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New XKit Town Hall #796

Closed 0xazure closed 8 years ago

0xazure commented 8 years ago

@new-xkit/admin, we've been at this since about July of this year and in that time we've made a lot of progress, with 234 issues and 331 PRs closed at the time of writing. The Chrome Web Store reports 259,000 users of New XKit, Firefox's Addon Store reported a healthy number of users before we were taken down, and we'll soon be releasing a Safari version.

Many other projects, particularly those in the Open Source world, host semi-regular group meetings to discuss the past, present, and future of the project. You can think of it as a combination of project retrospective and planning meeting to align the core team on project goals and bring visibility to issues that affect the project and team overall. We're about five months into the project, and I feel we're in a stable enough position that this is a good time to start organizing what I would propose to be the First New XKit Town Hall.

@bvtsang and I have put together a proposed outline and list of topics. We wanted to put this list together ahead of time so that it can be open for discussion and modification, as well as give time for participants to prepare comments and input.

At this time, we'd ask that discussion revolve around only around Town Hall talking points, as the point of the Town Hall is to have a discussion of these points and comments addressing these points defeats the purpose.

Last Updated: 2016-01-14

New XKit Town Hall Itinerary

Topic Ranking Survey

Governance

Town Hall

Any short questions / statements not related to any of the above topics, from both the core team and any interested community members.

Post-Town Hall TODOs:

NOTE: Please do not comment on this issue with answers to the above, as those will be discussed during the Town Hall. Comments should be additions to the topics proposed, or requests for clarification on the above topics.

0xazure commented 8 years ago

We will periodically update the master list with suggestions from the comments below, see Last Updated for a timestamp and a link to the last comment at the time of update.

0xazure commented 8 years ago

Additional points that need discussion:

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

@0xazure will that gitter chat be public? And will people (in case it IS public) that are not part of the team be allowed to have a say?

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

Additional point to discuss that come to my head right now:

nightpool commented 8 years ago

I would like a public-but-moderated channel (where only org member can chat for at least part of the meeting). I dislike trying to keep up with chat in gitter though, it's too easy to have people talking over each other. With that in mind I propose another discussion topic for this issue: what the structure of the meeting is going to be (how long will it take, who will keep track of the discussion, how will we ensure people don't talk over each other, stuff like that, who's going to keep order, stuff like that)

Additionally I'd like to add a meeting topic: the state of our infrastructure, including XCloud, NewXKitBot, our blogs, and discussion any infrastructure projects we want to handle in the future. On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 12:26 PM Wolvan notifications@github.com wrote:

Additional point to discuss:

  • Adding new members to the official team
    • Do we accept new Team members
    • What do people have to do to be allowed to join the core team
  • Other NXKit Org Projects (_cough_pipelinecough)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/796#issuecomment-159348228.

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

I second the infrastructure discussion. Also, having people be able to read what we discuss but not be able to type is what I'd find a good idea

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

@nightpool do you haev an alternative to gitter? Also, we should probably decide voice(+recorded) or text-only

invalidCards commented 8 years ago

/me butts in with Discord

nightpool commented 8 years ago

@wolvan the only other solution would be hangouts or something, I guess. not sure if people want to go that way though.

On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 2:03 PM ThePsionic notifications@github.com wrote:

/me butts in with Discord

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/796#issuecomment-159373838.

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

You mean Google Hangouts? Not really a fan of that, unstable as hell. Or do you mean because of recording? Recording definitely is not a big deal, I have tools to record any program on my PC

nightpool commented 8 years ago

@wolvan do you know of a better voice chat application that doesn't require yet another thick client?

On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 2:07 PM Wolvan notifications@github.com wrote:

You mean Google Hangouts? Not really a fan of that, unstable as hell. Or do you mean because of recording? Recording definitely is not a big deal, I have tools to record any program on my PC

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/796#issuecomment-159375088.

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

@ThePsionic

/me butts in with Discord

Discord has a very well functioning web interface, @nightpool. No client required

bvtsang commented 8 years ago

I've added the following topics:

@Wolvan I don't want to include Pipeline because it's separate from New XKit. If we're going with @nightpool's suggestion to make this public-but-moderated, then I really don't want to give the public any false hopes that Pipeline could be finished anytime soon.

RE Discord: We already have a Discord server up. Feel free to join to test it out, look around, etc.

RE date, time, and length: what about some time before Christmas? I don't anticipate to be busy then. Also, is an hour sufficient time to discuss all the above topics? There's a lot to go through, so we may want to allot more time or divide the town hall into separate days.

