Beta Discussion: Initiative Approval Process

[ndneighbor]

One of the deliberately open questions we hadn't answered is how do we approve the proposals that are made.

Is there a number of 👍 we should expect on every PR. Is there a group of maintainers ala other repos? Should the process be as formalized?

Part of the medium post here is to start a conversion with people to see where this can go.

[andrewjkerr]

I'd say the best approach I've seen to deciding things on behalf of a community is to have a board of a handful of individuals that represent the community and vote for proposals. Here's a few thoughts on how the board (council?) would operate:

Board Operations

Adding Board Members

There will always be x amount of board members. Whenever a position is vacant, the community will (non-anonymously) nominate additions to the board. After all nominations have been cast, voting will begin. Voting should be anonymous. Whoever wins the most votes becomes the new board member.

What about the initial board? This would most likely be the same process with the top x candidates winning a spot.

Removing Board Members

A proposal can be made to remove board members. If a majority of board members agree to forward the proposal to the community, the community may (anonymously) vote on the proposal.

Proposals

Submitting Proposals

If a proposer would like to be public, they may open a PR.

If a proposer would like to remain anonymous, there should be a way to contact the board to submit a proposal on behalf of the anonymous proposer.

Approving Proposals

The board will vote on proposals. Most proposals would require a majority vote unless y% of the board votes that a proposal requires a majority vote (66%).

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Obviously the only way this works is if the board keeps the community's best interests at heart. I'd love to hear any feedback on how best to keep the board accountable and always voting on behalf of the community instead of themselves. 🏖

[glfmn]

@andrewjkerr, with respect to board operations, I always feel like Benevolent Dictatorship better serves student and open-source communities; with so much turnover it's hard to properly disseminate the information required to have a real democracy.

There's already a standard for how these things are done as well: large volunteer organizations will groom volunteers at lower levels for positions and then appoint them when they are ready, at all but the highest (elected) positions.

I think for approving proposals if at least two reviewers have seen and approved a PR, then it's good to go, assuming our pool of reviewers are just organizers from around the community with an interest in taking on this responsibility.

The advantages are:

• reduced burden on FH organizers
• simple process with precedent in open source
• entirely enforceable through GitHub's built-in permissions system
• tag reviewers based on skills or experience

Some resources and examples to look at for inspiration:

• https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs
• https://github.com/amethyst/amethyst/pulls

[glfmn]

@ndneighbor, any thoughts?

[jalvarado91]

I'm a big fan of this idea @glfmn, a lot of the work on the platform side of things was done to centralize things on Github since everything is already in place and it's pretty low effort/burdening for volunteers. The main idea being to remove the need for a board and have it be an open process driven by the people that want to take action. Plus we can always have discussion on how to proceed on any initiative that may need more involvement.