Re: W3C Solid Community Group

> I’ve added a point at the start of the meeting to talk about our
preferred methodology to work through the issues and pull request together.

Thank you.

To seed that discussion a bit (and based on past Social WG experience), I'd
like to see a bit more action orientation. Particularly, I think the agenda
could:

   - Have more specific proposals that, if they are clearly good, we just
   vote on and move on with. For example, the first issue on the agenda page
   is this one by Kjetil
   <https://github.com/solid/web-access-control-spec/pull/37>. It's a PR.
   It's mergeable. It's been available for a week to comment on, and no one
   has. Can the agenda item just be "PROPOSAL: Merge PR
   web-access-control-spec#37? If there are concerns, they should come up
   (ideally on GitHub or this list ahead of time), but if not, we should only
   be spending the time to vote on it or a call for consensus right off the
   bat.
   - Where the agenda item is not actionable, i.e. just discussing a
   complicated issue, include a time limit (e.g. 10 minutes) and enforce it.
   Get the discussion going, but then encourage people to take it to the list
   or GitHub so it can be resolved there or at least turn into an actionable
   proposal or more focused time-bounded discussion for the next meeting.
   - If no one cares about a GitHub issue enough to turn it into a Proposal
   or time-bounded Discussion item, the call doesn't need to talk about it
   just because it's there. There is a burden of whoever file the issue to
   frame it in a way that is clear and actionable, or to put a discussion on
   the agenda of the people making time for the call (and represent that
   agenda item).

I think the book "On Conflict and Consensus: a handbook on Formal Consensus
decisionmaking
<http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/c-t-butler-and-amy-rothstein-on-conflict-and-consensus-a-handbook-on-formal-consensus-decisionm>"
is a good inspiration for focused collaboration in a volunteer group.
Here is a standard agenda
<http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/c-t-butler-and-amy-rothstein-on-conflict-and-consensus-a-handbook-on-formal-consensus-decisionm#toc63>
from that book, and in the context of a larger section others may enjoy as
I did.

There is also generally a framework in there of:
1) Time bounded discussion.
2) Identify Concerns
3) Resolve Concerns
4) Call for (formal) consensus. If there is a block, goto #2, potentially
after some offline formulation of that concern and attempts between the
proposer and the concerned person to reach a middle ground on their own
without the group (it's almost always easier without an audience to perform
for).

(True consensus isn't necessarily what I'm advocating for, but the clarity
of process and guardrails to avoid long drawn-out discussions is a good one
to be inspired by)

> The issues and pull requests are listed in a random order in the agenda
and we can go from the top so to prepare best start at the top of the list.

The agenda here? All the issues are grouped by author
<https://www.w3.org/community/solid/wiki/Meetings#20190404_1400CET>. What
do you mean by 'random order'?

On Thu, Apr 4, 2019 at 7:37 AM Alexandre Bourlier <alexandre@happy-dev.fr>
wrote:

> I agree with the idea of working offline on the issue beforehand.
>
> I struggle to find enough time to big into them though...
>
>
> On Thu, 4 Apr 2019 at 12:27, Mitzi László <mitzil@inrupt.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Justin and Benjamin,
>>
>> I’ve added a point at the start of the meeting to talk about our
>> preferred methodology to work through the issues and pull request together.
>>
>> The issues and pull requests are listed in a random order in the agenda
>> and we can go from the top so to prepare best start at the top of the list.
>>
>> It’s too last minute to change the agenda now because people may have
>> already prepared. If there are any burning issues or pull requests that you
>> would like to tackle first in next weeks agenda please let me know and we
>> can make sure to bump them to the top of the list.
>>
>> Mitzi
>>
>> On 4 Apr 2019, at 03:55, Justin Bingham <
>> justin.bingham@janeirodigital.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I’ve unfortunately got a conflict for tomorrow – but I have some
>> reservations about the agenda as proposed.
>>
>> There are likely some issues or pull requests in that list that could
>> fill up two hours of discussion on their own without coming to a definitive
>> conclusion. I’m not sure that a live session - where the vast majority of
>> the group may have little to no context on the substance of a given issue
>> or pull request - is going to be constructive.
>>
>> Working through outstanding issues or pull requests should always happen
>> out-of-band, because people need time to dig in and research to be able to
>> provide constructive feedback and/or correct solutions. In cases where
>> we’re at an impasse, we can certainly surface these as candidates for
>> discussion on the call, but we have to ensure that the people involved in
>> that issue or pull request will actually be attending first.
>>
>> I do think there is value in an exercise where people vote up and
>> prioritize outstanding issues or pull requests that they think demand
>> immediate attention, and maybe some identification of important items can
>> happen on the call, but we should agree on an offline mechanism. If
>> agreement on that approach can happen on the call, and those ideas can be
>> posted back to the mailing list after so people know how to mark/vote up
>> accordingly, that’d be great.
>>
>>
>> *From: *Mitzi László <mitzil@inrupt.com>
>> *Date: *Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at 9:15 AM
>> *To: *public-solid <public-solid@w3.org>
>> *Subject: *W3C Solid Community Group
>> *Resent-From: *<public-solid@w3.org>
>> *Resent-Date: *Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at 9:14 AM
>>
>> Hi W3C Solid Community Group,
>>
>> You can find the final agenda and call in details for the call tomorrow
>> at 1400 CET. [1]
>>
>> There are 85 open issues and pull requests on the Solid specifications.
>> The agenda is to work through them one by one and decide on a route
>> forward.
>>
>>
>> There is a lot to get through this week so the meeting will be two hours
>> long.
>>
>>
>> The person who opened the pull request or issue will be responsible for
>> presenting the pending items that needs to be decided together. Please
>> prepare a presentation of the options of routes forward and the pros and
>> cons/ considerations for each route. Please focus on what is most important
>> in as little time as possible.
>>
>>
>> If there is a difference of opinion the Solid Specifications Repository
>> Manager and Solid Leader will decide on the route forward as defined in the
>> agreed process.
>>
>> Mitzi
>>
>> [1] https://www.w3.org/community/solid/wiki/Meetings#20190404_1400CET
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
>
> Alexandre BOURLIER
> 06 51 71 08 21
> http://happy-dev.fr
>