About the Tech Blog
Purpose

The Wikimedia Tech Blog is intended to provide a supportive, well-indexed venue for members of the technical community to share posts focused around more complex technical topics associated with Wikimedia, the Free and Open Source software community, and the wider tech industry.

Topic areas which are out of scope for the blog

Policies or advocacy, Wikipedia and other content based projects with editor or reader workflows (other than technical aspects)

Readers are typically members (or potential members) of the Open Source software movement and/or the Wikimedia technical community. Readers have an understanding of computer science, software development, engineering processes, technical concepts, etc.

Authors

Posts are written by members of the Wikimedia technical community. This includes both paid staff and volunteers. Authors on the blog will not receive monetary compensation for their content.

Diverse voices and perspectives are important to the work of the Wikimedia movement. Everyone with an idea is encouraged to propose stories for the Wikimedia technical blog. Topics should cover technical information related to Wikimedia technical projects and Open Source technology.

Administrators

The Wikimedia Tech blog is administered by the Wikimedia Foundation Developer Advocacy Team.

License

Unless otherwise stated, the content will be published under a CC BY-SA 4.0 international license.

Before writing
Before you write your post, please consider the following:


 * Topic: See Outlines for topics for ideas. If you have an idea you would like to explore more refer to  Publishing in the technical blog.
 * Audience: Keep in mind that the Tech blog is intended for audiences in the Wikimedia technical community, individuals working in Open Source, engineers and other technical folks, other Open Source organizations and communities, the wider technical industry. Material in your post can be technically sophisticated as the audiences for this blog will have a generally high level of technical proficiency.


 * Goals: Your main goal is to convey information that will be interesting and useful for the above audiences. What are your secondary goals?
 * Deadline or intended publication date, if the post needs to go out in a certain timeframe. Please get in touch with the blog admins at least two weeks before any deadlines.
 * Approvals: Make sure to check in with other stakeholders and collaborators to ensure the post is appropriate and approved for publication

Writing

 * Language: To start, blog posts will be in English. As capacity grows, the admins will review processes for accepting posts in multiple languages.
 * Length: Blog posts should be at least 300 words long.
 * Format: Work with the tech blog admin to determine the best format to compose and review your work in. Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and LibreOffice can be useful for drafting. You can also draft on wiki, as long as the information is not sensitive and does not need legal review. Posts drafted in HTML and Markdown are also acceptable.
 * Style Conventions: Whenever possible, the tech blog adheres to the style conventions laid out in the Manual of Style of English Wikipedia. You may also refer to the MediaWiki Technical Style Guide as a supplemental.
 * Titles and section headers: Keep these concise and clear. Use sentence case.
 * Images: Online readers like images. Each post should have at least one. Include freely licensed images only. English Wikipedia's image use policy page can help guide you to choose images that are appropriate for the technical blog.  Include alt text to describe images for individuals who use screen readers.

Share your idea for your blog post or a post you have already written
Share ideas for blog posts by creating a Phabricator task with all of the questions completed.

You will need to sign up for a Phabricator account in order to do this.

A tech blog admin will contact you about the next steps.

Peer review and editing
Writing is a collaborative effort. The blog admins suggest you have your post reviewed by others before submitting it for publication in the tech blog. Peers, teammates and volunteer editors from the technical community can provide early feedback and perspectives that will help improve your post.

Blog admin review and editing
Once you feel your post is ready for publication, tell the blog admins by adding a comment in your Phabricator task, so a blog admin can review it and provide feedback. They will read your piece, ask some questions and provide some advice and editing.

The admins may ask for additional details like sourcing material, or other material to ensure that the post is factually accurate. They may ask you to make some substantive changes to the post before it is ready to publish. In some cases, they may need to have your post reviewed to ensure it does not violate any legal or privacy policies.

Scheduling
When these edits and the images are finalized, the blog admins will add a comment to your Phabricator task, move the Phabricator task into the approval process, and set a date for the blog post to be scheduled. Very rarely, there could be a situation where the blog admins are not able to publish a post after seeing the draft for some reason. If that happens, the blog admins will try to work with you to fix the problem, but they do reserve the right not to publish something if they don’t think it’s right for the Wikimedia Technical blog.

