Initial Website working group proposal

[ronnzw]

Based on the conversation on issue #2. I have created the initial proposal for the website working group.

• I have proposal for the duties that the group is willing to take and Liaison can add any other responsibilities l might have missed.
• I have added members that have accepted from the list of maintainers and those that showed interest, i will reach-out to the current maintainers of djangoproject.com for their confirmation.
• All aspects of the proposal can still be discuss
• @thibaudcolas agreed to take this to the board for approval as per the conversation
• Chair and Co-Chair to be selected by members.
• I didn't have visibility of the Ops-Team and their responsibilities but we might need to add the team as members, @thibaudcolas perhaps you can help

[thibaudcolas]

Thank you for giving this a go @ronnzw! I can’t review this fully now but:

• It’s really cool to see this happen 😎
• You’ve marked this as a draft PR, are you already looking for reviews or not?
• Please see Initial proposal for social media working group. #6 for an example of the process in action

@thibaudcolas agreed to take this to the board for approval as per the conversation

I’ll only be able to take this to the board once the proposal is completed and there’s a sense it’s "approved enough" here in the pull request. The next opportunity for a vote is the February 8th board meeting, in about 3 weeks – I think it’d be useful for you to decide whether you want to try to make that date or not. If so, please get your proposal completed and informally approved by the group’s proposed members at least 3-5 days ahead of that date so I can raise this with the board and they can review ahead of the meeting.

Could you:

• Fill in all TBA sections, even if just with draft information
• Think of how you want to coordinate with members to pick a chair and co-chair

I didn't have visibility of the Ops-Team and their responsibilities but we might need to add the team as members, @thibaudcolas perhaps you can help

I’ve raised the idea of this group (shared #2) with the Ops team on January 4th. I see we have two Ops team members in discussions on #2. So I think this will be something they can advise on, and I wouldn’t presume their involvement with the WG otherwise. We can ask them for review perhaps, once the proposal has more details.

[thibaudcolas]

Could you explain why you’re proposing a mailing list? They tend to run slow in my experience and are prone to spam. Django has a Discord server where we could have a private channel. The DSF has a Slack workspace. Could we use either of those?

[ronnzw]

Well this is open to discussion, maintainers can decided where they want comms to be. I just remembered that l got involved on the site through the DSF individual members mailing list so i just assumed.

[sabderemane]

IMO, it would be better to use Django discord or DSF slack, discussion would be easier than email.

[jcjudkins]

Is there a DSF slack?

[thibaudcolas]

I see we now have both the Slack channel and a mailing list. @ronnzw I think you need to define how each of those would be used, or if it’s open to discussion then explicitly write it here.

Keep in mind the more clear-cut the group charter is, the easier it is for people to consider joining and for the board to review. So if discussions need to happen, now is the best time to raise this question with interested members.

---

@jcjudkins yes, the DSF has a Slack Workspace for internal matters. Largely this has been used for paid employees, the board of directors, and a few working groups now.

[CuriousLearner]

IMHO slack works fine for the working group. Mailing list can be for discussion among larger audience.

[jacobian]

This all looks super good, thanks for getting it started!

[jacobian]

This is an interesting idea, I hadn't seen it before! What was the reasoning here? Is this something that maybe is a good enough idea we should adopt more broadly?

[ronnzw]

As time goes on people get new commitments and it's not always easy to give feedback on their intentions, especially for people that contribute on multiple projects. Not sure if it applies to all working groups.

[thibaudcolas]

Could we have a shorter term? 2 years feels like a long time to me, if people don’t want to be involved anymore it’d be better for them to be able to head off after 6-12 months.

[ronnzw]

i feel two years is ample time for this type of groups, maybe we can add that individuals can leave at anytime. The idea here is not to keep individuals that aren't interested in the group anymore but haven't found time to notify the team. This is not to stop members from leaving the group.

[cgl]

I also think we could have shorter terms.

[jacobian]

One general note for everyone to be aware of: 20tab has been working on some research towards a potential refresh/refactor/redesign/re-something of the website, so they should, in some way, be included/consulted here -- let's avoid duplicating work. @cgl has been leading that work, she might be able to say more.

[sabderemane]

Thank you @ronnzw for your work on the proposal, I add some comments, happy to have any feedback

[sabderemane]

IMO, it would be better to use Django discord or DSF slack, discussion would be easier than email.

[thibaudcolas]

Hi @ronnzw, just wanted to follow up on my initial message:

I’ll only be able to take this to the board once the proposal is completed and there’s a sense it’s "approved enough" here in the pull request. The next opportunity for a vote is the February 8th board meeting, in about 3 weeks – I think it’d be useful for you to decide whether you want to try to make that date or not. If so, please get your proposal completed and informally approved by the group’s proposed members at least 3-5 days ahead of that date so I can raise this with the board and they can review ahead of the meeting.

The board meeting is now in 2 weeks, so if you want this to be added to the agenda for that meeting, I’d recommend getting this proposal finished and informally approved by group participants by the end of January.

It’s also completely fine if this proposal needs more time – after February 8th, the next board meeting is on the 14th of March. Let us know what you think.

