Weekly meeting procedure for goverenace

[iceLearn]

The problem

Currently, our goverence document outline the procedure for proposal and how it works on consensus etc. Although we describe how the proposal timeline works on until gaining consensus, we are not explictly saying about the weekly meeting until the section "Urgent Proposals" - https://github.com/crowdresearch/collective/blob/master/governance/process.md

Regardless of urgent proposals we conduct weekly meetings and this is part of our governance procedure. However, in the weekly meetings we are not sure who should be essentially taking part. Can some random people take part and take decisions on behalf of some others proposals? Can some random people speaks for how others opinions on breaking consensus?

These are the key problems I encountered for past few weeks -
1.
In the past ~2 weekly meetings I felt that sometimes proposals were not clearly taken in their full idea or the broken consensus were not understood properly due to the fact that the individuals were not part of the meeting.

At the same time can anyone in the crowd shift the meeting due any condition or how should be the crowd reschedule the scheduled meetings. These rescheduling will have the impact on the timeline of the proposals, how shall we take those into account?

When the project evolve and when we have more contributors, we will not be able to facilitate all in weekly meeting room due to the google hangout limitation. Who should be essentially take part in the weekly hangout?

My proposal

I dont have a concrete solution but my proposal is to include a section "Weekly Meeting" in the Governance document under "Proposal Process" where explicitly define the process.
It will explicitly address the stated 1, 2. 3 problems.

1. If you submit proposal and it has 3+ unclear questions/ comments from others you are entitled to take part in the weekly meeting. If you have broken any consensus you are essentially required to take part in the weekly meeting or represent someone to express on behalf of you.

2. You are entitled to request to reschedule weekly meeting if you are either a PI, or in any of the Operations group or quality review group.
   ( I dont have a solution to covering the time gaps of the proposal but basically to go by the regular schedule even though weekly meeting delays)

3. We should define who can take part and who are essential to take part in the weekly meeting. I propose to have at least 2 operations 2 Quality review and based on 1 - proposal submitters and those who broke consensus.

Implication

Short term - we will run more effective meetings
Long term - will prevent many confusions and conflicts

Contact

Contact @iceLearn for any questions or @dilrukshi on slack

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Use comments to share your response or use emoji 👍 to show your support. To officially join in, add yourself as an assignee to the proposal. To break consensus, comment using this template. To find out more about this process, read the how-to.

[neilthemathguy]

I'm not able to understand what this proposal is trying to achieve. The title says " Weekly meeting procedure for goverenace". Which governance is being referred here?

In the past ~2 weekly meetings I felt that sometimes proposals were not clearly taken in their full idea or the broken consensus were not understood properly due to the fact that the individuals were not part of the meeting.

Can you elaborate?

You are entitled to request to reschedule weekly meeting if you are either a PI, or in any of the Operations group or quality review group.
( I dont have a solution to covering the time gaps of the proposal but basically to go by the regular schedule even though weekly meeting delays)

Every crowd researcher should have a right to request the time change not just few. Also the meeting times are crazy for many--- I've attended many meetings from 12am - 2:30 am.

We should define who can take part and who are essential to take part in the weekly meeting. I propose to have at least 2 operations 2 Quality review and based on 1 - proposal submitters and those who broke consensus.

What I have noticed is that people join these meetings and don't participate. Their participation is merely 'yes I agree'. So there are many complications on formalizing who should join and who should not. Ideal thing would be use a tool that allows 100 people join in through a conference.

[shirishgoyal]

Just to clarify, weekly meetings are not binding to resolve consensus or determining the status of the proposal. They just facilitate to bring members together, if they choose to, to discuss issues they feel important. Ideally, as discussed in last hangout, all proposals in current window should be discussed and overall meeting duration should be fixed and strictly followed. In general, all the members of the Collective are free to hold meetings whenever they want to discuss any of the issues/proposals.

[qwertyone]

I am with Neil on this one. I feel as if these are questions to be addressed.

…

On 6 January 2018 at 16:32, Neil Gaikwad ***@***.***> wrote: I'm not able to understand what this proposal is trying to achieve. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#47 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFy3xhBFal70wuygMG_LLvHm09zy8Xiqks5tH5ISgaJpZM4RVR5T> .

