Monthly (or bi-weekly?) co-working, issue-triage and PR-review sessions #167

fr33domlover commented 2023年02月22日 22:08:25 +01:00

SITUATION:

• When I work on my tasks alone, I feel less togetherness and have less energy than if I work in a shared space
• I often work on the more urgent, higher priority, easy, fun tasks, and as a result, some tasks don't get much attention: The tasks that are annoying, boring, challenging, not fun, but still important for the project and community to function and evolve

QUESTION:

How do we create together energy and space to attend to the sacred work of issue-triage and other important-but-not-exciting work in the project?

PROPOSAL:

Once a month, have a day where we work together on our backlog of tasks, with live chat via Matrix and live audio-video via Jitsi

• A weekday will be chosen here, based on what works best, especially for people interested/committed
• Meeting dates for the whole 2023 will be set based on that, and placed in a calendar for easy tracking
• To support varying timezones, the sessions will last 24 hours, from 00:00 UTC to 23:59 UTC, and people can join when it's comfortable for them
• I think having a short memorable name for these sessions would be beneficial, I propose "Monthly sacred work sessions" or just "sacred work sessions"

REQUEST:

• If you're happy/okay with this proposal, please react with thumb-up
• If you have any concern about any part of this proposal, please comment
• If you think you can benefit from such co-working sessions and see yourself participating in them regularly (even if you have some concern about the details proposed), please react with rocket

Some potential concerns:

• Are you working on Forgejo on a daily/weekly basis and have an idea about what would be beneficial? please comment your advice <3
• Is monthly enough? Anyone thinks it's too little, and we need e.g. biweekly sessions? I'd enjoy biweekly but okay with monthly if biweekly is too much
• Would it better support togetherness, if we do sessions more often, even if they're shorter? e.g. 3 hours biweekly?
• Is 00-23:59 UTC inclusive enough? Is that problematic in your timezone?
• Does the name "sacred work sessions" work for you? Perhaps it's an unclear term and you'd prefer the clarify of something like "monthly co-working sessions"?

**SITUATION**: - When I work on my tasks alone, I feel less togetherness and have less energy than if I work in a shared space - I often work on the more urgent, higher priority, easy, fun tasks, and as a result, some tasks don't get much attention: The tasks that are annoying, boring, challenging, not fun, but still important for the project and community to function and evolve **QUESTION**: How do we create together energy and space to attend to the sacred work of issue-triage and other important-but-not-exciting work in the project? **PROPOSAL**: Once a month, have a day where we work together on our backlog of tasks, with live chat via Matrix and live audio-video via Jitsi - A weekday will be chosen here, based on what works best, especially for people interested/committed - Meeting dates for the whole 2023 will be set based on that, and placed in a calendar for easy tracking - To support varying timezones, the sessions will last 24 hours, from 00:00 UTC to 23:59 UTC, and people can join when it's comfortable for them - I think having a short memorable name for these sessions would be beneficial, I propose "Monthly sacred work sessions" or just "sacred work sessions" **REQUEST**: - If you're **happy**/okay with this proposal, please react with **thumb-up** - If you have any **concern** about any part of this proposal, please **comment** - If you think you can benefit from such co-working sessions and **see yourself participating** in them regularly (even if you have some concern about the details proposed), please react with **rocket** Some potential concerns: - Are you working on Forgejo on a daily/weekly basis and have an idea about what would be beneficial? **please comment your advice** <3 - Is monthly enough? Anyone thinks it's too little, and we need e.g. biweekly sessions? **I'd enjoy biweekly but okay with monthly if biweekly is too much** - Would it better support togetherness, if we do sessions more often, even if they're shorter? e.g. 3 hours biweekly? - Is 00-23:59 UTC inclusive enough? Is that problematic in your timezone? - Does the name "sacred work sessions" work for you? Perhaps it's an unclear term and you'd prefer the clarify of something like "monthly co-working sessions"?

tallship commented 2023年02月23日 00:46:06 +01:00

I don't think tasks of almost any sort that deserve attention need to wait until an arbitrarily assigned window of time is designated - if someone is interested in participating then the onerous is upon them to reach out or perform do-ocracy on their own by selecting that task, engaging it, and steering it through to completion (or as nearly as they can towards that goal).