RE structure of the meeting: What if we appoint one person to be the lead and another person to be the moderator? The lead will be responsible for presenting the list of topics and the moderator will be responsible for making sure people stay on topic.

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

@bvtsang Pipeline was just an example project that our team is working on apart from New XKit. I just want to address how we handle other projects in general

bvtsang commented 8 years ago

@Wolvan As of this writing, the new-xkit organization has the following projects:

Three of the four are related to XKit and will be discussed (as part of infrastructure). If we generalize, we could say that only XKit-related projects are viable for discussion in the Town Hall.

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

fair enough I suppose, @bvtsang

nightpool commented 8 years ago

I would also prefer to address the full governance of all new-xkit associated projects. On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 3:05 PM Wolvan notifications@github.com wrote:

fair enough I suppose, @bvtsang https://github.com/bvtsang

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/796#issuecomment-159389737.

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

Another point that @0xazure reminded me of (thanks bud): Distribution of control over for example the bot, the extension pages in the appstores, the organization itself.... I hope you know what I mean

hobinjk commented 8 years ago

I agree with the importance of these topics. Discord looks like a great way to have a spoken discussion. Scheduling will probably end up being the chief difficulty with this.

dlmarquis commented 8 years ago

Re: meeting infrastructure:

We should designate a note-taker so that we have a written record of things we discussed. This can be done during the meeting, or someone can volunteer to go over the recording later. Format could be anything from full notes to "discussed Edible Reblogs: 01:23:00--01:35:45"-style bullets. Just something more convenient than having to listen to the whole thing each time we need to reference it.

For mobile: We have no plans for apps, but I've been adding mobile site support & features for the browser. This is largely for my own sanity, but I'd like to know a bit about how y'all handle those PRs. Are they being tested/should I expect things like ui design to be critiqued or just does-it-function-type stuff/etc.

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

If we don't do text-only chat I agree with @dlmarquis. Having a good transcript of what's being said to publish for people to read would help a lot, not only them but also us

nightpool commented 8 years ago

If we can figure out a general timeline for this (probably after thanksgiving?) I can set up a when2meet

On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 8:58 PM Wolvan notifications@github.com wrote:

If we don't do text-only chat I agree with @dlmarquis https://github.com/dlmarquis. Having a good transcript of what's being said to publish for people to read would help a lot, not only them but also us

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/796#issuecomment-159463132.

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

I propose the Town Hall to be on a saturday. I think the middle of the weekend might help us with timezones

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

@bvtsang and me have been talking about this, but since the Town Hall is going to be public, how about we give the people who are there the chance to ask questions after we finish the core of the town hall (as kind of an extension to the open floor or something)

Additionally, I propose the 12th december to be our date for the town hall, preferably around afternoon or evening UTC time

nightpool commented 8 years ago

yeah, I was assuming we'd have some sort of open floor.

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 10:54 AM Wolvan notifications@github.com wrote:

@bvtsang https://github.com/bvtsang and me have been talking about this, but since the Town Hall is going to be public, how about we give the people who are there the chance to ask questions after we finish the core of the town hall (as kind of an extension to the open floor or something)

Additionally, I propose the 12th december to be our date for the town hall

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/796#issuecomment-160669509.

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

Should we talk about donations as well?

0xazure commented 8 years ago

I think we always anticipated having some kind of moderator, regardless of what means of hosting we decided on. Though @nightpool you said

[in Gitter] it's too easy to have people talking over each other

I'd actually disagree. It would be significantly easier for people to "talk over" each other over a voice communication solution. At least with text there's a non-transient form of what was said that could be referred back to at the individual's own pace, rather than the pace of the (oral) conversation.

I'm rather ambivalent around text vs voice, but I'd just like to note that I think text-only would make it more difficult to lose discussion and would also preserve an easier record to turn into meeting notes. On the other hand, Discord does provide some nice functionality in terms of muting users and controlling permissions in both voice and text channels, which Gitter (and other text-only mediums) lack. If we go with voice chat, there would need to be agreement from all participating parties to allow recordings to be taken, even if those recordings are simply for generating meeting notes and a written documentation of the meeting. (This may also be a Legal Thing, particularly since we're international.)

Regarding date, time, length, I would tentatively second scheduling some time around the Christmas period. Given the number of topics and the size of the team, we're probably looking at ~2h+, but I think once we've firmed up the topics we should look at prioritizing them so that if we run over time we can be sure we've covered the most important ones. We could set up a Strawpoll or something to that effect for ranking.

As far as the project scope of this Town Hall, I'd like to limit it to XKit-related projects (XKit itself, XKit infrastructure like NewXKitBot, and XCloud) only. My understanding (@blackjackkent correct me if I'm off base here) is that Pipeline needs to have an internal discussion regarding the org and governance and get itself straightened out.

