Team meeting today

Marco Martin notmart at gmail.com
Wed Jun 20 19:19:35 UTC 2012


Hi all,
this is a very raw synopsis of the meeting, i hope we can now transform it in 
something very productive (i think the meeting especially the last part  was 
useful)

The meeting started from the realization that there is an 1% of cases where 
the discussion doesn't go well and can get people too emotional, making it not 
productive, for the project and for the morale.
Some cases of recent discussions where at first there was disagreement, but 
the discussion gone completely smoothly were analized (the 99% when things 
goes like they should), such as:

http://old.nabble.com/RFC%3A-Removing-of-decorations-td33476065.html
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=302077

some points in common have been individuated:

* we can see in those discussions the tone never escalated, even with 
disagreements, they look more like stimulating debates
* when someone wants the mantainer to change his mind stays on exclusively 
technical points: raises concerns and arguments them, like needing an use case 
for window decoration for remote sessions, that weren't considered in the 
original decision
* the maintainer proposes a third solution, balanced between the problem the 
original solution tries to address and the problem this causes. like waiting 
until a particular lightweight window decoration is here
* The discussion always stays focused, in topic

So that's how we want those discussions to happen.
There can be done a series of recommendations in order to do so, and we can 
point to people when those aren't followed.

note that those are just copied/pasted from points made over irc, so if they 
are incorrect, not completely understandable or if others missing feel free to 
correct:

* we see that there is need to document more
* especially if a discussion turns out to be recurring: document the reasons 
and point out to those
* it doesn't need to be done for everything, otherwise becomes not 
maintainable with bad signal/noise ratio
* we have established guidelines on how to interact with each other
* we don't want to blame community members for things which happened in the 
past
* We concentrate too much on energy eaters, rather than on progress
* we remind each other about our common goals if we see that a discussion goes 
in the wrong direction
* there's a lack of trust  we need to address
* if anyone breaks the guidelines (whoever they are) breaks these we point it 
out, and not write a (more angry) reply which escalates
* code reverting or being a bit invasive in non familiar areas should at least 
contact the ML or person affected
* we need a list of component and maintainer
* we respect maintainer decisions
* and, "respect the elders!"
* think about the bigger project, if an issue of disagreement risks of 
damaging/slowing down the project, is maybe the time to step back and say "i 
stil ldon't agree but i respect the decision"
* same thing if the maintainer and/or several other maintainers of related 
components didn't change their mind: respect the decision even if you still 
disagree

raw mammoth irc log: http://paste.opensuse.org/43938417 (not filtered from ot)
-- 
Marco Martin


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