If someone is having difficulty minding tasks and desires collaboration then they should, by all means reach out (as you have done here).

i.e., I'll be available this evening.

IMO, the existing, proposed, or in-flux governance documentation is in a state of disarray, being difficult to locate in a simple to digest manner, making it a chore just to ascertain the state it is in.

For example, the latest governance meeting's minutes, woefully lacking with respect to particular matters discussed and presented, diverging from, and omitting items, doesn't reflect most of the things discussed, or resolved to be presented as issue discussion items that are not for the participants of the meeting to decide in a vacuum solely based on the consensus arrived at during those meetings - those matters need to be decided upon and tracked like any other in the meta repo's issue tracker.

I can't recall immediately, but believe the file is decision-making .md or perhaps dm .md, that was I think used for some things, and then changed back to agreements .md for some things, in "willy nilly fashion" and back and forth a couple of times... If that's not your preception to then maybe we have an even bigger problem looming.

At the very least it isn't clear, between the times the last two meetings occurred, and wrt updates on the form of those two files, just what occurred, in the form of PRs labeled "wip", and others that were just straight merges.

Upon listening to the recording of this last meeting, it became apparent that "old business" (items agendized left over from previous agenda meeting) weren't dealt with first and foremost as they should be (at all really), and other items that really (IMO) should be addressed and discussed in the meta issue tracker instead were brought to the forefront of the agenda instead, and significant, important verbiage such as "affirmation" and "reaffirmation" that we're decided upon as the useful characterization of actions of/towards team members (all team members - not strictly the security team) responsibilities and how they should be appointed/selected/elected/vouched_for and subsequently occupy/remain in those positions... Well, that and other pertinent items appear nowhere in those minutes - but should.

Further, since the governance meetings are for building the framework to be presented and adopted (or not, following discussion and decision by the community) for the Forĝejo project, and NOT the forum to issue edicts in that vacuum independant of the regular process whereby we have established precedence of publicly discussing those proposals in issue tracker threads prior to arriving at consensus within the community and before resolving to adopt any such codification, it's is wholly inappropriate to "fast track"and deliver by fiat such edicts as official Forĝejo project policy or merge pull requests.

The last two meetings ran out of time without addressing agendized items due to the distraction of matters not prescient to the finalization of producing the documentation specifying the proposal to the community directly relevant to the codification of governance itself and procedure - which itself must be brought to the community membership for discussion, deliberation, consensus or vote, and finality of adoption.

I feel your pain, in working through this, and the frustrations you are expressing. I'm looking forward to working closely with you on this, but there are difficulties that have been raised before with respect to the tools used and available which you and I need to liberate the collaboration process from trying to place round pegs into square holes by attempting to incorporate FOSS based tools not designed for, nor well suited to, collaboration in the development of such documentation, especially when excellent FOSS based tools exist specifically designed for such tasks already exists, yet is unowned, and unincorporated into the business processes of the Forgejo project - for example(s):

• You've created a CalDAV compatible calendar item on a NextCloud server that you've shared, that isn't owned by the Forĝejo project - I have no objections to that at this time, believing that at this point, any good tool is an excellent way to proceed. Does that NextCloud server have CODE (LibreOffice) or OnlyOffice installed?

• Jitsi, Big Blue Button, and Matrix offer good ways to collaborate via audio and text as well - audio discussion at length is almost always quicker and more efficient than text chat or forum posting where expedience is concerned, with text based interaction being the most convenient to preserve emphatic, empirical, evidenciary records of historical significance; audio affords the ability to most accurately discern through vocal tones and inflections the emphasis and comprehension of conversation in much more digestible ways (usually).

• Kan Ban, Mind Map, Document processors, and other task oriented project management FOSS based tools for business processes such as PenPot, LibreOffice or OnlyOffice, etc., Offer the flexibility and collaborative editing, participation, and free-form expressive and creative capabilities to "forge" (no pun intended, and for lack of a better term) drafts and track and brainstorm the business processes in a facilitative way that Forĝejo itself cannot.

