Team meeting today

[David Edmundson]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 8:19 PM, Marco Martin <notmart at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 agreed we need a list of each component and their maintainer.

I had a trial run with KDE Telepathy
http://community.kde.org/index.php?title=Real-Time_Communication_and_Collaboration/Components/Overview
and we as a team filled it in as an example.  I ended up adding an
extra column called "Senior Devs" of people who could take over the
maintainer role. It was quite useful as it showed areas even in our
smaller project where we need to encourage people to step up towards
taking a leader role in future.

I made a similar form for Plasma is available here:
http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Maintainership please fill-in as
appropriate.

If you really hate editing mediawiki tables (who doesn't ) email me
directly with changes and I'll do it.
After a week (end of June) I will fill any gaps as "unmaintained".

List of components are based on bugzilla component entries. Feel free
to add more here, but it probably implies you should add it in
bugzilla too.

David Edmundson


> * 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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