2019 Q4 General Meeting
Kevin
2019 Q4 General Meeting
Tentative time: Friday, November 15, 2019-11-15 16:00:00 UTC
The time is in UTC. Click the link to see your local time.
All members of the community are welcome to participate.
Agenda
- review of 2018 Q3 meeting, including resolutions made:
- Gather objective data on how many gold-badge users the chat room has, compared to other rooms.
- Establish a mechanism for user grievances.
- Put more effort into warning users before kicking them
- Include a link to SOPython’s Github page.
- Hold a meeting one quarter after this one, around Nov 19 2018
- rollover the agenda items deferred from the 2018 Q4 meeting:
- Should we invite new users from the main site to chat, to guide them into asking better questions? Can we petition SO to implement a “invite user even though they’d normally not have enough reputation to talk” feature?
- bulletin board for job referrals
- Should we change our policy about trimming items from the starboard?
- How effective are these meetings at enacting real change? If they are not effective, why not? What can be done to improve this?
- Change room description to remove cruft. Recommendation: “Room rules <link>\n Formatting guide <link>”
- Spoiler feature is not working - remove the link from the room rules page until it is fixed.
- should we have/elect someone to be in charge of these meetings?
- do we want to have a free gitlab instance where regulars can migrate/preserve good question + answer discussions that happen in chat, which can be given a named-and-searchable link on sopython?
- How can we influence new users to ask better pandas questions on the main site?
- proposal: ‘define a consensus list of “the Python SO room’s priority list of unimplemented SO change requests, from 2018 and 2019” [… ] maybe one good approach to take is “here’s list of stuff that is near-universally agreed to be needed across all SE sites, not just SO or code-related sites” […] Then when SO doesn’t do diddly, we can at least say “We requested you guys to implement these for several years running” ’
To add agenda topics, edit this page (if you have 100+ reputation) or ask a room owner in chat. Be specific. Note that except for minor, last-minute topics, we will not plan to discuss anything not on the agenda.
The deadline for adding items to the agenda is 24 hours prior to the beginning of the meeting.
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 sopython.com 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.
Summary of meeting
The room meeting began at the appointed time, at https://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/47858647#47858647, and ended two hours later, at https://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/47859814#47859814. (with some follow-up conversation spilling into the MetaPython room).
Topics covered, in chronological order:
“How effective are these meetings at enacting real change?” Not amazingly effective. Some resolutions go unresolved for years, and there’s no transparency. Resolutions made: create a public tracker for not done / in progress / completed resolutions, and make Kevin give status updates upon request.
“Change room description to remove cruft.” Users expressed skepticism that this would improve engagement, but proposal accepted. Resolution made: strip the room description down to just links, with rules first, then formatting, and perhaps also a link to the wiki. Urls will be shortened with whatever reputable link shortener is available.
“Spoiler feature is not working - remove the link from the room rules page until it is fixed.” Proposal accepted. Resolution made: remove link to spoiler page.
“can we add an explanation of how to use userscripts to the userscript page?” (not a formal agenda item). Proposal accepted. Resolution: add an explanation of userscripts to the userscript page.
“should we have/elect someone to be in charge of these meetings?”. The chairman is already in chage, but an informal nomination/election process may make things smoother. Resolution made: add a section to future room meeting pages for nominating & voting for the chairman.
“do we want to have a free gitlab instance?” The main site and SOPython’s common question page already does a fairly good job at that sort of thing. Proposal vote resulted in “no”. Resolution made: none.
“define a consensus list of the Python SO room’s priority list of unimplemented SO change requests, from 2018 and 2019” et al. Broad consensus is that this would not have much effect on the priorities of the Stack Overflow dev team. Resolution made: none.
“Should we invite new users from the main site to chat, to guide them into asking better questions?”. Users are free to invite new users to chat and mentor them. Resolution made: none, since this is an individual action any user may take.
“bulletin board for job referrals”. Consensus was to keep commercial dealings out of SOPython. Resolution made: none.
“Should we change our policy about trimming items from the starboard?” Current policy is largely unobjectionable, although it’s unclear what the exact criteria is. Resolution: compose a wiki entry describing our guidelines.
“Gather objective data on how many gold-badge users the chat room has, compared to other rooms.” A scan of room regulars in all rooms by Kevin revealed that Python has more topic-relevant gold-badge holders than any other room, by raw count.
“Establish a mechanism for user grievances”. Until such time as a private/anonymous mechanism arises, a meta room will do. Resolutions made: create a Meta Python room for the public non-anonymous airing of grievances
“Put more effort into warning users before kicking them”. Spirited debate occurred about when kicking was appropriate, and continued up to and beyond the end of the meeting. ROs think they’re being pretty reasonable, but this is not universally agreed upon. Resolutions made: ROs should be explicit about what messages are formal RO instructions. When an RO kicks someone, the kick reason should contain a ping to that person.
“Include a link to SOPython’s Github page.” There is already a link in the footer, but a more prominent one would be nice. Resolution made: add a more explicit link to the “Contact Us” section of the /chatroom page.
Kevin apologized on his hands and knees for not holding a Q4 2018 meeting.
The next meeting will tentatively be held on February 7 2020.
Resolutions made
- create a kanban for resolutions. (done, see https://github.com/orgs/sopython/projects/1)
- respond to pings about resolution updates in a useful manner.
- strip the room description down to just links, with rules first, then formatting, and perhaps also a link to the wiki. Urls will be shortened with whatever reputable link shortener is available.
- remove link to spoiler page in room rules until functionality is restored.
- add an explanation of userscripts to the userscript page.
- add a section to future room meetings for proposing the chairman.
- compose a wiki entry describing star trimming guidelines.
- create a Meta Python room for the public non-anonymous airing of grievances.
- add a more explicit link to the “Contact Us” section of the /chatroom page.
- ROs should be explicit about what messages are formal RO instructions.
- When an RO kicks someone, the kick reason should contain a ping to that person.
- hold a meeting one quarter after this one, around February 7 2020.