• Project ownership of infrastructure capable of deploying and maintaining the availability of such tools is, although something not directly topically in scope with this particular issue being tracked, something of Paramount import that we must address in the future following completion of the governance bootstrap process here that has already taken much too long to even bring as a codified proposal as a discussion to the Forgejo community here.

• As I've mentioned before, but not had the precociousness to assume, nor have I directly asked of him, perhaps @circlebuilder would be gracious enough to offer the Forĝejo project a sub-forum on his Social Coding Discourse server.

Wrapping up

I'm certainly a bit disappointed in the lack of substance given the progress I perceived as having occurred in this most recent governance meeting, beset with a couple of agenda items that subtracted from the most relevant task of the meetings, and would expect that even though those particular conversations were productive, they still must be vetted and eventually resolved as would any other matter in the meta issue tracker and NOT be arbitrarily considered as resolved or decided until those items pass muster though that traditional and adopted process in the issue tracker.

I'll listen to the recordings again and take notes, appending the issue where the link to the minutes was already posted with points i think we left out and should have been included.

Finally, I'll be around this evening if you would like to work on the collaboration that you are requesting in this bug-tracker issue - say, beginning at 04:00hrs UTC ?? If that's not convenient for you, then we can work on discovering windows within which we can generally dedicate to the endeavor. I'll also create a discussion space for us since our private Matrix DM room isn't conducive to enabling the participation of others in this work 🙂

I'll also come back later and cleanup spelling and grammar here with an edit since I was pressed for time and I'm thinking it looks pretty atrocious right now.

ref: here and here

⛵

.

