haskell platform steering committee...

[Isaac Dupree]

On 11/08/10 10:37, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> On 8 November 2010 09:23, Isaac Dupree<ml at isaac.cedarswampstudios.org>  wrote:
>> 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.

Yes, that sounds like a good plan.  If a committee member wants to skip 
because of a conflict of interest, (also maybe particularly *wants* to 
volunteer at a particular time?), we could accept that, but mostly a 
round robin system seems good just to make sure we've got someone on the 
case.  What do we need to do to implement that? -- just keep track of a 
queue of committee members, the next person to facilitate being top of 
the list? (a list on the wiki? except that it's still down, a fact that 
rather pained me that it occurred during an important Platform 
discussion (the 'text' one))

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

Maybe. Continued discussion is surprisingly effective, as are statements 
by respected community members.  I was interested by the idea of voting 
being more for issues of general principle (where any possible vote on 
the principle is one that we could live with despite our disagreement). 
  That could help, except it resolves none of the questions of who gets 
to vote etc.etc., and possibly makes them worse since decisions on a 
principle are expected to keep being applied for years.

-Isaac