@Wolvan

Distribution of control

This is an interesting point, I'll update the master list with something to this effect.

how about we give the people who are there the chance to ask questions

I've updated the "Open Floor" section to hopefully clarify this. Provided there are community members that want to get involved and/or ask questions, I don't see any reason we can't include them.

donations

I don't think there's anything to talk about? We don't have any operating costs as far as I'm aware, and we've covered the cost of the Apple Developer Program (though that will come up for renewal on an annual basis).

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

I meant donations that we distribute under us team members. Also, @ChuckL does in fact have operation costs (even if they're tiny) and as you mentioned, the developer program costs yearly

bvtsang commented 8 years ago

@nightpool Do the weekends + Fridays in 12/6-12/20 work as a viable range for a when2meet?

@Wolvan Do you mean to add to the list of Town Hall topics the potential to accept and distribute donations (to overrule our current "we're not accepting donations" stance)? Or the logistics of distribution for existing (@ChuckL's) and future operation costs? Or something else?

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

I meant the potential to accept and distribute donations, yeah

blackjackkent commented 8 years ago

@0xazure Yes, Pipeline should probably be discussed in a different context; that's got its own set of issues and I don't want to add scope creep to the discussion.

I've been sort of out of the loop here bc traveling/company, but I'm inclined to lean towards text rather than voice for the discussion bc A) paper trail and B) easier to have everyone be heard and not talked over. I think we should definitely still have a moderator though (and everyone agree to be directed by that moderator as far as organizing the conversation).

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

Discussing pipeline is out of the question, but I would definitely like to discuss on how we will distribute our time between all the projects

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

Another suggestion: Organization of new-xkit org itself. As in, management of the org teams. Right now we only have the admins team afaik. What if we have "support" teams and something the like as well, people who don't handle coding but are responsible for helping users out. This is just an example group, I'd like to discuss this more in dev in the town hall meeting

nightpool commented 8 years ago

Would love to add more people without having to trust them with reviewer rights. On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 2:02 PM Wolvan notifications@github.com wrote:

Another suggestion: Organization of new-xkit org itself. As in, management of the org teams. Right now we only have the admins team afaik. What if we have "support" teams and something the like as well, people who don't handle coding but are responsible for helping users out. This is just an example group, I'd like to discuss this more in dev in the town hall meeting

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/796#issuecomment-161748297.

bvtsang commented 8 years ago

I've set up a when2meet. Note that the times listed are in UTC.

Here is a summary of other things we've touched upon, but haven't finalized:

Suggestion: use Discord, but without voice chat. This will preserve chat history, allow us to have a period where only developers can talk before opening discussion to the public, and not require meeting notes.

0xazure commented 8 years ago

discuss on how we will distribute our time between all the projects

I don't feel this should even be up for discussion. I would expect core team members contributing to side projects to be responsible for their own time management, and I don't think they should have their contribution time micro-managed. I can understand concerns about future "brain drain" as core team members cycle off to work on other projects, but we aren't in a position yet where that is a concern, and that discussion is closely linked with discussing projects like Pipeline "in a different context", as @blackjackkent said.

Suggestion: use Discord, but without voice chat.

:+1: from me. It's unfortunate that Gitter lacks chat controls like controlling who can speak at a given time in a channel.

0xazure commented 8 years ago

I'd like to close the suggestions for additional topics on this issue on 2015-12-12, so if you have any topic suggestions to add please try and get them in before then. I'd like to get the order of discussion hammered out, and I'll be sending a link for a ranking poll on the same day via Gitter so we can start to prioritize topics to fit into the time window so we can cover the most important and/or pressing items first should we start to go over time.

hobinjk commented 8 years ago

I'm adding an additional topic to cover the adoption of http://todogroup.org/opencodeofconduct/. Sorry for the delay in proposing this.

nightpool commented 8 years ago

was just about to say that same thing about a code of conduct for both our repos and, more importantly, our chat.

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 2:53 PM James Hobin notifications@github.com wrote:

I'm adding an additional topic to cover the adoption of http://todogroup.org/opencodeofconduct/. Sorry for the delay in proposing this.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/796#issuecomment-164876263.

0xazure commented 8 years ago

Meant to comment on 2015-12-12, but since we haven't settled on a date yet I thought I'd leave discussion open for a bit longer.

With this, I'd like to freeze the addition of new topics and instead continue refining the existing topics that have been put forward.

