Although it’s clever and gets at the “shoveling the snow” metaphor, the main significance is that its where we discuss real work on the project (as opposed to other discussion).
But there’s been some pushback on the “clearing the path” name, so we could discuss alternate names, perhaps more concrete plain ones like:
To expand my suggestion,
Now
Name: Clearing the Path
Description: A place for team members, volunteers, and anyone else interested to discuss concrete work on the Snowdrift.coop project.
Suggested
Name: Project Workspace
Description: A place for ideas, questions, and discussion about the Snowdrift.coop website and platform. Let’s clear the path!
Well, we have a separate category for stuff like whatever ideas, questions and discussion. The idea is that this category is for discussion of concrete work. So, I don’t like the suggested description change, although “Let’s clear the path!” works as a tag-line…
But this isn’t the place for “whatever” ideas, questions, and discussion. It’s for such content relating to developing the platform. Maybe this?
Description: A place for ideas, questions, and discussion about developing the Snowdrift.coop website and platform. Let’s clear the path!
My point is that it really is about ideas and questions as much as anything concrete. In fact, if it’s really concrete, it should probably be on Gitlab…
Alternate title: simply, Development
Edit: that’s probably too simple, and raises the question about what to do with “Development/Development”, which is clearly nonviable.
I see it as Discourse being the discussion place for basically everything on GitLab. GitLab is just mediocre by comparison for all forms of discussion.
So, we can and should use comments in GitLab if it’s really simple and short enough or is really just a straight path on a task. Otherwise, lots of discussion about the specific tasks in GitLab can and should be done here instead, just linking back. That also opens the discussion to everyone here who just has a snowdrift account and doesn’t need to register on GitLab.
Even something like working out design mockups… if the design folks choose to do it here, it will be more public and invite more feedback from the community. So, this is the place for that when they feel it’s the right approach (so, it’s nice that there’s some flexibility).
That said, I think the updated description is the right direction. Here’s some tweaked variants (I like aspects of each, so just posting for discussion):
Description: A place to discuss the work of developing the Snowdrift.coop website and platform. Let’s clear the path!
Description: Discussion around building the Snowdrift.coop website and platform — let’s clear the path to a free/libre/open world!
Description: Here we discuss the work, ideas, and questions around developing the Snowdrift.coop website, platform, and community. Let’s clear the path!
This is the big distinction, in my view. For stuff where we mostly just want internal discussion amongst the team (even if others technically can chime in), gitlab is the better place precisely because we’re less likely to end up spending time re-hashing with people approaching these problems for the first time. For stuff where we’d appreciate wider feedback, here is better.
The notable exception is in-line code reviews, which will still cause substantial chatter on Gitlab. However, I take the general point that most substantial chatter should happen on Discourse.
I think we’re in broad agreement now; any of the descriptions you suggest seem to work.
What about just “Workspace” instead of “Project workspace”?
Note that in meeting discussion @Salt emphasized his support for keeping the current name (and for keeping tie-ins to the Snowdrift name generally) as long as we have good descriptions that are clear.
We’re going to stick to the name.