Should this repository be renamed and `README.md` updated?

[krassowski]

Recently two well-intentioned attempts at addressing project-wide challenges:

• A New Documentation Working Group jupyterlab/frontends-team-compass#212
• New chat-based communication channel to replace Gitter/Matrix jupyterlab/frontends-team-compass#213

ended up moved/replicated in this (jupyter/governance) repository after their scope was clarified/expanded as project-wide.

Both would have probably benefited from engaging more stakeholders early:

• during project-wide online event, e.g. currently discontinued community call
• by ability to easily broadcast a non-binding, low-level initiative to all sub-projects (council of councils and beyond)

I am sure (and I believe everyone agrees) that both discussions were started in jupyterlab team compass not because they were aiming to exclude other subprojects but because:

• (a) it is easier to start a conversation with the group you know rather than the group you don't know
• (b) it is not obvious that we should discuss such things in this "governance" repository

Even after clarifications in #171 (comment), this repository readme still says:

The purpose of this repository is to formalize the governance process for Project Jupyter

Yes, the decision on forming a working group belongs in EC-level, and yes the decision on embracing a new a chat tool is governance-level discussion, but before we get to this stage I think that in both cases authors proposing these changes were seeking initial feedback to understand who would be interested in respective changes for two reasons:

• to define the scope - should it be jupyterlab only or extend beyond
• to understand if there is a broader interest at all and if the effort is worth pursuing

While I cannot comment for @andrii-i @ericsnekbytes who opened the issues in question, this was certainly what was behind my decision to initially (re-)raise the topic of a new communication channel in a jupyterlab call rather than in this repository (as of today called governance).

I would suggest:

• renaming this repository to clarify that this is the place designated for project-wide discussion on topics that:
  a) have project-wide impact and are not related to technical aspects of Jupyter (code/protocols)
  b) may need to have EC blessing at the end of the day even if they do not need to engage actively at the early stages of the discussion
  Here are some ideas:
  • team-compass (this is the pattern used by JupyterLab, Notebook, JupyterHub, jupyter-server; all of these hold their internal "governance" docs in their team compass); it would be still different from EC compass
  • governance-enhancement-proposals - would go line-in-line with jupyter-enhancement-proposals which is usually about technical changes, and requires approval of SSC rather than EC.
• updating readme to reflect the above
• updating the team-compasses of sub-projects to add a note when opening an issue that idea that could have a project-wide impact may be better discussed here
• considering if there could be a further support for reviving community calls (or a similar effort)

CC @jupyter/executive-council

[ericsnekbytes]

I am sure (and I believe everyone agrees) that both discussions were started in jupyterlab team compass not because they were aiming to exclude other subprojects but because:

• (a) it is easier to start a conversation with the group you know rather than the group you don't know
• (b) it is not obvious that we should discuss such things in this "governance" repository

...

...I think that in both cases authors proposing these changes were seeking initial feedback to understand who would be interested in respective changes for two reasons:

• to understand if there is a broader interest at all and if the effort is worth pursuing

I can confirm these 3 points above (as an author of one of the proposals mentioned), this post is pretty much spot on. I support the broad goals of this proposal.

Here are some ideas:

• team-compass (this is the pattern used by JupyterLab, Notebook, JupyterHub, jupyter-server; all of these hold their internal "governance" docs in their team compass); it would be still different from EC compass
• updating readme to reflect the above
• updating the team-compasses of sub-projects to add a note when opening an issue that idea that could have a project-wide impact may be better discussed here
• considering if there could be a further support for reviving community calls (or a similar effort)

team-compass I think is too generic and invites confusion with other compasses. I would suggest something like...

• jupyter-project-meta
• jupyter-meta-discussions
• jupyter-meta-team-compass

...to communicate the idea you mentioned above: that this is a place for project wide discussions/actions to happen.

Can you clarify the purpose/focus of the meeting/community call you mentioned?

[willingc]

In the short term (and hopefully longer-term), I created jupyter/docs repo. See jupyterlab/frontends-team-compass#212 (comment) for further discussion.

[willingc]

I completely agree with @ericsnekbytes and @krassowski that having common repos for across the orgs discussion would be helpful.