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Contributor Guidelines

How to contact us

Via our Mattermost Reception or by email LGsupport@extinctionrebellion.uk

Vision

To create an easy to navigate and relevant one-stop-shop for Local Groups and individual rebels to find the information and support they need. You can view a short presentation showing the journey of this plan.

Intro

There are a huge amount of valuable resources within XR UK, but they are spread all over the internet - Google docs, XRUK Cloud, XRUK website etc. This project aims to bring all of the resources into one place - the Rebel Toolkit [RT] - where they can be curated going forward by Local Group Support.

These resources need to be focused, relevant, accessible, up-to-date and tailored to the right audience.

We are creating new shelves and allocating books/shelves to specific circles within XR UK, to take responsibility for the content and update it in order to ensure consistency and ease of navigation.

Instead of open-access for anyone to edit, we will be giving tailored access so that you can be assured your particular section of the Toolkit is within your control. What comes with that is a responsibility to maintain the content.

If you find yourself ‘locked out’ of a page you want to edit - contact the RT team.

What are we asking for?

We have collated a massive list of resources - current RT books, information from the XRUK website and resources circles have shared with us already. We have catalogued these and assigned to the new plan for the RT shelves.

Your circle will receive a list of all of these resources, with links to all of them. We are asking you to create, or recreate, a book (or chapter) on the RT collating any of this information and fixing broken links or out-of-date content. We know that the resources we have found may not be a complete list, so of course if you have more up-to-date resources or information, use those!

We will give all members of your team who would like to work on updating the RT exclusive access to a particular area of the Toolkit - either a whole shelf or certain books within it.

If you think your group should be working on a certain section of the Toolkit, and have not heard from the RT team, please contact us.

Timescale

With the Strategy foregrounding the need to grow Local Groups, it is a priority to turn the Toolkit into a useful, thorough, and easy to use space as quickly as possible.

Therefore, when you are given the topics that we would like your circle to cover, we would really appreciate you making this work a priority within your circle. We have now set a deadline for all requested content to be with the Rebel Toolkit team by the 29th February 2024.

Using Shelves, Books, Chapters, and Pages

The RT is structured just like a real bookshelf, full of real books. Your group may be given a shelf, book or chapter to update. Please ensure that your content effectively uses the chapter/pages system to break down the topic into chunks. Ensure each chapter & page has a logical name as these will be displayed in the contents page of your book, and in the sidebar when navigating the book itself.

You don’t HAVE to use chapters if your book is short. If it’s 7 pages or less, it probably doesn’t need chapters.

A good example is the ‘Action Network for XR’ book.

action-network-for-XR.PNG

Book title

It is also important to choose a name for your book that communicates what the topic is in as few words as possible.

If you change the name of the book, it changes the URL and if you have linked to it from elsewhere (XRUK website, or an email footer perhaps) - that link will break. (note: book URLs are independent of what shelf they sit on - so any rearrangement of shelves that we do won’t affect this.

Audience

The audience for the RT pages we are asking you to work on, will be both individual rebels and those in Local or Community Groups. However, please remember that the Rebel Toolkit is publicly accessible to anyone on the internet, so don't include anything you wouldn't tell your nan!

Please ensure that you don’t use XR jargon, abbreviations, or make assumptions about users’ technological abilities. Use simple language, short sentences, and short paragraphs.

If you currently have information on the RT (or wish to add more) - which is not suitable for this broad audience, then please get in touch with us.

As part of future proofing the Tool, we are trying to minimise links to outside documents. It is preferable that information is written within the RT. Please transfer everything you can that is currently relevant and linked from the RT to an outside document, directly to a page on the RT. Only link to an outside document if this is absolutely necessary and the page cannot be recreated on the RT.

If you have to link to external docs please use Karla font, no italics, clear layout and for Google docs, edit the URL - make sure that after the last ‘/’ which normally says /edit or /view, replace this with /preview.

We are striving to reduce duplication of information. Therefore, if your circle needs to include elements of the work of another circle within your pages, please link directly to those pages, rather than writing your own section in your book.

For example, in the section on Outreach methods it is relevant to talk about how to include fundraising, you should talk to the Fundraising team and/or view their current content. They may already have suitable guidance, so you can link directly to this.

If those pages do not yet exist, talk directly to the team who you think should be providing the content or contact the RT team for guidance.

You do it by highlighting the title, hovering over it and picking up the link. See the image below:

Wiki spaces

The original vision of the RT was modelled on a ‘wiki’ style design - where everyone in the movement could share resources, instructions and ideas. Whilst an amazing vision, lack of curation has meant that huge swathes of the Toolkit are out of date, duplicated, or link to docs which no longer exist.

We still appreciate the vision of the Toolkit as a sharing space, therefore we will be creating several ‘Wiki’ style spaces, within relevant shelves or books. Each wiki will have a basic style guide, and anyone with a Hub log-in will be able to contribute to them.

Future Proofing

All circles who have been asked to contribute to the new RT must check their pages at least every 6 months to ensure that nothing needs to be updated. Ideally someone in your team should take on the role of updating the RT regularly, whenever you produce something new or change the ways you do something.

But our book is already fine!

Some circles already use and update their RT pages regularly. In this case, these books may simply move to the new shelf.

You may be sent other resources or documents that we have found that we are not sure are relevant any more. We would like to work with you to either incorporate them into your books, or get feedback that these resources are out of date.

Please review your pages with Local Group rebels in mind, remove jargon or lengthy detail and try to create concise and accessible information.

Sense check for your content

A checklist for deciding if your content a appropriate for the toolkit:

  1. Is it for people not yet connected to XR ?
  • If yes, consider adding to the XRUK website
  1. Is it for rebels, rather than people who are not (yet) in XR?
  • If yes, Rebel Toolkit is the right place
  1. Is it aimed at a small group of rebels maybe within an XRUK circle?
  • If yes, it could go on the UK circles section of the toolkit which will only be viewable by logging in.
Access and Inclusion

Access and Inclusion should be considered in everything we do, and that includes in the content everyone here is adding to the Rebel Toolkit. Please read this guide which has been written by the Disabled Rebels Network

We all need to consider making the content itself accessible, by using clear layout, no italics etc.

Any content written for the RT relating to LG spaces, meeting facilitation, handing zoom calls or planning actions etc should also consider the guidance provided.

Stay in touch!

If you want to meet with us again during the process of updating, or when you think your updated info is complete, please contact us.

The conversations with all the different teams should help us develop a more nuanced and detailed view of what needs to happen to make the RT a fabulous resource for the movement.

What we are aiming for is to reduce any duplication in content. So we may contact you again if we identify overlaps and repetitions.

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