[ronnzw]

Hi @ronnzw, just wanted to follow up on my initial message:

I’ll only be able to take this to the board once the proposal is completed and there’s a sense it’s "approved enough" here in the pull request. The next opportunity for a vote is the February 8th board meeting, in about 3 weeks – I think it’d be useful for you to decide whether you want to try to make that date or not. If so, please get your proposal completed and informally approved by the group’s proposed members at least 3-5 days ahead of that date so I can raise this with the board and they can review ahead of the meeting.

The board meeting is now in 2 weeks, so if you want this to be added to the agenda for that meeting, I’d recommend getting this proposal finished and informally approved by group participants by the end of January.

It’s also completely fine if this proposal needs more time – after February 8th, the next board meeting is on the 14th of March. Let us know what you think.

Thanks for the reminder @thibaudcolas. l would prefer to get this done ASAP(meaning February 8th). Any ideas of how l can get this approved by group participants? Is it just getting their feedback on the issue: #2 ?

[thibaudcolas]

@ronnzw yes. I would recommend getting at least "looks good to me" feedback from everyone who you added to the list of members, and you’ll also need to identify a Chair and Co-Chair by coordinating with those participants.

[thibaudcolas]

From this description it’s unclear to me if this working group also works on the website’s contents, or just specific things that count as "features"?

For example if someone from our Security team wants to publish a post on the website’s blog – do they reach out to this working group, or elsewhere?

[ronnzw]

I had asked for help on this particular item and you are the one who provided the wording that is on there. I'm happy if you can add on that you feel would make sense.

[thibaudcolas]

@ronnzw cool! Let‘s see what others think then.

[thibaudcolas]

Could we set up a Google Form instead? From my experience with DSF mailing lists, it’s 99% spam that we receive on those emails.

It’d be nice for you to define here what kind of information people should provide when applying, rather than just expect applicants will figure it out.

[ronnzw]

@django/djangoproject-com-maintainters what questions must we ask if we are to build the form?

[CuriousLearner]

To be a part of this group, I think there should be a criterion to be a contributor to any project within the Django organization OR a member of DSF. I think then it makes sense to be part of the working group. Thoughts?

[thibaudcolas]

Could we have a shorter term? 2 years feels like a long time to me, if people don’t want to be involved anymore it’d be better for them to be able to head off after 6-12 months.

[thibaudcolas]

I see we now have both the Slack channel and a mailing list. @ronnzw I think you need to define how each of those would be used, or if it’s open to discussion then explicitly write it here.

Keep in mind the more clear-cut the group charter is, the easier it is for people to consider joining and for the board to review. So if discussions need to happen, now is the best time to raise this question with interested members.

---

@jcjudkins yes, the DSF has a Slack Workspace for internal matters. Largely this has been used for paid employees, the board of directors, and a few working groups now.

[cgl]

I also think we could have shorter terms.

[thibaudcolas]

@ronnzw from private discussions, @cgl has volunteered to be the group’s board liaison. You can add @sabderemane and I as regular members.

Please liaise with @cgl as far as when this is ready for the board to review per the proposal process. The board meeting is in 7 days, so my personal recommendation would be to have the proposal completed at least by next Monday.

---

To pick the group’s Chair and Co-Chair, you could organise an online form where people who are interested in joining the group submit some information / preferences about how the group runs. This is what happened for #6. So for example you could have the following questions:

• Your name
• Why you want to join the group
• Are you currently a DSF individual member
• What would you prefer for the group to collaborate? (Slack, mailing list, Discord, forum, other)
• Would you be up for being co-chair?
• Would you be up for being chair?
• Please provide a statement on why you would make a good chair/co-chair

---

Once you’ve collected everyone’s answers, you could organise a vote to determine who would be chair/co-chair.

[cgl]

I 'd like to see some details on turnover too. What is the desired team size and how people drop from the team?

[ronnzw]

@ronnzw from private discussions, @cgl has volunteered to be the group’s board liaison. You can add @sabderemane and I as regular members.

Please liaise with @cgl as far as when this is ready for the board to review per the proposal process. The board meeting is in 7 days, so my personal recommendation would be to have the proposal completed at least by next Monday.

To pick the group’s Chair and Co-Chair, you could organise an online form where people who are interested in joining the group submit some information / preferences about how the group runs. This is what happened for #6. So for example you could have the following questions:

• Your name
• Why you want to join the group
• Are you currently a DSF individual member
• What would you prefer for the group to collaborate? (Slack, mailing list, Discord, forum, other)
• Would you be up for being co-chair?
• Would you be up for being chair?
• Please provide a statement on why you would make a good chair/co-chair

Once you’ve collected everyone’s answers, you could organise a vote to determine who would be chair/co-chair.

@thibaudcolas we will only be able to create the form once the wg is setup because we will need to attach the form to a specific wg email. For #6 my understanding is that the form is not there as yet, i think for the same reason. Also the guide clearly mention that the information can be updated at a later stage.

[ronnzw]

I 'd like to see some details on turnover too. What is the desired team size and how people drop from the team?

From conservations on slack it seems like between 7 - 9 members is the proposed size. Do you have problems with this number @cgl @jacobian @thibaudcolas @CuriousLearner @sabderemane