I don't think tasks of almost any sort that deserve attention need to wait until an arbitrarily assigned window of time is designated - if someone is interested in participating then the onerous is upon them to reach out or perform do-ocracy on their own by selecting that task, engaging it, and steering it through to completion (or as nearly as they can towards that goal). If someone is having difficulty minding tasks and desires collaboration then they should, by all means reach out (as you have done here). i.e., I'll be available this evening. IMO, the existing, proposed, or in-flux governance documentation is in a state of disarray, being difficult to locate in a simple to digest manner, making it a chore just to ascertain the state it is in. For example, the latest governance meeting's minutes, woefully lacking with respect to particular matters discussed and presented, diverging from, and omitting items, doesn't reflect most of the things discussed, or resolved to be presented as issue discussion items that are not for the participants of the meeting to decide in a vacuum solely based on the consensus arrived at during those meetings - those matters need to be decided upon and tracked like any other in the **meta** repo's issue tracker. I can't recall immediately, but believe the file is decision-making .md or perhaps dm .md, that was I think used for some things, and then changed back to agreements .md for some things, in "willy nilly fashion" and back and forth a couple of times... If that's not your preception to then maybe we have an even bigger problem looming. At the very least it isn't clear, between the times the last two meetings occurred, and wrt updates on the form of those two files, just what occurred, in the form of PRs labeled "wip", and others that were just straight merges. Upon listening to the recording of this last meeting, it became apparent that "old business" (items agendized left over from previous agenda meeting) weren't dealt with first and foremost as they should be (at all really), and other items that really (IMO) should be addressed and discussed in the meta issue tracker instead were brought to the forefront of the agenda instead, and significant, important verbiage such as "affirmation" and "reaffirmation" that we're decided upon as the useful characterization of actions of/towards team members (all team members - not strictly the security team) responsibilities and how they should be appointed/selected/elected/vouched_for and subsequently occupy/remain in those positions... Well, that and other pertinent items appear nowhere in those minutes - but should. Further, since the governance meetings are for building the framework to be presented and adopted (or not, following discussion and decision by the community) for the Forĝejo project, and **NOT** the forum to issue edicts in that vacuum independant of the regular process whereby we have established precedence of publicly discussing those proposals in issue tracker threads prior to arriving at consensus within the community and before resolving to adopt any such codification, it's is wholly inappropriate to "fast track"and deliver by fiat such edicts as official Forĝejo project policy **or merge pull requests**. The last two meetings ran out of time without addressing agendized items due to the distraction of matters not prescient to the finalization of producing the documentation specifying the proposal to the community directly relevant to the codification of governance itself and procedure - which itself must be brought to the community membership for discussion, deliberation, consensus or vote, and finality of adoption. I feel your pain, in working through this, and the frustrations you are expressing. I'm looking forward to working closely with you on this, but there are difficulties that have been raised before with respect to the tools used and available which you and I need to liberate the collaboration process from trying to place round pegs into square holes by attempting to incorporate FOSS based tools not designed for, nor well suited to, collaboration in the development of such documentation, especially when excellent FOSS based tools exist specifically designed for such tasks already exists, yet is unowned, and unincorporated into the business processes of the Forgejo project - for example(s): * You've created a **CalDAV** compatible calendar item on a **NextCloud** server that you've shared, that isn't owned by the Forĝejo project - I have no objections to that at this time, believing that at this point, any good tool is an excellent way to proceed. Does that NextCloud server have **CODE** (LibreOffice) or **OnlyOffice** installed? * **Jitsi**, **Big Blue Button**, and **Matrix** offer good ways to collaborate via audio and text as well - audio discussion at length is almost always quicker and more efficient than text chat or forum posting where expedience is concerned, with text based interaction being the most convenient to preserve emphatic, empirical, evidenciary records of historical significance; audio affords the ability to most accurately discern through vocal tones and inflections the emphasis and comprehension of conversation in much more digestible ways (usually). * Kan Ban, Mind Map, Document processors, and other task oriented project management FOSS based tools for business processes such as PenPot, LibreOffice or OnlyOffice, etc., Offer the flexibility and collaborative editing, participation, and free-form expressive and creative capabilities to "forge" (no pun intended, and for lack of a better term) drafts and track and brainstorm the business processes in a facilitative way that Forĝejo itself cannot. * Project ownership of infrastructure capable of deploying and maintaining the availability of such tools is, although something not directly topically in scope with this particular issue being tracked, something of Paramount import that we must address in the future following completion of the governance bootstrap process here that has already taken much too long to even bring as a codified proposal as a discussion to the Forgejo community here. * As I've mentioned before, but not had the precociousness to assume, nor have I directly asked of him, perhaps @circlebuilder would be gracious enough to offer the Forĝejo project a sub-forum on his Social Coding Discourse server. ### Wrapping up I'm certainly a bit disappointed in the lack of substance given the progress I perceived as having occurred in this most recent governance meeting, beset with a couple of agenda items that subtracted from the most relevant task of the meetings, and would expect that even though those particular conversations were productive, they still must be vetted and eventually resolved as would any other matter in the meta issue tracker and **NOT** be arbitrarily considered as resolved or decided until those items pass muster though that traditional and adopted process in the issue tracker. I'll listen to the recordings again and take notes, appending the issue where the link to the minutes was already posted with points i think we left out and should have been included. Finally, I'll be around this evening if you would like to work on the collaboration that you are requesting in this bug-tracker issue - say, beginning at 04:00hrs UTC ?? If that's not convenient for you, then we can work on discovering windows within which we can generally dedicate to the endeavor. I'll also create a discussion space for us since our private Matrix DM room isn't conducive to enabling the participation of others in this work 🙂 I'll also come back later and cleanup spelling and grammar here with an edit since I was pressed for time and I'm thinking it looks pretty atrocious right now. ref: [here](https://codeberg.org/forgejo/meta/issues/166) and [here](https://codeberg.org/forgejo/meta/src/branch/readme/meeting-notes/2023-02-20.md) ⛵ .

circlebuilder commented 2023年02月23日 07:02:52 +01:00

First of all I will refer to my #151: proposal to have parallel agile project tracks whereby a steady cadence of actionable issues flow over Kanban boards for each track. I'll repeat the diagram depicting a single project track (Development track):

Project track showing Backlog grooming --> Triaging --> Board planning --> Delivery

Second I fully agree with @fr33domlover that such co-working sessions are great for community vibe and project culture. Like @tallship I don't think there needs to be fixed planning for them. They can take place organically whenever someone wants to have one. And they work in correspondence to the agile project tracks.

@tallship: I'm certainly a bit disappointed [..]

