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Season of Docs 2022 Organization Application p5.js
🌸 Hello! p5.js is applying for Season of Docs this year. Below is our application.
p5.js is a JavaScript library that starts with the original goal of Processing, to make coding accessible for artists, designers, educators, beginners, and reinterprets this for today's web. Using the original metaphor of a software sketchbook, p5.js has a full set of drawing functionality. Moreover, you’re not limited to your drawing canvas, you can think of your whole browser page as your sketch! p5.js has addon libraries that make it easy to interact with other HTML5 objects, including text, input, video, webcam, and sound.
p5.js has more than 1.5 million users, 17.2k GitHub stars and 2.6k forks. p5.js also has a large contributor base, with more than 460 people have contributed to the project since 2013.
Like any open source project, supporting and maintaining an active community of contributors is an essential part of p5.js. The main issue we are experiencing is that though we have many contributors, creation and maintenance of documentation has not been a priority. There currently are different types of contributor docs in the p5.js GitHub repository and p5.js Website GitHub repository, like access statement, project note, roadmap docs, etc. It can be difficult for contributors to navigate the existing contributor doc structure in the two repositories.
One of our top priorities for p5.js entails bolstering the diversity of contributors in our community especially including those who may have never contributed to our codebases. By focusing on the contributor doc organization and development, we will not only provide better documentation and a stronger community for current contributors, we will also expand the opportunities to include users who are interested but unsure of how to contribute.
We hope to work with one technical writer on the p5.js Contributor Docs Organization & Development Project, focusing on organizing the existing contributor docs, and creating new contributor docs based on research.
The p5.js Contributor Docs Organization & Development Project will focus on two key areas: 1) organizing the existing contributor docs, 2) creating new contributor docs based on research.
This project aims to improve contributor docs section on p5.js GitHub repository to make it easier for new people to contribute, especially those without deep experience coding or contributing to open source. There currently are different types of contributor docs in the p5.js GitHub repository and p5.js Website GitHub repository, like access statement, project note, roadmap docs, etc. It can be difficult for contributors to navigate the existing contributor doc structure in the two repositories. A clearer organization structure will be beneficial for contributors who seek supporting documentation.
In addition to organizing and modifying the current documentation, this project will also include researching, proposing, and implementing new contributor docs for new use cases, like a translation guide for contributors who are interested in translating the p5.js website and documentation.
- Meet with mentor to set project timeline and discuss expectations
- Review existing contributor docs and propose a new organizing structure
- Make sure contributor docs are updated and in accordance with the latest software version
- Research the needs of new contributor docs
- Create best practices document for new users based on aforementioned research phase
- Share project findings with p5.js community (live presentation or blog post)
- Familiarity with Javascript
- GitHub Experience
- Communication Skills
- Interest in community building
We estimate that this project will take approximately 280 hours.
Technical Writer: Kenneth Lim
p5.js community has identified Kenneth Lim as the technical writer. Kenneth has been an active contributor to p5.js codebase, p5.js website, p5.js translation documentations, and was also a mentor for Season of Docs in 2021.
Mentors: Dr Peaks Krafft, Louis McCallum
With support from p5.js Project Lead: Qianqian Ye.
As of March 2022, we have over 460 active contributors and 8 dedicated stewards. After p5.js Contributor Docs Organization & Development Project, we hope to gain an increase in the following metrics:
- Increase number of new contributors by 5% (based on our current active contributor base) one year after project completion
- Form a committee of 3-5 community members, in addition to the stewards, to focus on maintaining contributor documentations
- A public write-up or presentation of lessons learned and future recommendations or the community, prepared by the Technical Writer
We estimate the work will take about 20 hours per week for the 14 weeks of the Season of Docs, about 280 hours in total. Here are the technical writer goals by month:
- Month 1: Review all current contributor docs and propose a new organizing structure. Begin researching the needs of new contributor docs.
- Month 2: Make sure contributor docs are updated and in accordance with the current software version. Begin creating new contributor docs based on research
- Month 3: Re-structure the contributor doc organization, finish updating documentation, prepare project findings presentation (live-presentation or blog-post to Processing Foundation Medium publication).
Our proposed budget:
| Budget Item | Amount | Running Total | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technical Writer - p5.js Contributor Docs Organization & Development | $13,000 | $13,000 | |
| Mentor Stipends | $2,000 | $15,000 | |
| TOTAL | $15,000 |
TOTAL: 15000.00
p5.js has participated in Season of Docs in 2021. The case study can be found at
Another collaboration with a technical writer took place in 2018 working with one of our Fellows, Vijith Assar. Over a period of six months, Vijith worked closely with his mentor Lauren McCarthy to survey the contributor-facing documentation and document the layout of the github repository, guiding design principles, and contributor docs. Through this work we were able to significantly increase the number of contributors and their ease of working on the project.
We have participated in Google Season of Docs in 2021 with two technical writers. The two technical writers worked on new p5.js contributors onboarding documentation and p5.js Friendly Error System documentation. You can read more about their projects in the published case study.
Since 2013, we have mentored over 100 contributors through Google Summer of Code, Rails Girls Summer of Code, and our own Fellowship Program. During this time, a number of projects have dealt with documentation. Documentation is one of the key aspects of the p5.js project, both user-facing and contributor-facing. We have created an extensive interactive user reference that features documentation in multiple languages and custom developed screen reader accessible functionality. You can read more about p5.js related Google Summer of Code projects in the Wrap-up reports.
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