2025 Q4 community blog post

docs/blog/2025-Q4-community-board.rst

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+.. post:: Nov 21, 2025
+   :tags: community board, news, report
+   :author: Mikey Ariel
+
+Write the Docs Community Board Quarterly Update Q4-2025
+=======================================================
+
+Greetings, documentarians! Mikey Ariel here, chairperson of the WTD community board. I'm happy to share our third quarterly update for 2025 with you. 
+
+To catch up on previous quarterly updates, check out the `community board blog posts <https://www.writethedocs.org/blog/archive/tag/community-board/>`_ archive. 
+
+Q3-2025 quarterly meeting highlights
+------------------------------------
+
+For this quarter, the board meeting was canceled due to the proximity to the inogural Berlin conference. This was the first time that the board did not meet in real-time, since some members were traveling to the conference. 
+
+Fear not, the team leads provided their updates asynchronously, so we still have some news for you!
+
+Here are the highlights from the meeting:
+
+**WTD Berlin conference**
+    The Berlin conference was a resounding success, thanks to Sasha Romijn the conference chair and our producer Katie Janovec, who also produces the Portland conferences. Sasha is already thinking about 2026, and how to improve both the in-person and the virtual experience for attendees. 
+
+**WTD Core Operations offsite**
+    After the Berlin conference, the Core Operations team (Eric Holscher, Mikey Ariel, Sam Wright, Sasha Romijn) held retrospective and planning discussions about the WTD community as a whole, the organization and team structure, and the future of the community board. This is a yearly effort that helps the WTD organization support the community in the short and long-term. 
+
+    These discussions focused on how we can expand the global community in the face of the changing landscape for conferences, meetups, and online spaces. The CoreOps team will follow-up with specific team leads to discuss ideas that are related to specific teams, and the board will communicate proposals and initiatives to the community as we refine them. 
+
+**Slack moderation** 
+    Janine Chan reported that there's a small trend where scammers try to recruit job seekers for location-based scams. This is mostly done by DMs, which makes it more difficult for the moderators to catch these. Thankfully, the WTD community is sharp and engaged, so the moderation team was informed directly by community members. 
+
+    We would like to remind the community that Slack interactions are a part of our official spaces, so if anyone receives unusual or suspicious DMs, please share them with the Slack moderators so they can ban any bad actors. 
+
+**WTD events in Africa**
+    The Nigeria meetup held their first summit earlier in November 2025, and <thoughts? recap links?>. In addition, the Kenya meetup organizers are highly engaged and are discussing more expanded community activity. We hope to see more documentarian community activities in this continent, and will update when additional events are announced. 
+
+**Newsletter team changes**
+    The newletter team is sad to announce that two of their members will be stepping down from their roles. This is not unexpected since the team includes mostly volunteers, but we will miss <do we want to name names?>. If you've been considering joining one of the WTD community teams, the newsletter is a great place to start and stay! Please contact Aaron Collier on Slack or email if interested. 
+
+As always, the board continues to review the community backlog to determine what are the most valuable efforts for the community in the short and long term. 
+
+What is the community board
+---------------------------
+
+The `Community Board <https://www.writethedocs.org/team/#community-board>`_ exists to curate the overall strategic direction of the community teams.
+
+The board members are team leads for each WTD team, as well as the conference chairs of our various conferences:
+
+* Mikey Ariel (CoreOps, brand and design, board chair)
+* Eric Holscher (CoreOps, Portland chair)
+* Samuel Wright (CoreOps, infrastructure)
+* Sasha Romijn (CoreOps, support, Atlantic chair)
+* Rose Williams (meetups)
+* Janine Chan (Slack moderation)
+* Aaron Collier (newsletter)
+* Swapnil Ogale (Australia chair)
+
+The community board meets quarterly in real-time, and provides monthly asynchronous status updates. Board members can share the status of what they're working on and request any help to keep the various teams functioning effectively.
+
+Thank you 
+---------
+
+Thanks again to the team leads that participate in the community board, and to all the team members (mostly volunteers!) who work diligently to support the community and each other. If you want to join any of the WTD community teams, check out the `Team page <https://www.writethedocs.org/team/>`_ for team descriptions and contacts. 
+
+See you in the next update, and wishing everyone a joyous and productive 2025!
+
+Mikey and the community board