Finalizing a proposal

[wolftune]

Continuing the discussion from Team Agreements Proposal:

So, we had a proposal, it was voted on (but not everyone voted), it’s assigned to @alignwaivers and currently nothing is marked as the solution for the topic and it’s not tagged #proposal

What is supposed to happen to have this be finished and in place, and we can record or reference the decision and use it etc.?

Is the standard to record approved proposals here: https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/governance/-/tree/master/decision-making (I did that for the proposal-poll decision itself) ?

[alignwaivers]

My apologies for not getting on this sooner. What a weird time this is

According to the original proposal process agreed on, the ‘deadline’ would have passed, but that being said only 5 people voted (not even a majority of the team) and for something so fundamental for team members it seems we should at least have more than that? Maybe not - it does seem pretty reasonable but I would at least hope more people from the team (@iko, @msiep, @chreekat, @fr33domlover, @h30, @david) would consent before implementing and asking team members to agree.

I can’t reopen the poll but I’m thinking I could follow up with those who didn’t vote and confirm if there are any objections or not?

I would call this an exception to normal proposals simply because we don’t have an explicit agreement about this stuff until this is agreed upon itself

[chreekat]

Hi! It’s nice to see progress and improved clarity in these things.

Now, I haven’t participated mostly for lack of time. However, it wasn’t entirely clear to me that there was a proposal that required action. So there might be room for more clarity.

I’ve followed the Discourse discussions at a high level, so I am aware that a proposal process was created and agreed upon, and I take it that this was one such proposal.

But the proposal itself is awash in discussion, and the casual observer cannot be certain if they are looking at a final proposal or not, without investing significantly in the discussion. For instance, the proposal starts with

Here is the formal proposal: will start the poll for consent decision within a few days since this has already been discussed quite a bit.
Newest proposal for team agreements (with msiep’s suggestion incorporated)

Ironically, this introduction, which indicates some sort of temporal locality (“Newest proposal”), makes it unclear which version of “now” is being referred to. Is it today’s now? Or some other now? Is this really the final version? Does “discussed quite a bit” refer to the discussion that follows, or some other discussion?

I do now have some extra time to spend on Snowdrift, but I’m going to do my best to avoid participating in these meta discussions. If there’s some input that some other team needs from me, I’ll do my best to participate, but can we find a more concrete way to distribute the text of proposals?

Thanks!

[smichel17]

@chreekat

But the proposal itself is awash in discussion, and the casual observer cannot be certain if they are looking at a final proposal or not, without investing significantly in the discussion.

Would it help if the proposal were “marked as the solution” to the thread, so it’s highlighted in the top post without having to dig into the discussion? Or are you talking about being able to tell from an email excerpt, whether a proposal is ready to vote on?

[alignwaivers]

yeah @chreekat it can be confusing when there’s a meta discussion about such a thing without clarity / VCS. And we should mitigate wasting anyone’s time , as it’s unnecssariy to read the discussion that leads up to it
Here’s the exact post to read:

Team Agreements Proposal

Official Proposal for all @team members (existing and future): I agree to: participate in the weekly meeting as much as I can When I know about absences in advance, I will notify others and relay pertinent information for the agenda respond within 48 hours to snowdrift-related messages directed to me or pertaining to my role/s (as long as they come through whatever my preferred contact method is) If other priorities come up that temporarily leave me less reliable, I will notify the team …

Ignore others, the one with the an actual poll is the target here (albeit one you can’t vote at this point, Ideally we can get everyone’s consent imo with an acknowledment post)

[smichel17]

Note: I marked it as the solution so it’ll appear at the top. @chreekat does that work better?

@alignwaivers I think that means you can remove the proposal text from the top post if you’d like (this way there’s only one authoritative proposal text).

[photm]

How about doing both of these:

• Post in a new thread when starting a consent decision (Avoids getting hidden in the middle of a discussion)
• Push proposals as merge-requests to the governance repo and link to gitlab’s “view file at commit xyzabc” (Avoids adding remarks like “final version:” to the proposal, since you wouldn’t want the final git patch)

[smichel17]

@photm

Post in a new thread when starting a consent decision (Avoids getting hidden in the middle of a discussion)

I would prefer to try mark-as-solution to pin an active proposal, before using new threads. Multiple similar topics are harder for me to keep track of:

• I wanted to reply to a post I saw earlier. Was it in thread X or Y?
• I’m reading a conversation later, how do I follow the order it happened in across threads?

I’m open to new threads if mark-as-solution is not a good solution.

@photm

Push proposals as merge-requests to the governance repo and link to gitlab’s “view file at commit xyzabc” (Avoids adding remarks like “final version:” to the proposal, since you wouldn’t want the final git patch)

On one hand, I think merge request flow is great for this sort of thing. On the other, I am concerned about excluding folks who aren’t comfortable in git, like @mray. If we can find a workflow that stays within the gitlab UI, I think it could work, though.

[alignwaivers]

Great input yall, all great ideas

I agree about redundant threads (unless really necessary). Thank goodness urls can point to a specific post in a thread rather than forcing everyone to scroll ad naseum.

@smichel17

I would prefer to try mark-as-solution to pin an active proposal,

This does seem a best solution for most cases imo,

and I really love the idea of git usage (even as I’m still getting accustomed to that) but @smichel17 that is also a good point and we would like people to be comfortable with that workflow.

@photm just fyi I totally liked those ideas!