Though I am not disappointed - there's great thoughts and ideas passing the trackers - I repeat that I feel too many things are too large chunks of work, too much information to parse and hence not immediately actionable (and getting less so, with more information being added), and possibly trying to formalize too many things upfront. Hence I started this comment pointing to agility which is the objective of #151.

(I might add to the diagram a dotted arrow-to-self indicating that Board Planning only involves actionable issues)

First of all I will refer to my [#151: proposal to have parallel agile project tracks](https://codeberg.org/forgejo/meta/issues/151) whereby a steady cadence of actionable issues flow over Kanban boards for each track. I'll repeat the diagram depicting a single project track (Development track):  Second I fully agree with @fr33domlover that such co-working sessions are great for community vibe and project culture. Like @tallship I don't think there needs to be fixed planning for them. They can take place organically whenever someone wants to have one. And they work in correspondence to the agile project tracks. > @tallship: I'm certainly a bit disappointed [..] Though I am not disappointed - there's great thoughts and ideas passing the trackers - I repeat that I feel too many things are too large chunks of work, too much information to parse and hence not immediately actionable (and getting less so, with more information being added), and possibly trying to formalize too many things upfront. Hence I started this comment pointing to _agility_ which is the objective of #151. (I might add to the diagram a dotted arrow-to-self indicating that Board Planning only involves _actionable issues_)

circlebuilder commented 2023年02月23日 07:18:17 +01:00

@tallship: As I've mentioned before, but not had the precociousness to assume, nor have I directly asked of him, perhaps @circlebuilder would be gracious enough to offer the Forĝejo project a sub-forum on his Social Coding Discourse server.

Yes, this option exists, and the offer was made several times in #14 Social coding practitioner, e.g. in this comment.

I have recently also discussed this with Ivan wrt the Bonfire project, which may use the forum for discussing Developer Experience and Process Improvement. Subject matter that is somewhat adjacent to daily project work and very much on-topic for Social Coding.

> @tallship: As I've mentioned before, but not had the precociousness to assume, nor have I directly asked of him, perhaps @circlebuilder would be gracious enough to offer the Forĝejo project a sub-forum on his Social Coding Discourse server. Yes, this option exists, and the offer was made several times in #14 Social coding practitioner, e.g. [in this comment](https://codeberg.org/forgejo/meta/issues/14#issuecomment-746210). I have recently also discussed this with Ivan wrt the [Bonfire project](https://bonfirenetworks.org/), which may use the forum for discussing Developer Experience and Process Improvement. Subject matter that is somewhat adjacent to daily project work and very much on-topic for Social Coding.

KaKi87 commented 2023年02月23日 07:43:21 +01:00

As mentioned, co-working sessions don't have to be scheduled.

The existing Forgejo Development chat is basically a permanent co-working chat.

If people want to perform a task together, they can chat about it there, anytime.

If they want to voice chat, they can just join https://meet.jit.si/forgejo-development (for example) anytime as well.

As mentioned, co-working sessions don't have to be scheduled. The existing *Forgejo Development* chat is basically a permanent co-working chat. If people want to perform a task together, they can chat about it there, anytime. If they want to voice chat, they can just join https://meet.jit.si/forgejo-development (for example) anytime as well.

Ryuno-Ki commented 2023年02月23日 12:39:48 +01:00

Thanks for bringing this up, @fr33domlover.

I understand your proposal as a version of editathon (as Wikipedia would call it).
Since we are working across the globe (with a focus on North America and Europe, though) I welcome a 24h meeting room.

This should not stop us from ad-hoc meetings if we feel the need.

Personally, I feel often distracted when working with video chat on. But I enjoy having the ability to socialise. I can imagine that the opportunities can be used for triaging (with subsequent documentation on the issue tracker) or resolving difficult code parts.

I would not want to have decisions to be made on those meetings.

@tallship Text is the most accessible format. Hard-of-hearing or deaf people can't use audio recordings. We don't have transcripts of them. That's out of scope for this issue here.

