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Reviewers' Guide

Rick Viscomi edited this page Dec 21, 2020 · 15 revisions

Commitment

If you're considering becoming a peer reviewer of a Web Almanac chapter, you're probably wondering what the level of commitment is. Reviewers' responsibilities may vary depending on the complexity of the topic and the total number of reviewers. Generally though, you should expect to spend your time in the following way:

  • Content planning: about 2 hours working with authors and other peer reviewers to brainstorm the scope of the chapter and what stats/metrics are needed from the HTTP Archive dataset. The planning phase may vary year to year but will typically occur during May-June.
  • Data validation: about 1 hour working with authors and data analysts to validate that the results pulled from the dataset align with your expectations. This phase is meant to catch analysis bugs early so we can rerun queries and ensure that your chapter is methodologically valid. This phase typically occurs in August-September.
  • Content writing: about 7 hours working with authors to revise the contents of the chapter for technical correctness. This phase typically occurs in October-November.

The total commitment is approximately 20 hours of work over 6 months.

How to join

Using the list below, simply choose a chapter in which you're experienced and interested, and leave a comment asking to join. Issues marked with the Help Wanted: Reviewers label are actively looking for new contributors, so don't be shy!

Page Content

User Experience

Content Publishing

Content Distribution

Resources

The Google Developer Documentation Style Guide is an in-depth resource for technical writers. Familiarize yourselves with the "General principles" section, specifically:

As reviewers, you're responsible for reading over authors' chapters and providing technical feedback on the contents of the reports as well as ensuring that the writing style conforms to these general principles. If all chapter authors and reviewers follow these guidelines, the Almanac will have a consistent style and unified voice.