Spring 2015 General Meeting

Took place on 2015-05-21 15:00

Agenda

  1. Old Business
  2. sopython-dev
  3. sopython-site re-branding
  4. Moderation
    • If there is an active room owner, let them deal with explaining rules, rather than have a bunch of people pile on and all respond
    • Call garlic if you see a vampire. Even if they’re not the worst vampire in the world, they still shouldn’t be given a free pass
  5. AOB

Room owner topic discussion - This private room is for the ROs to discuss anything sensitive that might need to go on the agenda. Of course, we’re still open to suggestions from non-ROs :)

Why do we hold these meetings?

We like to be open with what we do in the sopython community and with what plans we have for the future.

As such we like to hold these open-house meetings every once in a while for the development team to let everyone know what they’re up to, as well as letting anyone voice any opinions they have to the community at large (be they positive or negative). If you cannot attend the meeting but would like to be involved within sopython then you are of course welcome to bring this up with one of the room owners at a more convenient time.

calming but insanely annoying music Please be advised that the sopython GM will begin in TEN minutes. music continues
Damn :/ It randomly stops working with errors about failing to connect to the Adaptive Server, which is related to FreeTDS, but I'm on Windows, so I'm not using FreeTDS.
8 minutes
tristan's countdown better than NASA's
@BhargavRao Yeah, I'm looking at the docs for pyodbc right now, I was just hoping someone else knew of one they used and could recommend.
Eff you tris. It'll start when I say!
Love you too buddy
@tristan it's okay - we allow these physicists a bit of temporal incausality stuff...
<3
hah, yeah, sorry, i changed it by measuring it
:)
umm... are @davidism and @poke around?
@Ffisegydd I added a last minute agenda item
Rbrb all, sorry I'll miss the meeting but sick wife beats chatroom :)
WAT. Priorities man! Your wife will be sick all evening! See her later! (I kid, I hope Mrs. BobbyG is well)
whipppppped
:)
@JonClements I'm around, but I'm going to be distracted eating this Oreo Pop-Tart
Nah not whipped, she wouldn't mind. Just love that girl!
(Really rbrb)
On that note - I might have to leave half way through because I ... uh... clients!
@Robert hope she's okay mate... all the best
lurks expectantly
@RobertGrant oof, i hope she starts feeling better m8
OK, kind of present
@holdenweb if that's the best you can be - we appreciate it :)
I'll chair unless anyone else really wants to?
Speak now or forever hold your cabbage.
you're the best chair... please proceed
bangs gavel
Okay. Item 0 - Old Business.
Which is a fancy term for "What has happened wrt the previous meeting's stuff.
The first thing we discussed was the use of cv-pls.
yes, I think we got that under control nicely
It seems to be about the right note.
Things still get closed but we're not a barrage of evil.
And we're adding more comments to stuff we close. Or at least some of us are. :)
So no one sees any reason to change the "rule" up? There was some discussion of setting the 10 minutes arbitrarily and then changing if necessary.
I don't think it's necessary to change from 10.
yes - the important thing is we're not seem as "vindicate" - just doing what we need to keep the site in order
It is perfect at 10
[now fully present : apologies]
Awesome. The second thing we discussed was Help Vampires.
wb @holdenweb
We still get them. They're still a pain. Some people still engage them.
'Garlic' helped. It's a useful soft reminder to others not to get wrapped up
I put an item on the agenda for later to discuss some specifics more
Davidism has added a bit about HVs to the agenda, so we might as well discuss it now. As such we'll temporarily jump to Item 4.
ah, ok
I see that the especially insistent ones get kicked after 2 or 3 pages of back-and-forth, which I generally support.
It beats an indefinite trickle of "so, anyone get any new ideas for my problem?" from the subject
We could probably use 'garlic' more liberally...
Topic A: who should deal with help vampires.