Thanks for bringing this up, @fr33domlover. I understand your proposal as a version of editathon (as Wikipedia would call it). Since we are working across the globe (with a focus on North America and Europe, though) I welcome a 24h meeting room. This should not stop us from ad-hoc meetings if we feel the need. Personally, I feel often distracted when working with video chat on. But I enjoy having the ability to socialise. I can imagine that the opportunities can be used for triaging (with subsequent documentation on the issue tracker) or resolving difficult code parts. I would not want to have decisions to be made on those meetings. @tallship Text is the most accessible format. Hard-of-hearing or deaf people can't use audio recordings. We don't have transcripts of them. That's out of scope for this issue here.

tallship commented 2023年02月23日 12:55:48 +01:00

@circlebuilder

@tallship: As I've mentioned before, but not had the precociousness to assume, nor have I directly asked of him, perhaps @circlebuilder would be gracious enough to offer the Forĝejo project a sub-forum on his Social Coding Discourse server.

Yes, this option exists, and the offer was made several times in #14 Social coding practitioner, e.g. in this comment.

Thank you Arnold, and...

@circlebuilder:
I can create top-level Forgejo forum space + admin / mod staff assignment to manage. Might call it "Forgejo Labs" for research track of the project. Part happens on forum, other parts on project boards, trackers, repo's.

Ref: here

I'm requesting that you create the top-level forum space for us, "Forgejo Labs" at the Social Coding coding.social Discourse facilities you have so graciously offered.

As per your request here, I'll open an issue for it, and collect interest and parties offering to lend some measure of their time toward curation and fostering the potential a capable and non-ephemeral resource like Social Coding can offer, not to mention additional exposure that a noob-friendly and familiar interface can offer us by creating an onboarding vehicle for those to whom a revision control system like web based "code development platforms" might sound a bit daunting to.

@circlebuilder >> @tallship: As I've mentioned before, but not had the precociousness to assume, nor have I directly asked of him, perhaps @circlebuilder would be gracious enough to offer the Forĝejo project a sub-forum on his Social Coding Discourse server. > >Yes, this option exists, and the offer was made several times in #14 Social coding practitioner, e.g. [in this comment](https://codeberg.org/forgejo/meta/issues/14#issuecomment-746210). > Thank you Arnold, and... >> @circlebuilder: > I can create top-level Forgejo forum space + admin / mod staff assignment to manage. Might call it "Forgejo Labs" for research track of the project. Part happens on forum, other parts on project boards, trackers, repo's. Ref: [here](https://codeberg.org/forgejo/meta/issues/14#issuecomment-746386) I'm requesting that you create the top-level forum space for us, "Forgejo Labs" at the Social Coding `coding.social` Discourse facilities you have so graciously offered. As per your request [here](https://codeberg.org/forgejo/meta/issues/14#issuecomment-746875), I'll open an issue for it, and collect interest and parties offering to lend some measure of their time toward curation and fostering the potential a capable and non-ephemeral resource like Social Coding can offer, not to mention additional exposure that a noob-friendly and familiar interface can offer us by creating an onboarding vehicle for those to whom a revision control system like web based "code development platforms" might sound a bit daunting to.

fr33domlover commented 2023年03月01日 21:17:03 +01:00

@tallship, your very long comment contains useful and important info and feedback, but most of it is off-topic for this specific issue. I worry that when people see such a long comment, they don't even bother to read, and then the whole issue/decision doesn't get the attention it deserves.

Please, let's try to make more effort to be concise and stay on-topic. Otherwise we're exhausting ourselves reading tons of off-topic text.

Anyway, sensing little interest. Re-focusing on my purpose in life, the big picture. Letting go of keeping up with issue triage for now. Closing this issue now.

@tallship, your very long comment contains useful and important info and feedback, but most of it is off-topic for this specific issue. I worry that when people see such a long comment, they don't even bother to read, and then the whole issue/decision doesn't get the attention it deserves. Please, let's try to make more effort to be concise and stay on-topic. Otherwise we're exhausting ourselves reading tons of off-topic text. Anyway, sensing little interest. Re-focusing on my purpose in life, the big picture. Letting go of keeping up with issue triage for now. Closing this issue now.

KaKi87 commented 2023年03月01日 21:51:12 +01:00

when people see such a long comment, they don't even bother to read

Guilty as charged. 😅

> when people see such a long comment, they don't even bother to read Guilty as charged. 😅