How we pick authors

[rviscomi]

We're opening the call for contributors to the 2021 edition, which brings up a question about how we pick the authors for each chapter. I wanted to share my thoughts about it and open it up for discussion if there's any feedback/suggestions.

• Web Almanac authors are subject matter experts, so we look for contributors with a lot of experience on the subject.

• We recognize that there are biases in the tech industry that have made some groups of people underrepresented, so we consciously seek out authors who would bring new perspectives and better represent the web community.

• Some authors are eager to contribute year after year, which we love, but we want to share the platform and hear from new people whenever possible. 2019 and 2020 authors are still strongly encouraged to contribute as peer reviewers.

Given these considerations, we try to pick someone to lead each chapter who is a good balance of all three but sometimes there are tradeoffs and tough calls.

After we select an author to be the content team lead, that person has the leeway to staff the rest of the chapter as they see fit by assigning additional coauthors and reviewers to help steer the content scope and direction. Some extremely large chapters are only possible with the help of multiple coauthors, so we encourage the lead to build their team while keeping these considerations in mind.