I have also prepared a survey (note: there are multiple pages) to gather feedback on prioritizing the current topics for discussion. Would really appreciate everyone's input so we can cover the most important ground first during the allotted time, once we've set a date.

nightpool commented 8 years ago

few questions:

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

Going unlisted isn't really working anymore, since we already tried and failed that, right?

bvtsang commented 8 years ago

The topics are frozen because there are too many things to discuss, and we may not have enough time to go through them all. With the number of members we have right now, we may easily keep talking for more than two hours, and based on our first when2meet we can't guarantee two hours for everyone.

The XKit 8.0.0 topic is about things that will go into that specific release. The Future XKit Versions is a generalized discussion of XKit 8.0.0 where we decide the process of defining what goes into XKit 9.0.0, 10.0.0, etc. They are separate topics because one is about the present and the other is about the future.

0xazure commented 8 years ago

@nightpool:

if we haven’t decided on a time, why have we frozen the topics?

We've frozen the topics so we can start prioritizing them. I'm already concerned about fitting everything we already have into a reasonable meeting window; I think sticking with what we have so far will be the best use of the time. Additionally, there hasn't been much movement on this issue (barring @hobinjk's addition 2 days ago) within the last week, I feel it's unlikely that we'll be getting any more additions. If this isn't the case, by all means, but I did give sufficient notice (and some extra).

what voting method are we using to compile the rankings?

Not sure I understand. It's a ranking system. The survey itself has details.

[...] separate topics, but the new initiatives aren't?

Do you mean why the Papercut Project and Analytics aren't separate topics?

but before we discuss XKit 8 we have to discuss future projects that could make up XKit 8, no?

We've (I've) already started compiling a Milestone of features for v8.0.0. There are already a lot of feature requests that can get taken care of together as we implement certain changes for v8.0.0. Have a look at the milestone (which, during the TH, we can all discuss and suggest changes to same).

As @bvtsang said, "Future XKit Versions" is about defining a process for major release changes going forward, as opposed to dealing with a specific release and its features.

infrastructure discussion go under org management

Yes, I actually like that better too (probably because I didn't make the edit that added those points).

other stuff under "New Initiatives"

But they aren't new initiatives. It's a during-this-Town-Hall where-are-we-currently gathering of feedback. They're fine as a separate topic, but we could nitpick the topic name, sure.

bvtsang commented 8 years ago

@new-xkit/admin The times everyone has agreed to is 1/16, 10-11 PM UTC. But before then, a couple of notes:

That's it! I'll see you all there!

nightpool commented 8 years ago

:+1:

On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 11:26 PM Bryan Tsang notifications@github.com wrote:

@new-xkit/admin https://github.com/orgs/new-xkit/teams/admin The times everyone has agreed to is 1/16, 10-11 PM UTC. But before then, a couple of notes:

  • If you haven't already, please join our Discord https://discord.gg/0a2AI1yBgWncTzSK so we can set up the permissions stuff early (and so you can get a feel of how it works)
    • The general public is also invited to join.
    • For simple moderation and note-taking, there will be no voice chat for the Town Hall.
  • @0xazure https://github.com/0xazure, we'll need the results of the survey http://goo.gl/forms/DYKjebi8BM you passed out so we can properly prioritize our topics. Note that we only have an hour.
  • If you have any other concerns, please let us all know in this issue or in our org chat.

That's it! I'll see you all there!

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/796#issuecomment-171526974.

0xazure commented 8 years ago

I've gone through the results of the survey and, based on the responses, put together the meeting itinerary below. Note that some (minor) executive decision-making has been exercised in order to ensure topic flow, as well as some tweaks because of changes between when the survey was created and now.

New XKit Organization

Future XKit Versions

Platforms

New Project Initiatives

As always, let me know if there are any comments/questions/(constructive) criticisms.

Wolvan commented 8 years ago

This just came to me, @0xazure, but should we discuss palemoon real quick as part of platform as well? Nothing big, just a quick talk over (5-10min maybe)

0xazure commented 8 years ago

should we discuss palemoon real quick

Per my comment on Dec 17th I'd really rather not be adding additional topics to our already-lengthy list.

The discussion around Pale Moon isn't something that can be taken care of "real quick", and I don't feel that sufficient discussion has been had on #900 for it to be promoted to a Town Hall topic. I'd actually like to see #900 pushed back to a feature request issue for discussion instead of its current existence as just a PR.

I feel there are currently too many outstanding questions for Pale Moon to be a productive discussion topic for the Town Hall.

bvtsang commented 8 years ago

Summary posted here: http://new-xkit-extension.tumblr.com/post/139751926379/2016-01-16-town-hall-summary