[iceLearn]

Thanks all. these are really great questions and valid viewpoints.
Expressing my view to @neilthemathguy -
By Goverence I meant to the procedure document we have in https://github.com/crowdresearch/collective and specifically Goverenace Process - https://github.com/crowdresearch/collective/blob/master/governance/process.md
We have been using weekly meeting wednesday to discuss whether proposal x y z has consensus or not and changed labels according or based on the discussion we have.
But if you notice, the weekly meeting is not defined in a governance process.

And @shirishgoyal's comment of weekly meeting "weekly meetings are not binding to resolve consensus or determining the status of the proposal. They just facilitate to bring members together......,"
I do agree on the last point on that fact that anyone in the collective can have meeting anytime and discuss proposals /issues. But I am reluctant to think as the wednesday meeting we have been having is just to bring members together and discuss.
In other words my proposal is to make it part of the governance process to have the weekly meeting in (this case wednesdays 9pm PDT).
So I propose to add a paragraph which explicitly define the weekly meeting policy. Currently there is nothing specific about it.

Elaborating more in first quote @neilthemathguy , please feel free to ping me on slack, I am happy to express more details in a hangout if things here are not clear or I dont want this comment to be super long.
What meant was during past few weeks of weekly meetings we have discussed proposals one by one whether what stage is it in.. or does it need more clarifications, while we discuss some of the proposals we sometimes expressed our inability to understand what exactly meant by some proposals or some breaking consensus. We sometimes use "I can't speak for him/her but I assume this what they meant" etc..
My genuine attempt here is to make less confusing so the proposal submitters or those who break consensus take part in the meeting it is less likely to have mis-interpretations.
But I understand that it is not possible for every proposal, that is I mentioned or propose based on the confusing proposals its best if they take part in the meeting.

@neilthemathguy on your second comment -
I agree every crowd researcher should have a right to request the time change not just few. and also there were occasions that (m)any members who took meeting in odd times. such as 12am to 5am
But the point I want to make is this weekly meeting is sometimes crucial and some important decisions are made during that. If we do not have a clear policy on how we change and reschedule it will lead to conflicts in the long run. I am seeing more of future than immediate present where handful of us can quickly adapt for change of time.

I am more than happy to see the last idea of having a conference tool that support 100 people, but the main idea of my proposal is to define the weekly meeting in the governance process and come up with some policies where we can effectively conduct it based on the problems I mentioned as 1 2 3 or there may be more.

Yet I feel it is confusing to mention weekly meeting under Urgent proposals but not anywhere else in the document as a process.

In order to understand more of your thoughts - @neilthemathguy @shirishgoyal @qwertyone
Do you think we should not add the weekly meeting in the Governance process, if so why?

[qwertyone]

It is not in the nature of this group to have a specific time that does not conflict with role and geographic constraints as well as provide remuneration for members who volunteer their time to serve in bigger roles. It has been my experience that the meeting times for this group favor the US and India, which pushes meetings to the early mornings for those in Europe. As well as being a dedicated parent usually involves a commitment in the afternoons to keep a child entertained and fed, which happens to the second time when meetings fall. As such, it is a battle of attrition to address the group's morning demands and an unsustainable sacrifice of the prime time activities for my child. As a result, many of the meetings seem to favor those who are in more stable positions. The issue of remuneration would free up individuals to focus their energies on the demands of larger roles, since another meeting requires more time commitment. I anticipate that the growing demands for meetings and the accompanying preparation and post meeting commitment will force people to select more narrow roles as this effort grows. What should be maximum expected devotion of time per week for volunteers?

[iceLearn]

Just to make more of the point accross I take @shirishgoyal' s view

Just to clarify, weekly meetings are not binding to resolve consensus or determining the status of the proposal. They just facilitate to bring members together, if they choose to, to discuss issues they feel important.

before we adopt the goverance process, we used weekly meeting to identify key milestones, progress and some important decisions were taken in those meetings
After adopting goverance process we had disucced about the proposals and that was the primary objective of the meetings.

Ideally, as discussed in last hangout, all proposals in current window should be discussed and overall meeting duration should be fixed and strictly followed.

Yes, in otherwords you are agreeing we should dicuss about proposal in the meeting which is primary reason to meeting

In general, all the members of the Collective are free to hold meetings whenever they want to discuss any of the issues/proposals.

Yes, collective is free to hold meetings, yet can only few random people discuss in a meeting and based on that can they change anything? such as they decide proposal x has consensus and change lebel? or take decisions on what do in prospect time.

My interpretation is, at least key people should take part and we should have a defined meeting which dicuss about the proposals - which is the weekly meeting which we have used.

