Re: QT4CG meeting 109 draft minutes, 11 February 2025

Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@gmail.com> writes:
>     > * DN: I think we shouldn't discuss an issue if the original author
>     >      isn't present.
>     >     * NW: I think it's more important to make progress.
>
> Something that is omitted here: then I rephrased to: "We will move the triaging of any issues whose original author is not present at the meeting to the end of the queue". There were no objections to this rephrased rule for triaging.

I have amended the minutes as you suggest.

> We need to define "progress": 

Progress is getting the issues triaged.

Our most critical resource is attention. There are a limited number of volunteers and a fixed number of hours in the day. If we want to be finished in a finite amount of time, we must make progress on issues faster than they arrive. That means we need to focus our attention where we can most profitably spend it. That’s what triage means.

> is this just closing the issue (even without enough understanding), or ruling on it with understanding, most of which comes from the author of said issue?

I’m not trying to be disrespectful to the folks who put time and energy into making issues, but if we look at an issue and no one on the CG is prepared to do the work necessary to resolve it, what is gained by leaving it open? We give ourselves the dispiriting impression of not making progress and the submitter the inaccurate impression we are still planning to do something about it.

I sort of expect most issues to wind up in the “optional” category in this first round of triage because we’d all like to do everything. But anything we close, we don’t have to think about again, and anything we mark required implies that the CG is going get someone to do the work.

And please note, just because we close something doesn’t mean it can’t be reopened if someone with the time and energy to work on it comes along.

> Maybe, if we don't want to have much to do at any cost, then probably we shouldn't have joined this CG in the first place?

Dimitre, I think that’s an unfair characterization. We have all been *working hard* for 109 weeks. That’s two years of wall-clock time and countless hours doing the background tasks necessary to discuss, come to consensus, specify, implement, and test our work.

As I said a couple of weeks ago, I think the consensus opinion of the CG is that we should be thinking about reaching a conclusion and publishing a 4.0 specification. If I’m wrong and the CG is happy to keep going for another year or two or five or ten, without producing a 4.0 specification for the community, then we can abandon this exercise as unnecessary.

But if we want to finish in 2026 or 2027, then we’re going to have to do this exercise more than once and we’re eventually going to have to abandon all the issues that don’t make the cut, whatever the cut is, for 4.0.

> Probably a good practice would be in the future to address any new issue, after a predefined, meaningful period, say 2 months, to avoid the accumulation of issues that are years old?

Maybe. Most weeks there are more things on the agenda than we can finish in an hour, so everything is a trade off. Review an issue that’s two months old, or review another PR? It’s not always easy to determine what’s most valuable.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

--
Norm Tovey-Walsh
Saxonica

Received on Wednesday, 12 February 2025 17:34:25 UTC