Re: Labels and Milestones on GitHub

On 01/07/2016 09:27 AM, Adrian Hope-Bailie wrote:
> Wide/Horizontal Review and related topics*

Fine by me, but keep in mind that these sorts of horizontal W3C reviews
typically take months. My concern is that the use of any of those labels
would kick off a 2-4 month long review process. Some of what we're
working on needs that, but if we're overzealous with those tags, it'll
take many times longer to get a set of specs out than our charter allows.

> *Actions*
> 
> I have also added the "action" label as an experiment.

+1

> *Questions * As mentioned in a previous email, the issue list on our 
> main repo [1] is for discussing high-level issues the majority of 
> which will take the form of design questions such as those already 
> labelled as "question". Any new issues added to hte list that are 
> intended to be "question for the group to get consensus on" should
> be labelled as "question".

Almost every issue contains a question and the vast majority of our
important issues will require consensus from the group to merge into a spec.

I suggest that we have a "call for consensus" tag that can be used when
a WG member wants the group to resolve a particular issue and has made a
proposal for doing so.

> *Other labels*
> 
> The default labels should be used to try and organise issues based on
> their type. i.e. Is this a high-level design question, a bug in one
> of the tools or documents, a request for an enhancement etc.

Labels should probably be tied to how we want the issue to proceed. For
example, tagging something as "call for consensus" would signal to the
chairs that the item needs to go on a weekly call agenda to be resolved.

Tagging something as "flows" would signal to the group that the item is
currently being discussed in the Flows Task Force and no action is
needed until the flows task force performs a "call for consensus".

> *Milestones* As another experiment I have created a milestone for
> our 14 January call. The plan is to group any questions we consider
> ready for resolution on that call under that milestone.

Happy to try this out, but I think having "call for consensus" tags are
more helpful. Milestones could be something that the chairs use to build
weekly agendas?

I'd expect Milestones to be used for things like "FPWD",
"Messaging-WD-1", etc.

> I propose that the best way for this to happen is for the group to 
> comment that they believe there is either general consensus on the 
> proposal that has been made to resolve the issue or a need to
> discuss it on the call and then assign the issue to me
> (@adrianhopebailie).

It's hard to understand if there is "general consensus" if the vast
majority of the WG participants are not participating in the issue
tracker (which is the current state we're in).

One of the best ways to see if there is consensus is to do a call for
consensus (meaning, propose something and see what people say).

We should fall back to a "call for consensus" tag - anyone may ask for
it at any time, and if there isn't consensus, the tag is removed and
it's discussed in the issue tracker again until there is another call
for consensus (which anyone may ask for).

> Nick and I will triage the issues as best we can to come up with a 
> list we think we can get through on a single call and put them into 
> the milestone for that call.

Here's my concern with this approach: We address the easy questions and
the hard questions end up hanging around for way longer than is healthy
for the group. I think this is where we are today, with very few of the
really hard architectural questions being actively discussed.

I don't think we're on a healthy trajectory wrt. the specs at the
moment. I'll put together an email to the group with a proposal to
attempt to address these issues next.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Web Payments: The Architect, the Sage, and the Moral Voice
https://manu.sporny.org/2015/payments-collaboration/

Received on Thursday, 7 January 2016 18:51:08 UTC