I also generally support that, but I wonder if we can be a bit harsh on people who haven't got the vocabulary to describe their problem, but have tried hard / a lot
If there is an active owner in the room, please let them interact with the vampire. If they are in the process of educating/kicking them, don't try to pile on.
I appreciate that there are regulars that know how things work, but having 3 people all saying the same thing, or even worse arguing about what they're doing, is not productive.
Yes, agree with that. One at once. I accept I am pretty new to the situation and can see there's a lot of history.
Just like parenting, you gotta have a united front :-)
@JRichardSnape maybe such people could be directed towards python-tutor@python.org, which is pretty noob-friendly and patient?
None of this "dad said no so ask mom" business
So, taking it/them aside into a separate room is not advised?
Keep in mind that while something might look inocent to you, the owners have an active list of users with bad behavior.
Of course if you begin saying the message (not realising an RO is present) then that's perfectly fine, you can't be expected to know someone is present if they're lurking, just don't say anything more.
Mailing groups aren't a solution for HVs that want help 'now'
So we might be dealing with something that you just don't know the history about.
@tristan fair enough
s/active list of users/active list of users that includes davidism himself/g
Do we stick to the 1 page rule for HVs?
Topic B: respecting the garlic
@Bhar Use your judgement, the 1 page thing was a suggestion.
If someone calls garlic, it's time to take a step back and evaluate if you should continue interacting with the person.
I WANT TO MAKE ONE THING CLEAR HERE
Just because they're not the worst vampire in the world doesn't mean their behavior gets a pass.
Ooh, I love it when you get shouty
the RO's aren't the behold of this room, they're merely your trustrees
everyone here has a right to say what they want to
step out of bounds - we're step in
@JonClements Hello
At the same time, if you think an RO is out-of-order then don't hesitate to speak to them. All I'd say is speak to them when the HV or whoever has gone (i.e. don't argue in front of the children :P)
w.r.t. garlic I think "take a step back", yes. But not necessarily stop. I have one specific recent example in mind where the leadup to interacting with me was ... misguided?... and I called it out, but actually the problem was really hard, they had tried hard and in the end was a justified question.
I got confused by this conversation because there didn't appear to be any HVs in the room at the time. We need a way to distinguish code words from actual food chat XD
Yes, please don't keep interacting with the vampire or kicked user. The owners can be questioned, but it doesn't really help matters to start some discussion while the vampire is still present.
@Ffisegydd and we've got an email for that
Of course anyone can call 'garlic' but I reckon that the person who's currently engaging the HV should then do their best to wind down the interaction. But if they're don't / can't do that, a RO should intervene.
Yeah definitely, there's no need to be rude.
Another strategy, if you just really want to help, is to open a room for just the two of you. If we've indicated the conversation should end here, that doesn't mean it can't continue elsewhere.
yep. That works (and indeed was what I did with the example I have in mind). Also helps to gently educate away from the "cut and thrust" so to speak
If someone is willing to help and can take it to another room, +1
Okay. Good that's what I was wondering
Is everyone happy with HVs and Garlic? Shall we move on?
Obviously no obligation to do any of that. I think that's the key point. Not obliged to do anything
one sec
I think if I summarise as such "don't do it in our room" - but do it at another "at your costs" - sums it up?
yeah, that's good
The next thing we discussed was making a Python-specific trash room. We did, it's great, etc.
✓ from me
Not much to say on that.
trash-room?
err yeah
the rotating knives is still a great name
oh, I do have something
Yep Zero did a great job there
want to elab. on that for our newest members?
@holdenweb A room where trash from here gets moved to.
@holdenweb when you remove posts from the room (say spam) you have to remove them to another room (you can't delete them, only move).
I would have liked “salad bowl”
Python Trash - The Rotating Knives
So there's a "Trash Room" which is just generic, but we made a Python specific one so all our trash goes there.
One thing I'd like to say on the subject of sending to trash. never mind
It also means that, because we're also ROs of our trash room, we can move messages back if necessary.
cbg :D
Yeah, in case we ever make mistakes. (This never happens, we are infallible.)
