haskell platform steering committee...

[Duncan Coutts]

On 8 November 2010 09:23, Isaac Dupree <ml at isaac.cedarswampstudios.org> wrote:
> Incidentally, who is actually active in the steering committee?

Your list below is right

http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/wiki/Members#SteeringCommittee
http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/wiki/AddingPackages#History

> I see (if I interpreted correctly) Duncan and Thomas had the great advantage
> of getting to meet and discuss in person.

That was handy but not essential. Don pointed out how we'd not been
doing our job and since Thomas and I were there at the time...

> I'm a silly U.S. person
> without much travel money at present, and a sleep schedule that means
> I'm asleep during European business hours.  If this makes me a less
> effective committee member I could withdraw from that title, or y'all
> could advise me on how to be more effective, or whatever.

I don't think timezone is an issue.

>  I feel okay
> about the current situation though (just wanted to hear what it is from
> your perspective).  We exercise direction; we don't exercise authority.
>  So, as long as it's a consistent direction.

So as I mentioned in my recent reply to Bryan about the process, I
think it would help if we, the committee members, took the active role
in discussions that we originally intended. To do that I suggest that
we assign a steering committee member to each new proposal when it is
first proposed. It would be the responsibility of that committee
member to do the various things set out in the proposal process
document that we all wrote.

Mainly that means making sure that objections etc are being recorded
in the wiki (since long threads can be hard to track) and doing the
call for consensus on specific issues. They could also act moderator
if the discussions are getting off-topic and relieve a bit of pressure
on the package author.

I think we should also re-emphasise the role of the package proposers,
as distinct from the package author.

> It was based on volunteers; there no worries about succession or
> anything; we got about the number of volunteers we hoped for.
> http://www.mail-archive.com/haskell-platform@projects.haskell.org/msg00563.html
>
> Hmm, I looked back on the mailing-list, just to get one sort of
> perspective from the last few months -- Adam hasn't posted much -- I
> realized I maybe haven't posted very much until this week, although I
> have been reading the libraries@ discussions -- Iavor's also posted
> some; and Johan, Duncan, and Thomas have definitely been involved in the
> libraries & platform discussions.

About participation (and I've not been great myself), I think that if
we have a round-robin system of assigning committee members to
proposals then it'll help to prevent the problem that we each assume
the others are taking care of things. If it turns out that a member is
persistently too busy to take the role of guiding proposals through
the discussion then that would certainly be a sign that they should
consider handing over to someone else.

We should also at some point consider the issue of using voting to
resolve particularly tricky issues.

Duncan