The Techlighter Training Initiative
The TTI is a 1-2 month program where a techlighter takes on a mentee to teach them our technical policies. Each month, the mentee takes a test and all techlighters vote if they should be promoted or not. If they fail on the second month they get demoted, and can try again in a few months. That's really all there is to it. The main goal would be to train people quickly and with ease and try to get them aboard the Techlighter team as soon as possible without neglecting quality or proper training.
What the mentorship would entail is overall similar to what GLTs experience during their time in the GLMP, except this would be more streamlined and have a more defined process. We'll have a number of standard resources available for the entire TTI, not just to be shared between mentors and mentees. There will be wiki quick references, CSS-explained videos, color contrast testing sites, and anything else a Techlighter would need to ensure the quality of the components and themes they devlight/techlight. The mentors would also be encouraged to provide their mentees with an example of both a techlight and a devlight they did in the past so that the mentee can easily get the gist of how they are supposed to work.
While it is never guaranteed that we will have a component or theme in the forums for a mentee to look at for practice, in the case that there is one available, all trainees (though let's be honest, there will probably only be one at a time at the start of this initiative) get priority for critiquing the tech page. The trainee obviously won't have the power to techlight/devlight yet, but they will fill a similar role as GLTs for writing critique.
In the case that there isn't a tech page available for critique, the trainees will still have plenty of opportunities to practice. There will be a number of practice tests regarding critique or technical knowledge for them to use to get the experience required to be a Techlighter. These tests will be very similar to their TTI "final", where the trainee may be asked to write documentation for an unknown component they have to read the code for, find the flaws in a theme or component, or engage in a practice tech support scenario.
As previously mentioned, the Techlighter team will vote on the promotion of the trainee based on their performance on their "final" and their overall improvement over their course in the TTI. If they do not get promoted after 2 months, they will be demoted from the TTI and rejoin in 3 months.
There is no application required for joining the TTI, but it is expected that you know the basics of CSS and BHL/wikidot syntax at the very least before joining (HTML and JavaScript also work, but they should still know the basics of BHL and wikidot syntax). This is not a program to teach people CSS, our mentors simply do not have time for that, this is a program to showcase how to use their prior knowledge in the context of our site.
With the implementation of this new program, we would like to also offer the position to some experienced coders on our site, specifically Ambersight. Originally we were going to also offer it to Rako, but he's already a Techlighter lol. We aren't sure if Ambersight would accept the position, but we find their tech knowledge to be incredibly valuable, and it would quite frankly be a waste of time to train them when they already have so much experience with our site's tech.
Tech Features
We have written features and art features, so why not shed some light on our tech? It'd serve as a great way to give more attention to our wonderful components and themes and provide a bit of an incentive to learn to make them.
Here's how it'd work:
- Every 3 months (this may be adjusted based on the output of tech), the TTI would vote on all tech posted during those 3 months to pick one featured component or theme for that feature cycle.
- We'd have a block on the home page dedicated to the tech feature, which would show a picture of the theme or component being used and link to the informational page and give a shoutout to the coder.
- If there aren't enough pages for there to be a new feature, we will either leave it as the last feature or feature something from the last feature cycle.
And that's it! Pretty simple, right? This would be implemented along with the new homepage and the first feature would be voted on prior to its implementation.
Tech Deletion
Tech pages can be deleted by request, or if they fall below the threshold of 0. However, tech pages can only be deleted if they have less than 3 dependencies or they are less than a week (? we can change that amount) old. Simple as that.
Theme Reform
There have been a number of themes posted to our site, more than we can even count. However, a large amount of those themes are inaccessible to users with colorblindness or other stimuli sensitivities. I recall having to port certain posted pages to my personal site, the only difference being that the theme was removed, just so Mel could read it. I even titled the pages "___ But Without The Theme So Mel Can Read It". That shouldn't have to be an issue. Every single one of our pages should follow a strict visual guideline to ensure its accessibility to all users.
With this proposition specifically, I would like to use Mel's list of themes that they personally created of which themes pass basic accessibility checks, and I'd like to have the members of the Tech Subteam revise their color schemes, font choices(this could be resolved by adding a font toggle to the themes with wacky fonts), etc. until they achieve a level of accessibility that accommodates all users.
Additionally, though this is not nearly as important as the former proposal, I would like to revamp the Theme Hub. Ambersight suggested this change a while back, but instead of having the "preview" button, there would be a picture of what each theme looks like on each block. CN has a theme hub like this, and it has worked very well for them. Please see the image attached below.
While one could argue that this would remove the automated listing feature, I don't see this as much of an issue, given that the Preview button has to be set up manually and often was left neglected because people simply didn't know how. This would remove that issue by providing a simple and easy way to display the theme on the hub.
Improved Accessibility
This is a bit of an extension of the previous section, but I'm the one writing this and I'm choosing to organize it this way, and no one can stop me. >:3
Anyway, our main wants for this are the following:
- Dedicated threads for tech crit and tech help in the site forums
- A “tech-crit” forum channel in the Discord server. Yes, I know that tech-support already exists, but I think it would be best if technology critique and simple coding help were separate, as they are very different things.
- A Techlighter user flair for the site, preferably one that matches the server
On top of this, we would ideally like to have separate fragments similar to meet-the-staff that would list all of the current Techlighters with respective profiles, along with having a place in the server to put these profiles as well for increased visibility. We want to encourage folks to post tech and use their programming skills, but they can’t do that unless they’re super active in the discord and even then, before myself and Robot were promoted, it was a very slow process. I view all of these as very small asks that will collectively improve the coder experience, overall making things more user-friendly and allowing for a smoother techlighting process.
The last thing for this specific area of changes would be for all tech-related hubs to be moved to the "wiki" tab instead of being in the "library" tab of the top bar and sidebar. This was suggested by Scutoid, as the current "library" tab is excessively long due to us having a bunch of categories for pages, so this would aim to slightly combat that. Why we'd like to make this specific change is because readers aren't interested in our tech as much as our authors, as they are the only people who actually use the components and themes we have to offer. The "wiki" tab makes a lot more sense for the intended audience, and it's still accessible to anyone who wants to check out the tech we have available.