The blog admins maintain a private editorial calendar to schedule upcoming posts. This schedule is subject to frequent changes, based on other content in the pipeline and the approval process. Again, please let blog admins know at least two weeks in advance if you have any deadlines they should know about.

Published
You'll receive an email when your post has been published to the Tech blog.

Sharing your blog post
Once your post is published on the blog, the admins will share it on Twitter @mediawiki and @wikimediatech and Facebook.

You are encouraged to share your post widely.

Grand idea product launch

 * What was launched
 * The problem we addressed
 * Include brief background information on problem
 * How was the problem solved?
 * One interesting fact about the development process
 * What’s next?
 * Call to action if applicable.

One detail product launch

 * What was launched
 * an important detail that makes the launch unique
 * Explanation of detail and why it’s interesting
 * Connection to larger goals or objectives
 * Summary of other things people can find in the product
 * Call to action to explore product or otherwise engage

Product update

 * What’s the new feature
 * Link and summary of previous work
 * Deeper explanation of the feature
 * Explanation of either an interesting technical detail of the feature or an important step in the development of the feature
 * Connect the feature back to goals
 * Next steps

One thing I learned

 * Brief explanation of your project and your work on that project
 * Introduction of interesting thing(s) you learned
 * Further explanation of what you learned
 * The impact this thing had on your work
 * How this is relevant to other projects/teams
 * Point to documentation or artifact if it exists
 * Question or call to action

Explainer for complicated tech concept or process

 * Explain a tech concept or process and why its important
 * Connection to larger outcome or goal.
 * Why it’s important
 * Conclusion

Technical explanation

 * Explanation of the topic or feature this technical explanation applies to
 * Your goal in developing this technical fix
 * What you did
 * Why you did it
 * How this has positively impacted your project
 * Connection to larger outcome or goal
 * How this can be reused outside your project
 * Call to reuse/adapt

Technical how-to

 * What this guide will teach you
 * Who this guide is useful for
 * Summary of guide content
 * Multiple headings, paragraphs with bolded intros, or a bulleted list are best
 * Concise explanations with code samples if applicable
 * Downloadable artifacts if applicable
 * Why we think this type of information is useful
 * And how it’s improved our projects
 * Call to action and links to additional resources

Announcement of new policy related to technology

 * Announcement of new change
 * 2 additional important details
 * How this change fits into larger mission or goals
 * Additional small or technical details
 * Thanks, connection back to policy and moving forward

Innovative work in technology

 * Who, what, when of someone doing something incredibly innovative
 * Why it’s important or noteworthy
 * Additional details
 * How people can learn more

Interview with Technical Community member(s)

 * How did you come up with that idea?
 * What inspired you to do [X]?
 * What are your next steps?
 * Can you detail how [Wikimedia project] helped you do [X]?

Length
Aim for a minimum of 300 and a maximum of 1,000 words in order to keep the attention of your readers.

For longer form articles, provide a concise summary at the beginning so readers will have a preview of the post's contents.

Accessibility

 * Charts or graphs: make sure that the colors are accessible.
 * Alt text: Include alternative text describing your images. This is important for individuals using screen readers.

Language
It's okay to sound like yourself, but be aware of your readers. Try to keep your language concise and clear.

Try to avoid using phrases, metaphors and colloquialisms that might be unfamiliar to a global audience. Avoid Wikimedia "in-jokes" or humor that might not resonate with the audience.

Attribution
All images used on the Wikimedia Tech Blog must be freely licensed and have proper attribution. For screenshots of Wikipedia articles, this will include attributing the text and license (CC BY-SA 3.0), along with separate attributions for any images included in the screenshot.

If you're also uploading the screenshots to Commons, you should probably tag those images with Template:Wikimedia-screenshot.

Spelling, grammar and writing aids
Many writers benefit from running spelling and grammar checks on their work. Not only can these check for issues with your document, they can help you become a better writer by identifying your more common errors.

Some Open Source options:


 * https://www.languagetool.org/
 * https://editsaurus.tylerwalters.com/
 * https://grammark.org/dist/#/