Text team
Reading habits and expectations are very different for online readers and readers of a printed text. Well-written texts that are suited for the use on webpages are of vital importance for the success of a website.
We therefore would like to build a team of skilled people, who can take care of the labels and descriptions found on the BeWelcome website, and also the articles in this wiki and other places.
This is a proposed team. It has yet to be discussed if we want to have it or not. The Text team can be part of the Translation team, or an independent team. See Text team (Writers' team) in the forum.
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How to join
Until now, we don't really have a fixed team structure, and we have not yet decided that new people can join this team to become a volunteer. But you can easily apply for the Translation team and start proofreading and improving our english texts. Or you can join Media/PR, Support Team, or the Wiki team, whatever you prefer. If you can't identify with any of these, just get in contact with one of the people already working here - a short message in bw, and we can invite you for a chat on skype or irc.
First thing you can do is to improve this very page ;)
What does membership in this team imply?
As long as this is just a "proposed team", it doesn't mean a lot - but it can be a good way to show that you are interested in web writing, and to find other skilled writers.
People
| Kasper (Guaka)wikitalk | fairly advanced non-native English writer, good knowledge of many languages |
| Jared (jsacks)wikitalk | proofreading English texts |
| Andreas (lemon-head)wikitalk | not actually so much a creative writer / web writer, but someone who really wants this team to become reality! |
| Robino (Robino)wikitalk | journalist and aspiration to help out BV in this field |
| you? |
Tasks
- Write structured texts for the online reader - members of BeWelcome, volunteers, and of course the curious visitor from "outside".
- Fix spelling errors
- Fix style
- Rewrite texts in a mean and lean fashion (?)
- Coordinate writing activities, and find useful strategies for this.
- Identify problems in existing texts (proofreading), or find out where a new text is needed. Find out which person or team is responsible for this text, and get in contact.
- Discuss which texts should be visible to whom.
Which texts need care?
The tasks of the Writers' team overlap with other teams - so ideally you would be a member in these too, or at least get in contact with them.
- Labels and descriptions of menus, buttons etc in BeWelcome. Changing a single word can already have a huge impact on usability! Cooperation with New features team.
- Longer texts such as help and FAQ. Most of these are in the responsibility of the Support, so it would be a good idea to start a membership there.
- Texts in our wiki, that present BW/BV to the masses. Maybe membership in the Wiki team would make sense.
- Newsletter and communication with media. This is the responsibility of the PR/Media team, so you would ideally be a member there as well.
Process
We can still discuss about the process - this is just an idea how it could work. Maybe we don't even need to be too strict - but for the beginning it might help to have a well-defined process.
An important aspect for an efficient process is that we don't make too much noise for every small change we want to make to the text. Many problems can be solved by a single person or a small group (for instance other volunteers you meet on skype), so we don't need to steal everyone's time by writing a forum post.
For small problems that can be fixed easily, the process could be:
- identify the problems (spelling errors, ambiguous phrasing), and accumulate them in a list, with suggestions for improvement.
- the very obvious problems can be corrected right away, without further discussion
- for the other problems, if the list is big enough, start a thread in the forum, so everyone can give an opinion.
- put the changes online.
- update in the wiki or flyspray, if necessary (remove complaints about the problems that were just solved, or mark them as "solved").
For writing new and lengthy important texts (like the faq):
- brainstorming - who are the readers, what needs to be inside the text.. (asking all volunteers)
- writing drafts
- discuss and improve or merge the drafts (this can happen in a smaller group)
- discussion and final decision (here all volunteers are asked to give their opinion)
- put online (or back to 3.)
- add a documentation about the changes and the associated arguments (maybe in the Sitemap?)
For pages that are not designed to be understood by the public (especially wiki pages for our volunteer work)
- identify flaws
- go ahead and change it, or ask another person to do that.
Tools
- For drafting, we can use the wiki?
- For documentation, we can use the?
- The team pages and the sitemap to cross-link everything.
Specific texts that need work
- Rewrite texts on the Main Page: Main_Page/rewrite
- Bewelcome Slogans - Brainstorm Documentation BeWelcome Slogans
Writing guidelines
See Jakob Nielsen on "Writing for the Web"
This section needs work!! It was written with a lack of background knowledge on web writing.
Quality criteria
- Clear and easy to understand, leaving no ambiguities. To make this possible, we need to know the reader: A text for tech experts can be written in a different style than a text for anyone. Depending on the reader, some terms can be assumed as known, others need to be explained.
- Meaningful, useful, informative, giving answers in the place where they are expected. To make this possible, we need to understand the expectations of a reader visiting our pages.
- Texts that we as volunteers can identify with. For instance, a text saying "At BeWelcome we are all vegetarians." or "We at BeWelcome think that Microsoft sucks." are not appropriate to represent the opinions of all volunteers. Noone wants to be identified with an organisation that puts an unfortunate or wrong label on its members. Therefore it is necessary to have some participation for the important texts, to make sure that all or a majority of members is happy with the text. If necessary, a statement can be added that the issue is still under discussion, or that not all volunteers agree, or that this is the personal opinion of someone.
Things to think about when writing
- Where will this text be displayed? (quite obvious question)
- Who is the reader? Which terms can we assume as known by this reader? From which situation did the reader get here? What are the most important questions the reader expects to be answered in this text?
- Who are "we" ? If we use this word in a public text, we need to take care that we don't impose our private views on other volunteers.
