How do we make decisions?

Project Discussion
2

At first some casual remarks

  1. Decision is inevitably directly linked to responsibility and commitment to actually implement a decision.

  2. And responsibility and commitment is inevitably directly linked to the authorization to make changes to the repository.

  3. And thus the circle of those who are authorized to make changes are the ones who ultimately and effectively make the decision.

  4. And the circle of those who are currently authorized to make changes is, on the one hand, the group of people who is responsible for the current (somewhat miserable) state of documentation and, at the same time, the only one who could ultimately change and improve it.

I think your considerations fall a little short. The participation of occasional contributors is indeed very important and will be the “icing on the cake” in the future. But we also need to think about how to initiate consistent and continuous evolution and involvement over the long term. So we particularly need “proven contributors” who contribute reliably in the long term.

In the long term, we need a kind of “FESCO for documentation”. And in the short term, we need a migration path to it. So how we make decisions can only be determined transitionally at the moment.

I think we should take 4 steps now:

  1. We need a list of those who have administrative permission to our repos and a statement in each case as to whether they are still willing and able to do appropriate work and participate in the process by contributing hours of work.

  2. We need to decide on a list of the 3 or 4 most essential content items (and possibly tooling needed for this) that we want to achieve in the next about 3 months. We should make this decision at 2-3 consecutive meetings, supported by a discussion thread. That way, everyone who is really interested should get a suitable opportunity to participate.
    This, of course, includes finding people from our community who are willing to commit the appropriate hours of work.

  3. We then need to determine a tool that we can use to track progress and really start immediately.

  4. We can then use these 3 months or so to find a responsible team that is provably capable of bringing about a positive development. And this team then ultimately makes the decisions, of course, on the basis of a broad and consensual agreement. So we get a kind of “proven contributors”.

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