Sometimes I worry about the name, because I feel like owners of moved messages conflate "Your message was moved to the trash" with "you are trash"
cbg @AlexanderHuszagh
@Kevin I agree
OTOH, even if we changed the name to The Pleasant Field of Wildflowers, if they want to feel hurt that we didn't like their post, they'll go ahead and feel hurt either way
a@Kevin we could also consider those users that think a downvote the same thing, surely?
Anything else on TRK?
let's get back on topic, @Ffisegydd
We then went onto having an Events feature.
We never actually had an event -_-
This is something I may try to push once I've sorted out employment.
are we done with topic, or move on?
any other words to be said?
we did move on?
That (disappointing) Python Hackerrank thing was kind of an event, right? What's an event in this context?
An Event is an official thing that we do together, set at a time in advance.
Like a hack, or a close-vote frenzy, or a video chat thing.
I tried setting up some livestreaming but it turned out to be hard to get good quality text at a resolution my computer can handle.
@davidism nice music though :)
Yeah, I want to bring it back, just need to mess around with it more.
@Ffisegydd bang on the gavel and let's get bak on point!
Continuing quickly on. We discussed RO coverage. Since then PM2Ring has been promoted, giving us a solid presence in the Southern Hemisphere.
If anyone want to suggest or run an event, please ping us any time, we'll add it to the room calendar.
(And Jon if you want to hurry us on you can bloody chair next time :P)
There are no plans to add any more ROs for the foreseeable future.
okay - I'm leaning back - told off
extra pineapples for @PM2Ring
Finally, we discussed the Room Language.
Congrats @PM2Ring
provides segue
Thanks, guys!
It also means that when we play Risk we now have a good base of operations in Aus.
@PM2Ring oh - did you remember to bring you black cloak?
@JonClements Darn, I knew I forgot something. :)
sighs - at least tell us you got the red candles and the goats head?
English legibility and people speaking non-English hasn't really been an issue, hurray!
Okay. I think that concludes Old Business.
I feel like communication has gotten better, or at least hasn't been a big problem. For some reason there was that period of time when everyone was putting a space before punctuation. :-|
And new-comers are pickin salad faster \o/
Mostly that was to annoy you, I think.
@JonClements is looking a little typo-ey today though. I recommend he open a window, in case of CO2 poisoning.
:)
@Kevin try 18 hours every day - you'll have fun :)
Okay. Item 1 - sopython-dev!
@Kevin CO2 isn't poisonous, it suffocates you. CO is poisonous (locks up your haemoglobin)
I've had to stop Nidaba while looking for a job, so nothing has happened for that.
I'm actually pushing a new version of the site right now.
@Ffisegydd Hopefully, I'll be able to lurk here a bit earlier than I have over recent weeks, eg from 4:00 UTC; OTOH, this rooms generally pretty dead around that time.
We are thinking of switching from mongo to postgres though, so anyone who likes postgres and/or sqlalchemy should get in touch.
I fixed question marks in wiki titles and added redirects for renamed wiki pages.
Nidaba looks really interesting. ARe you looking for active participation, or is it mainly your baby at the mo?
I was speaking to @Jon about subheadings in the sopython rules to be linkable, so that you can direct the user to a particular part of the page.
I'lll speak up here if I may
regarding server wise
you may ;)
@Ffisegydd just started working with sqlalchemy and love it. Good at DB design, but useless at operations
@JRich please, please, please get involved if you want to.
@BhargavRao's suggestion seems good, I second it
Ah - crossed in the post. I've got postgres running and use sqlalchemy for my research data at the moment - happy to help
@Ffisegydd Big PostgreSQL fan
bang gavel Jon has the floor
spent about what was it $80 for about 18 months
Something like http://sopython.com/pages/chatroom#Asking_a_question which will highlight that section would be quite good
just became no good anymore
but thankfually @davidism and @Ffisegydd have taken up the role as admins now
Cabbage :-)
I am late by half-an-hour :'(
(got to rhubarb guys. Will catch up later)
cbg @thefourtheye
tra Int.
