Re: [mb-style] Tarragon, Style Council and the winds of change
On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 03:34:37 +0100, Robert Kaye wrote: Mr. Secretary: Thank you for accepting this new job -- the stage is yours! OK, I will not do long talks now. Let's get things done. What currently works well is the community on mb-syle: *You*. You are not abolished at all, you are the ones that make things work, you discuss style issues, you reach consensus (sometimes :-) ). So we keep that. Therefore, the first rule is: (1) Decisions about style issues should be made by the Style Community on mb-style. That community has no formal organization. What also seems to work reasonably well is the trac thingie. From our current practice I thus conlude two other rules: (2) If you do not want a stlye issue to be forgotten, enter it as a Style Issue ticket in trac. (3) If you want a style issue to be fixed, do the work yourself. This last point needs some clarification: You will need an affirmative nod from the Secretary, as you previously needed one from Tarragon. I will check a couple of conditions, like: - Has the community reached consensus? - Have the points on the ChecklistForStyleChanges been checked (Yes, I know this page does not exist yet, I'll have to dig Tarragons mail up and wikify it). - No objections from the elder? If these conditions are met, I will give you an OK and you can proceed. This gives us: (4) You need an OK from the secretary before you change anything official. If you put the sentence Need OK from Secretary in the body of your email, I will filter it, and you can be sure that I don't miss it. If you summarise the answers to the above questions, the OK will come _much_ quicker than if I have to find this out by myself. Also please include a link to the trac ticket. Finally I want to disempower myself: (5) If you are unhappy with a decision of the Secretary, publicly call upon the Elder. Similarily, if no consensus can be reached the Secretary calls upon the Elder This means that if I have overlooked some dissensus, you can stop me, and the matter gets passed over to Robert. Also, if I cannot keep a neutral point of view: Slap me! :-). That's enough rules for now. They are not new, they mostly clarify the actual _working_ practice of this community. I'll set up more rules as we need them, not earlier. So, now you can get going: If you want to fix something, request an OK from me. Hope to get things rolling! DonRedman -- Words that are written in CamelCase refer to WikiPages: Visit http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/ the best MusicBrainz documentation around! :-) ___ Musicbrainz-style mailing list Musicbrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
[mb-style] Tarragon, Style Council and the winds of change
Hi everyone! Tarragon has recently informed me that he wishes to step down as the leader of the Style Council. Given that he declared his tenure to be temporary when he helped us emerge from the SG5 debacle, this is not really a surprise. Tarragon: Thank you very much for your time and helping us out in a time of need. Should I ever get myself down to .au, I will buy you a fine dinner and a few rounds of drinks -- your efforts and support of this project have been phenomenal and I deeply appreciate everything you've done for MusicBrainz. Don Redman and I have been discussing the style council over the last couple of weeks and how we should proceed from here to fill the very large shoes left behind by Tarragon. We feel that Tarragon's work on the ChecklistForStyleChanges wiki page and the adoption of Trac for style issues has provided more structure for us to work out style issues. Given these two changes and the nebulous nature of the Style Council, we believe that it is time to iterate the concept and see if we can establish a system that is a little more decentralized and thus hopefully more scalable. From here on out, we would like to try a two-tiered approach that consists of these two roles: 1. The Elder: This person will make decisions when the community cannot reach consensus. The Elder will read mb-style and generally keep up with style happenings, but generally not get involved in day- to-day operations. Ideally the Elder will not act until the Secretary calls upon the Elder to act. When the Elder is called upon to act on an issues, the Elder may ask the proponents of a style issue to present their arguments for their approach and against the countering approach. These arguments should summarize the issue at hand and distill the essence of the issues in a concise manner that will allow the Elder to become informed of the nuances of the issue and make an informed decision. In essence, the Elder is a benevolent dictator. The position of the Elder is a permanent position. [1] 2. The Secretary: This person ensures that the style process moves forward and continues to work. The secretary remains neutral on style issues and will work to foster consensus on style issues. Should consensus not be reached, the secretary calls on the Elder to make a decision on a style issue. The secretary will play the role of the Elder's right hand in all style issues and will ensure that style rules are being followed and adjust style rules as necessary. This person will require people to check the ChecklistForStyleChanges, open and close issues, give final yeses to style changes if the community reaches consensus. Most of this will be administrative work and this position will rotate every three months. As the benevolent dictator of MusicBrainz, I hereby abolish the Style Council and assume the role of Elder. I choose Don Redman as my Secretary for the next three months. Thank you for all the folks who have participated in the Style Council in the past, but its time to move on and attempt a different structure that we use to deal with style problems. We hope that over the next three months we can set a number of precedents that match our actions here on the style mailing list. Our new Secretary, who is very well versed on social issues in all forms, says that our guiding principles should be: Make rules by making things work along them. Never invent rules before things work. Rules should follow practice, not lead it. In the coming week Don will start by tackling open issues, resolving some and passing some on to me to decide. Mr. Secretary: Thank you for accepting this new job -- the stage is yours! Thanks! [1] Don and I are using Konrad Adenauer, post-war Germany's first chancellor as the example for the Elder. Adenauder had little to no precedents (or they were all really poor precedents) to follow when he started his job. Adenauer set many precedents for all of the chancellors to follow -- many of which are still in use today. More on Adenauer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Adenauer -- --ruaok Somewhere in Texas a village is *still* missing its idiot. Robert Kaye -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] --http://mayhem-chaos.net ___ Musicbrainz-style mailing list Musicbrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
