[ghc-steering-committee] Unhappy proposers

[Richard Eisenberg]

Thanks, Joachim, for writing the initial post and suggesting concrete directions. And, thanks, Matthew (who, at some point, got dropped off this conversation -- no doubt unintentionally), for speaking up about your dissatisfaction instead of just stewing.

I agree that we should make it a policy not to make a "reject" recommendation without writing on the GitHub issue first, in order to invite a rebuttal.

However, I'd prefer to keep discussions on this list, for the reasons others have mentioned. Primarily, I'm worried that GitHub can be a noisy place, and if we have our deliberations there, our status as a decision-making committee is somewhat compromised. On the other hand, an easy practice that could increase discoverability and transparency is to have the shepherd post a link to the on-list conversation on the GitHub trail at the end of deliberations. Our thoughts are then preserved nicely.

Richard

> On Apr 17, 2019, at 5:43 PM, Eric Seidel <eric at seidel.io> wrote:
> 
> Iavor's point about keeping the committee discussion restricted to the committee is basically my only reason for preferring to keep the discussion on the mailing list. 
> 
> It seems useful to have a separate place for us to deliberate and formulate a response to the proposal, not for any notion of privacy or secrecy (our discussions are already public, as they should be). Rather, it's just easier to keep the discussion focused  when we have a smaller group of participants.
> 
> If there's a feeling that our discussions are not visible enough, perhaps we could deliberate proposals on a separate, locked issue? That might satisfy both desires, though it also feels a bit laborious..
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Apr 17, 2019, at 14:23, Iavor Diatchki wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 11:01 AM Joachim Breitner 
>> <mail at joachim-breitner.de> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> 2. I think it would be good to try to keep the committee
>>>> discussion on Github more or less restricted to the committee and the
>>>> proposal author. I think this would help keep steer discussions
>>>> towards termination (which is sometimes difficult even when we are
>>>> restricted to just the committee :-)
>>> 
>>> Likely not possible from a technical point of view, but without
>>> enforcement not possible from a social point of view. I think if we
>>> move the discussion to Github, we have to face (and maybe benefit!)
>>> from a larger group of participants.
>>> 
>>> (You can lock conversations, but that would also lock out the original
>>> author, see https://help.github.com/en/articles/locking-conversations)
>>> 
>> 
>> Yeah, I didn't mean that we should do anything technical, just have 
>> this be the specified process and hope that people more or less follow 
>> it.
>> Obviously, if someone has something productive to say during the 
>> committee discussion, they can mention it and we can try to address it.
>> 
>> However, I think there is a benefit to encourage the community to give 
>> their feedback before the committee discussion has begun,
>> as I think this 1) helps improve proposals, and 2) enables us (the 
>> committee) to read through the discussion to see what the current 
>> opinions are---
>> I find this quite helpful, as it gives me an idea of what people 
>> like/dislike, and sometime points out issue I hadn't thought about.
>> 
>> -Iavor
>> 
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