@JonClements have you thought of asking the PSF for financial support if it's needed? Or even infrastructure support?
I just came to office to attend our room meeting :'( Is it over?
Not yet
No, half way through.
First of all let's thank Jon for all the work he's put in to the room and the contributions he made. It was very much appreciated.
Yay :-) Cool then
@holdenweb hahah... look at our next agenda :p;
@davidism Yup, melons @JonClements :-)
Yes. Thank you Jon. As a newcomer, I've found the tone and function of the room really good. Melons
Agreed. This is a good room.
Melons to NINJA Puppy!
We've moved the site to my webfaction account, and I haven't heard about any problems. We're looking at AWS when we need to do heavy work with nidaba. But the first step is to more fully develop the software.
@BhargavRao Awww, watermelon to you :D
@thefourtheye Clarified :P
Once I've sorted a job out I will get a (smaller) Linode set up probably to help with development. And because the site won't be ran from it, if necessary I can tear it down.
again: formal offer to help with AWS/deploy automation for when we get there
Oh, you didn't mean the cutest puppy.
Looking into AWS it'll be far too expensive.
you're still the evil puppy
Just the postgres DB we'd need would be more than we paid for an entire Linode instance.
okay - moving forward :)
@Ffisegydd yes, it rapidly gets spendy
Ref Nidaba - @Ffisegydd I'll get in touch post meeting about workflow you want etc ?
We'll have to see what our options are once we have more realistic numbers.
@JRS yeah cool, we can sit down and discuss it at some point.
other dev news
What's this new build then?
so the sopy news infra should be between people, this is a discussion about the "room"
KevinScript update: not dead, only sleeping.
A few minor fixes already went out. We had to change the icon because it conflicted with official Python trademark.
and how sopy and how it affects end users
r.a.b.b.i.t. was on hold, but I plan to start working on that this weekend again. Will try to get it in a state that it can run at least at some basic level in here 24/7 then.
Awesome.
switches to mobile
The official logo is not changed on github.com/sopython
Yeah we know.
logo change? We had a logo change?
We can go onto that in the next part of the agenda.
On that note, if anyone wants to step up on design, the site could really use a better theme and logo.
Ping me any time, or submit a pr, if you want to help.
Yeah. So basically PSF said that we weren't allowed to use the Python logo with modified colours.
So we need a new logo.
ouch
The one we have at the moment is a stand-in that davidism put together.
sopython.com/favicon.ico
They do realize that it’s a block-y thing instead, right?
But we thought that, seeing as how we may change the logo, we could look into re-branding the entire site.
@poke bbah, lemme dig up the term
Is @Peter still around and up to some design stuff maybe?
"After a fairly long and delayed email conversation with David Mert (the head of the PSF Trademark Committee) - it's been decided that we can no longer use our current logo as it's "definitely a dilutive derivative"." - Jon
I think he's been pretty busy with real life work.
“PSF Trademark Committee”…
He's busy playing with virtual reality
brb
a trademark committee…
do they have a coffee drinking committee too?
ya know what
let's keep ours
Let's just alter the logo for That's so Raven so it says "That's SO Python"
huh?
screw it
No.
Sure about it?
I think we change it.
any action they'd take against a community project only weakens themselves
@Kevin I can actually see that working if we make the circle a python. :)
The Disney corporation isn't particularly litigious, is it?
I like the current logo.
Yeah, I put a lot five minutes of work into it!
Yeah they are.
