[ghc-steering-committee] GHC proposals

[Simon Peyton Jones]

Good points.

How about this: when you do the work for your monthly email, you update the spreadsheet, including a prominent date saying "this was true on date X".  Zero extra work for you.

That way I can have a bookmark to a table that shows a decent approximation to the status quo.  I find it hard to grep back through mountains of email, be sure I'm looking at the latest status update from you, etc.  It's enough friction that I just don't do it.

Tom, our "nudger" will find that useful -- and will doubtless update it if he knows the status has changed (e.g he nudges someone and they say "oh I did that").

The rest of us (esp shepherds) can use it as an aide memoire. (What proposals am I responsible for?)

Would that be ok?

Simon

|  -----Original Message-----
|  From: ghc-steering-committee <ghc-steering-committee-bounces at haskell.org> On
|  Behalf Of Joachim Breitner
|  Sent: 01 July 2021 20:06
|  To: ghc-steering-committee at haskell.org
|  Subject: Re: [ghc-steering-committee] GHC proposals
|  
|  Hi,
|  
|  I understand the desire to have a constantly updated "dashboard". But I
|  don't think a spreadsheed will work. At least not if your expectation is
|  that we, collaboratively, keep it up to date. If we already fall behind our
|  actual review commitments, surely we'll fall behind additional red tape
|  commitments. And then we'll have a file that we can't rely on because we
|  wouldn't be confident that it actually reflects reality.
|  
|  And it's not that I hates manual solutions. In fact, my semi-regular
|  "status" emails are fully manual! In a way you did more or less what I do
|  every time I create these: I did through my email and curate the current
|  status quo. This is tenable because it's clear who does it (the secretary,
|  instead of everybody), and because it's an email there is no confusion as
|  whether it is is up to date - is is up to date the moment I write it, and
|  makes no promises about later states.
|  
|  So that's a difference in frequency, form and ownership (at intervals vs.
|  continous; push email vs. pull URL; collectively vs. secretarial).
|  Your sheet also contains additional fields (Author, various dates) - maybe I
|  should include them in the status email.
|  
|  I don't want to stop us from trying out different procedures, though, so if
|  there is a general sentiment that a wiki-like process (everyone
|  collaboratively edits a common file) is worth exploring, we can do that of
|  course. But I miss the "yes please and I definitely will keep it up to date"
|  cries from our crowd :-)
|  
|  Ultimately, the best would be a tool that uses the Github API to create a
|  dashboard (Note that  most information on your sheet is already present in
|  github, especially as all status changes are represented as label changes),
|  maybe even with automatic nudging on github or email.
|  
|  The next best thing is someone (but someone, not somemany) doing that
|  manually; maintaining a dashboard like yours, plus nudging. But who wants to
|  do manually what can be done (mostly) automated.
|  
|  
|  Cheers,
|  Joachim
|  
|  
|  Am Montag, dem 28.06.2021 um 09:56 +0000 schrieb Simon Peyton Jones via
|  ghc-steering-committee:
|  > I'm a bit concerned that we are falling down on our commitment to
|  > decide about GHC proposals in a timely manner.
|  > Part of the problem is that at any moment I don't have a clear
|  > snapshot in my head of what decisions are pending, and who is driving
|  > them.  I know that Joachim hates manual solutions, but I have spent a
|  > few minutes digging through my email to build
|  >  * this spreadsheet giving the current status You all have edit
|  > permissions.  It covers only the handful of proposals that are in our
|  > court.   Can I suggest that we all use it to keep ourselves on the
|  > ball?   E.g. as a shepherd you can use it to record who you are
|  > waiting for, as I have done for #302.
|  > You'll notice that we are behind on every one of them.  Remember, if
|  > there edits we want the author to make, we push it back, out of our
|  > court.  It can re-enter when the author re-submits.
|  > If our commitments are over-ambitious, let's review them.
|  > Tom: you are our official nudger.  Would you like to make you weekly
|  > nudge into an email to the full committee, with a pointer to the
|  > spreadsheet and your current understanding of who is responsible for
|  > driving?
|  > I hope this is helpful.  If not, let's think of something else!
|  > Simon
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|  --
|  Joachim Breitner
|    mail at joachim-breitner.de
|  
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