[ghc-steering-committee] GHC steering committee status

[Chris Dornan]

While I think the spreadsheet is really nice, I have to say I am personally comfortable with Joachim's periodic summaries and his ability to read the room as to whether a proposal has the support of the committee.

If folks don't have time to respond for feedback then that is just the way it is and enough of the remainder of the committee have weighed in then I think we just move on. If Joachim is aware of missing coverage in any response then he waits until we have satisfactory coverage.

I am not saying we could not do better, but, for my needs, Joachim is managing everything pretty optimally.

Of course we all have way of working so it would be really good if folks could indicate whether they want (1) the old way (2) the way of the spreadsheet or (3) some hybrid.

I suspect we might want to consider a hybrid -- if so, do we need to find an assistant to Joachim to maintain the spreadsheet? (Let's not add to Joachim's workload but share it.)

Chris


> On 10 Sep 2023, at 03:06, Simon Peyton Jones <simon.peytonjones at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear GHC steering committee
> 
> Re GHC proposals I was talking to Simon M about
> Making the shepherd's job easier and quicker
> Providing a way for members of the committee to say (explicitly) "I don't have an opinion about this proposal" and thus recuse themselves.   Explicit recusal is better than "silence means assent" because silence can, and often does, mean "I'm under water and not listening".
> With that in mind, I want to revive my suggestion of running an online spreadsheet  <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e6GdwHmAjeDEUhTvP-b18MDkpTfH3SMHhFu5F3nDIWc/edit?usp=sharing>to describe the state of proposals that are in our active purview.  That is, I'm not proposing to show proposals that are under discussion by the community, or accepted etc -- just the ones that are in our inbox, where the next action is ours.
> 
> That makes it much easier to see our current inbox, without looking back for Jocahim's last email and then adding deltas for all the emails since -- which I cannot do in my head.
> 
> Specifically, I have a column for each committee member's vote.  That should make it easy for the shepherd to see who is yet to express an opinion, which I always find difficult.
> 
> As I say above, I am very uncomfortable with "silence means assent" for any but the smallest proposals.  I suggest instead that if there is a proposal where you feel unable to offer an opinion, due to lack of expertise, or lack of time, you can say "recuse" meaning that you explicitly want to stand down from this particular proposal.   (Somehow "abstain" carries a connotation of conflict of interest or something, but it amounts to the same thing.)  If you are too  under water to even recuse yourself, maybe it's time to step down.
> 
> So in columns F to O we should see explicit responses from every committee member, in a timely way.
> 
> Joachim doesn't like spreadsheets like this because they can easily get out of date.  But it must be better than manually trawling email. And it is up to each of us (not Joachim) to fill in our own column for proposals in our inbox.
> 
> If we don't like it, we can change it.  You all have edit rights.
> 
> I have populated it with data from Joachim's message of 2 Sept, but there has been some action since then, so shepherds please update it.  This is not Joachim's task!
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Simon
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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