@JonClements whilst I agree with that in principle, I think in practise it could end up with a drawn out disagreement (I'm put in mind of Messrs Stallman and Torvalds)
@AlexanderHuszagh Oh, never mind then ;-)
Disney's not nearly as bad as Tintin though
bangs gavel (we all have gavels, not just @Fizzy)
:p
pycharm 4.5 isawesome
I think I vote "nay" on the "let's keep the logo that we aren't technically allowed to use" movement
really like debuggin and profiler now
Even if we probably won't be actually sued
@JoranBeasley great, but gush about it after the meeting :)
o i c :P
More development news: I've finally gotten around to working on my Stack Exchange API. So far it's got authentication for site, api, and chat, as well as a basic client.
bitbucket.org/davidism/shanty/src
fantastic :)
Ooh, neat
pycharm educational is awasome!
is distracted by link to a codebase
I mean, I doubt disney would sue... If you're using something from Tintin...??
Please stay on topic
They're known to sue individual school teachers who bring in Tintin to teach classes for the day.
Sorry.
@davidism Why are you so good with naming things?
Haha. Ok, what is our current topic?
development, we need more of it
I am also working on wiki history, although I'm tempted to re-work some things with the current system
I'd love to add frivolous features to r.a.b.b.i.t., as soon as the difficult stuff is sorted out (e.g. authenticating and sending/receiving messages)
Apologies that this is all taking so long, I'm doing all this when I have a free hour after work.
Re: RABBIT, I know @poke has plans with node.js, but shanty will also be able to handle chat auth and websockets, so I plan to get something going as well
@davidism I would say no need for apologies - we can all understand that I imagine.
@Kevin You know that that part has been working for months, right? :P
Oh, I'd better get my butt in gear then :-)
As I said above:
14 mins ago, by poke
r.a.b.b.i.t. was on hold, but I plan to start working on that this weekend again. Will try to get it in a state that it can run at least at some basic level in here 24/7 then.
Sorry back now.
What did I miss?
I think that's all I have to say about my work right now.
bitbucket.org/davidism/shanty/src
github.com/sopython/sopython-site
(I know I'm a bit late but) re. logo: I don't want to mess about with the PSF. Yeah they probably wouldn't strong-arm it but who cares? We change the logo.
(I know I'm a bit late but) +1
bangs a shuriken gavel. It splinters the table before getting stuck.
agreed with that
It’s a shame that we have to change the logo, but we should change it.
Yeah :(
@davidism, I was wondering, what do you think of using select2 for tag searching in SOPython site? I could implement it easily if you'd like.
Ok, the plurality appears to be in favor of "change it" so I guess we can un-backtrack back to dev news or whatever comes after that
Plus it's an excuse to re-brand the website to shocking-pink.
If we think about it, our page should probably salad-green and feature a cabbage.
@Ffisegydd your call on the PSF, but (drools into beard) in my day it ws the shape, not the color, that was important. Anyway, ho hum
@corvid sure, I'd love to see a pr for that
someone please make a cabbage theme for the site
Okay. As we've been over Moderation earlier I think that's AOB now?
AOB1. I just got offered a data science consultant job ;)
Nice.
Pineapple!
Congrats!
@holdenweb Colour in trademarks is a contentious issue. Do a search on "Cadbury purple" for an example.
Nice Fizzy!
@PM2Ring whatevs. I've served my debt to Python socirty
What the site needs is a Cabbage Simulator using Three.js and Physi.js
Whoops gotta step out early, bbiab
Cabbageville?
We can pay for the server with microtransactions.
Guys, I'm not joking about this, if you want to add a cabbage simulator, I will seriously consider any prs.
pay $4.99 to play as crazy cabbage man from Avatar the last airbender
aob2: i'll be in moscow in june and berlin in july. if you know of anything super cool happening or want to beer with me, please let me know
@davidism I actually made one a while ago. It's just a bunch of falling cabbages
Any Other Any Other Business?
We could also show ads every hour in chat.. like salad ads from the local supermarket.
@poke local to where, exactly?
Yes, we need to consider monetizing the chat.
no idea
No? Okay. Thanks people.
bangs gavel