Allow any Voting Member to initiate nomination process for adding new role members

[dhomeier]

In response to https://github.com/astropy/astropy-project/issues/435#issuecomment-2239194529 this PR is modifying the nomination policy to permit any Voting Member to invite a nominee, open a PR and send the announcement to start the voting period, i.e. the first 5 steps described in the nomination process. It also changes message templates accordingly.

In the present form, this does not specifically mandate any confirmation from the CoCo in this phase, though this could still be added – specifically, if maintainer_access.md should still mention "acceptance [of the nomination] by CoCo" this should indeed be confirmed before step 1.

[pllim]

From 2024-08-05 CoCo tag-up: Open this to voting member and ~named roles on Team page~ (@eteq will clarify).

[dhomeier]

Sounds like a good solution to me; especially this might include a maintainer for a different coordinated or subpackage that however has a strong dependency on the one needing the new member.

[pllim]

2-week comment period has started: https://groups.google.com/g/astropy-dev/c/w9GI11G4H0Q

[eteq]

The two week comment period has passed, the CoCo also discussed as is happy with this once @dhomeier addresses @mhvk's point. After that this is ready to be merged.

[dhomeier]

I like it in general. But I think personally I would tend/prefer to check with others before just sending a message to someone nominating them. Is that something worth mentioning? At some level it is obvious.

Hi @mhvk, I just realised that I had probably misread your suggestion, thinking you meant checking with the nominee. I assume now you mean checking with other members if they support that nomination? That is also sensible, and perhaps to some degree obvious, but I find it hard to codify in a rule. Could you confirm if this reasonably phrased?

[pllim]

Given all the approvals and resolved discussion, I merged this. Thanks, all!

[pllim]

Should the first paragraph in adding-new-role-members.md be updated also?

[dhomeier]

Updated to say what? The process itself is still ultimately in the hands of CoCo; I don't see much to be changed there.

[pllim]

Here is the current wordings:

---

This document describes the process for adding new people to named roles. This document is not about how people are nominated for a role in the first place, but rather the process by which they are added once nominated. The process itself is in the hands of the Coordination Committee according to APE0.

---

The "This document is not about how people are nominated for a role in the first place" part threw people off. Because they thought only CoCo can make the nomination, which is in conflict with our updated Step 1.

[dhomeier]

I thought it was about the third sentence; that second sentence had me confused a bit as well, but not because I read it as “only CoCo may nominate people”, but because it gives the impression the nomination process itself is described in another document. But that document is APE 0, which states

Anyone can be nominated as a Voting Member by providing evidence of meeting the requirements laid out in the Membership section above. Both self-nominations and nominations by others are allowed.

So nomination has always been open to everyone, nothing about that has changed with this PR.

[pllim]

Maybe we should either point to specific section in the APE 0 or repeat the text here, because APE 0 is a lot to read and if people read the wrong parts, they can get confused. What do you think?

[pllim]

Anyone can be nominated as a Voting Member

Wait... when I read the excerpt from https://github.com/astropy/astropy-project/pull/436#issuecomment-2452645047 again, it is about nominating a voting member, not a named role on the Team page.

[pllim]

Please see https://github.com/astropy/astropy-project/pull/452 for a follow-up. Thanks!