Yes please.
New people do not know how things work and what is appropriate at VHS, and when they guess wrong they are not always corrected in the most polite or appropriate way. Our verbal walk thoughts of the space are varied and depending on how busy/knowledgeable the person that is giving the tour is, new members will get a widely different experiences. There is no central place where for people to look up policy and rules that govern the space. All of these problems make becoming a VHS member that much harder for new people. This reduces membership and causes friction between members.
I had started creating a VHS handbook. This would be a living google document that people get when they become a VHS member. This document would outlines what it is to be a VHS member, a code of conduct, and the operating procedures for running the Vancouver Hackspace. I got heavily discouraged at the last QGM and abandoned this project.
This document could have notes and links to specific sections and would grow as our organization would grow. I think this should be a google doc (or embedded single page document) instead of a wiki as a wiki can be overwhelming to new members as the information is scattered across the entire site.
Examples section:
- How to become a key holder
- How to open the space as a keyholder
- How to close the space as a keyholder
- The difference between a member, keyholder, and a bottom liner,
- How to run an event
- How to run a workshop
- How to pay your membership dues.
- History of VHS
- Committees at VHS
- How you join a committee
- How you start a committee
- VHS and press
- VHS logos and design files.
- VHS github
- How to submit a GM proposal
- etc…
This is the old version that I made back when we were at 45 west. I made this as a document that I could copy and past responses to people that asked questions in the mailing list. It is more than out dated.
This is the part I would have the most interest in helping with.
I am a fan of killing the wiki and replacing it with TALK/Website pages. We had this conversation before and I didn’t feel like pushing it.
I have no interest in updating a wiki, or VHS wiki.
I am really hesitant to create more categories on TALK. I find that they add to the confusion and the learning curve of TALK. Instead I would suggest having a single page on the website as your reference section that links to specific topics in TALK.
The VHS handbook can have link outs to the specific topics as well acting as the central reference location for information too.
This is an example of a reference post that I have made on TALK. Every post in this series also links back to this reference post.
Thank you for taking this on.