All I am saying it to add the weekly meeting as a defined process and introduce policies if someone want to change it.

[markwhiting]

@neilthemathguy are you intending to break consensus here? Its not using the template or providing a suggestion as intended. Either one is fine, just wanted to clarify.

[qwertyone]

I am going to put this out there, the governance meeting is important to maintain the 'rule of law' and maintain fairness across proposals. As such, activities that reschedule meetings can compromise the system to meddling for personal gain.

[markwhiting]

Broken consensus timed out on this because of no update after a week, and consensus has been regained.

[neilthemathguy]

@qwertyone As such, activities that reschedule meetings can compromise the system to meddling for personal gain.

Could you elaborate?

[neilthemathguy]

The label broken Consensus here was related to Needs More Information. It has clearly stated in the comments. As it has happened in many proposals, we had to create the label needs more information to address this issue where the proposal doesn't have enough information to decide whether to have consensus or not.

You can notice that in the above comments and one by @qwertyone ``As I am with Neil on this one. I feel as if these are questions to be addressed.''

[markwhiting]

Thanks for clarifying your broken consensus comment, @neilthemathguy. As I mentioned above and in the meeting, this was given consensus because of the governance process rule on breaks in consensus that are not updated for some time. Specifically:

If a member of the Collective previously expressed disagreement, which led to a lack of consensus, but then has not replied for an entire weekly cycle — from weekly deadline to weekly deadline — their disagreement is considered resolved and consensus is assumed.

I'm not sure what other alternatives there are from that perspective, but I'd be interested to hear if you think there's another path forward that falls within our governance mechanism.

Additionally, the more information tag, while useful to indicate that more information is needed, is not something that we currently have policy around. When this was introduced we explicitly said that to use that formally a policy should proposed and our documents should be updated (I think we talked about this during this weekly hangout). I think its a good idea for us to have a mechanism like that but as we agreed then, it seems critical for us to formalize it if we are going to use in a way that could potentially delay proposals.

[neilthemathguy]

Yes, based on the governance process and rule you listed above, the transition to the proposal has consensus is absolutely correct.

If a member of the Collective previously expressed disagreement, which led to a lack of consensus, but then has not replied for an entire weekly cycle — from weekly deadline to weekly deadline — their disagreement is considered resolved and consensus is assumed.

It is still unclear to me what are the actionable items came out of this and what problem they solve. It would be better to summarize them.

I saw the hangout and it was disappointing to see people who have no context about things make guesses and accuse others. This defeats the governance process and its objectives. The consensus model is for making better decisions, hearing other perspectives, and improving the practice. Where is that happening?

[shirishgoyal]

Yes, collective is free to hold meetings, yet can only few random people discuss in a meeting and based on that can they change anything?

@iceLearn First of all to clarify, this wasn't the case. Random people were not discussing in the meeting and yes, some people have publicly mentioned they are not meeting person OR they don't join meetings. So it was mandatory to add one's comments to the proposal to express their opinion. Meetings as mentioned before were not mandatory (accounting for timezones and people's personalities) but yes, proposals can still be discussed and others can add comments if they can derive some fruitful insight from that discussion to the proposal.

Secondly, the labels for consensus are changed following the governance process and it can be done after specific time. To even make it simpler, I would suggest to leave this update to participants of the proposal and anyone who breaks consensus.

As a result, many of the meetings seem to favor those who are in more stable positions.

@qwertyone I really don't understand what you mean by "stable" here. There is no such "stable" position in the Collective. One's stability is only defined by their participation and time they commit to the Collective.

I am going to put this out there, the governance meeting is important to maintain the 'rule of law' and maintain fairness across proposals. As such, activities that reschedule meetings can compromise the system to meddling for personal gain.

No meeting reschedules should tamper with governance process as mentioned earlier. The governance process is just meant to be followed and executed. Anyone in the Collective is free to make a call for meeting and host it based on their agreement with attendees. This has no binding on governance procedures. No, the meetings cannot maintain the "rule of law", right now only proposals which reach consensus do. No, the meetings cannot maintain fairness across proposals as not everybody can join these meetings and these meetings are short enough that not all proposals can be discussed for fairness/quality. So, comments are appreciated in proposals to keep everything documented and visible to the community.

Without a summary (when breaking consensus happened) on a proposal, it cannot reach consensus as it doesn't give any concrete idea on whether participants assimilated the ideas from other conflicting thoughts or not and, what the final proposal looks like.