[GOV] streamlined asynchronous decision making & communication cycles

[fkiraly]

Proposal for implementing decision making processes (e.g., current stage 3 or council decision making, or future decision making models) on discord.

The main requirement is to allow asynchronous participation, for committee members who communicate mainly in writing or via discord.

The design relies on:

• discord channels for communication
• transparent reporting on GitHub
• tied to communication & decision cycles = minuting cycle, usually 1 week or 2 weeks (between virtual synchronous meetings)

channels

New channels in the governance category:

• actions - actions from cycles are announced here (once a week). Public channel.
• decisions - pending decision items from cycles are announced here (once a week), with summary or link to proposed decision and timeline. Votes happen in threads under decision item announcements.
• decisions-reserved, actions-reserved, same as above, but for reserved actions or decisions. Channel visible to committees or reserved scope.
• governance (existing channel) - anyone can table items here for the decision cycle. Content appearing here in any cycle has the same status as speaking in the virtual (synchronous) meeting.

general procedure

• input in the governance channel is presented in synchronous meetings and counts the same as synchronous input
• actions are decisions are minuted once per cycle
• minutes are confirmed (or corrected) in the subsequent cycle
• unconfirmed minutes are published on GitHub (as unconfirmed)
• unconfirmed minutes are corrected and labelled confirmed, on GitHub, once confirmed

Minute publication is as current, in the community-org repository, folder according to committee (e.g., community-council).

[marrov]

I agree with the overall process, just a few minor comments:

• The responsibility for publication of actions and decisions in the new discord channels is not clear and so may be not done in time. Maybe the person who is minuting should do this?
• If someone wants to participate in the decision but has no time to review the material before voting is should there be a mechanism to delay the decision making e.g. for one week. If so should there be a max and should there be decisions that cannot be delayed (fixed deadline)?
• Minor gripe: I feel that making the minutes as currently in hackmd and then moving the md to github is potentially an unnecessary step that makes the github content not up to date. Is there a better way of syncing these (either minute in github directly or have a link to an open hackmd folder in GitHub)?

[fkiraly]

Maybe the person who is minuting should do this?

agreed, makes sense!

If someone wants to participate in the decision but has no time to review the material before voting is should there be a mechanism to delay the decision making e.g. for one week

I thought there is 1 cycle where the proposal is published (not decided upon), and then it moves to decision for another cycle.

Is there a better way of syncing these

Don't know whether there's a better way :-(