Figure out what we want out of jupyter.org

[mfisher87]

Discussed in 2026-06-10 meeting.

Proposal: Start by writing up a 1-pager that specifies the goals of each portion of the website. In parallel, the marketing committee writes the same. Distill / negotiate those two sets of goals into one set of requirements that can be taken on by a contractor or the LF to guide an iterative process of improving the website.

TODO: Full context, problem statement

Link to the draft document (Hackmd) started in the June 17 meeting

[aprilmj]

How would @mfisher87, @LahariChowtoori and @jasongrout feel about brainstorming that document in comments here?

We've already discussed a few points that feel worth capturing.

1. Part of the website should feel like a welcome mat for contributors and maintainers, with a special focus on new contributors
2. About the community pages / website... why are there 2 pages? https://jupyter.org/community (let’s treat this as the welcome mat) and https://docs.jupyter.org/en/latest/community/content-community.html (it’s ok if they two pages connect, as long as they don’t conflict)

An action we tried to assign ourselves 2 meetings ago: each of us must bring our own version of the community page -bullets, a napkin drawing, a fully coded website, or an interpretive dance (no more than 10 min) - we could try this again?

[aprilmj]

There are also some nice notes from our conversation about kicking off a welcome mat initiative here: https://jupyter.org/community-committee/meeting-notes/20260415-core/

[mfisher87]

An action we tried to assign ourselves 2 meetings ago: each of us must bring our own version of the community page -bullets, a napkin drawing, a fully coded website, or an interpretive dance (no more than 10 min) - we could try this again?

💯 Let's start recording stuff like this as GitHub issues maybe? For me personally, I think I'll be more accountable to GitHub issues, but maybe that doesn't work for everyone

[mfisher87]

jupyter.org/community (let’s treat this as the welcome mat)

another option is an explicit jupyter.org/welcome page. Is the responsibility of /community to welcome new community members or describe the community? It's currently doing both and we could split those responsibilities up. I personally like the idea of putting the calendar on a dedicated page /community/calendar to make it more linkable. And having a dedicated /community/workshops page also feels useful. Having a listing of past workshops on /community, to me, is noise. Having fewer, bigger pages is harder to consume and contribute to than a larger number of smaller, more focused pages with clear purpose.

To boil this down, I think we could/should have a verb and a noun for every page that succinctly describes its responsibility. What does it do and for whom? Then we can not only make the pages more focused and make it clear to contributors where things go, we can also identify from a list of those verb-noun responsibilities what pages are missing.

E.g.

• /welcome: Welcome new folks -- contributors or users
• /community: Map/outline community affordances (which are described in child pages). THE community page, delete https://docs.jupyter.org/en/latest/community/content-community.html and redirect here)
• /community/comms: Describe how the community communicates ("Where to talk" at the moment)
• /community/workshops: Describe community workshops
• /community/calendar: Inform community members about when events are
• /community/events: Describe different categories of events (or maybe we have one page for each category of event, e.g. jupyter.org/con, mapped on /community)
• /community/meetings: Inform community members about what meetings they might want to participate in (answer "is this meeting for me?")
• /community/code: Inform community members about behavioral expectations. Canonical location for code of conduct. We currently link people to a blob on GitHub from various pages. It's findable, but not shareable from memory.

https://docs.jupyter.org/en/latest/community/content-community.html has a lot of stuff that's duplicative either now or under a new design. Inventory:

• Calendar: Covered above
• Meetings: Covered above
• Communications: Covered above
• Governance: Covered by jupyter.org/governance
• Code of conduct: Covered above
• Running Jupyter events: Not covered. I think this does belong in docs.jupyter.org, not on jupyter.org/community/...
• What is a Jovyan: Put this under jupyter.org/welcome -- can open with "Welcome, Jovyan!" and a shorter definition of the term.

All of the above are just opinions scribbled in crayon -- no strong attachment or feelings.

I do feel strongly that we as community committee should recommend a GitHub-based website management approach. Excluding the community from the process Chris described at the meeting today where they can propose a small website change and have it praised and merged by a Jupyter community leader is part of the "contributor funnel". Aside from my strong distaste for wordpress and its chaotic governance and lack of openness, my strongest concern about having the foundation manage the website is that it eliminates a valid and valuable contributor onramp.

Having a strong website design spec for the website only makes that onramp more powerful -- contributors are taking a smaller risk by opening a PR against the website when its design goals are clear and they can justify their change under the specification.

[aprilmj]

I've been thinking about what I'd expect from each type of page...

Welcome Mat
I love the idea of this as a separate thing, @mfisher87, and the "Welcome Jovyan". I feel like some kind of prominent link on the jupyter.org site - a big red "new here?" or "ready to contribute?" button or something.

This should be the most useful getting started information for contributors and the contributor-curious. Kinds of things you can do. How to find your people. Etc. Some things we have on the current Community page fit that definition, so the Welcome Mat could link to those pages.

Community Page
Is the primary home of everything Jupyter-community-related.

• People, ideas and where to find them / where to talk
• Regular meetings (calendar of where to jump in)
• Special events (workshops, conferences, etc)

Docs Pages
These should be how-to references. There could be community content here, like

• How to facilitate a meeting
• How to plan an event
• How to build a roadmap
  Done well, the docs stuff could be super easy and maintainable by the whole community - like, you learn a thing, so you share it on the site

[aprilmj]

Enthusiastic + 💯 to @mfisher87's wish to have most of the website stay easy for people to edit/propose edits to.

[mfisher87]

This should be the most useful getting started information for contributors and the contributor-curious. Kinds of things you can do. How to find your people. Etc. Some things we have on the current Community page fit that definition, so the Welcome Mat could link to those pages.

💯 I like the idea of having a "menu" kind of display. The welcome page, IMO, should be all about psychological affordances ("kinds of things you can do").

[jasongrout]

Having fewer, bigger pages is harder to consume and contribute to than a larger number of smaller, more focused pages with clear purpose.

FYI, in general, I find it easier to have one or two larger pages that I can scroll through, rather than clicking lots of smaller pages. Linking right now is done with anchors, for example: https://jupyter.org/community#calendar