Proposal: Privileges and Responsibilities of Editorial Board Members

[acrymble]

As part of my new role of Team Development Manager I'm looking at ways that we can support each other effectively, and reduce energy spent on unproductive tasks. I hope this will result in a happier and healthier team.

One thing I'd like to suggest is that the Editorial Board outline some of the privileges of membership in our organization, but also to adopt a policy of minimum expectations for board members. I suggest that people who cannot meet the minimum expectations, or who fail to meet them over a period of time, should be asked to step down so that we can replace them with someone who has more time for the project. It should also give members some indication of whether they in fact do have enough time to continue in their role.

I suggest the following and welcome discussion or other ideas:

• A minimum average contribution of one half-day per month to the project.
• Average response times to direct @ requests on Github of one week or less.
• All responses when editing a lesson of one week or less (even if just to say I will respond in X days).
• Active engagement in any roles held by the member, performed to a suitably high standard
• Regular attendance at meetings, or apologies sent in advance.

I appreciate that everyone is a volunteer, but I do think we need to be able to rely upon each other, and to recognise that the people who have to ask (often repeatedly) if someone is going to do something, is also a volunteer, and that it's not a good use of time or fun to have to chase people.

Please let me know views on this idea.

In terms of benefits (some ideas):

• The right to participate in all decisions made by the Editorial Board, through Github or our meetings
• The right to publicly declare yourself a member of the project team, and to use that association in any job applications, grant applications, social media, public facing profiles, etc, as long as it is done in a manner that does not put the reputation of the project at risk or that has not specifically been requested by the board to cease.
• The right to a sabbatical as per our Sabbatical guidelines
• others?

[acrymble]

I've just had an email from someone about this so I should have started by saying this isn't directed at anyone, or a commentary on anyone. It's just something I became aware of this week because I was inducted as a trustee of a charity and they have policies like this to make it clear what they want me to do and not do. It struck me as something that might help us too.

[drjwbaker]

I imagine this might help with recruitment/onboarding. @acrymble: are you proposing that you would monitor this? Might be quite a bit of work..

[acrymble]

Good question. Maybe I need to build this into a wider guide on being a member of the team, which can highlight positive elements, and not just negative ones.

I don't view this as something that needs active monitoring, but that can be used as the basis for a conversation with someone if needed.

[amsichani]

thanks @acrymble . I think this is a sensible way to measure/manage workload and contribution of board members in a volunteer-run project, esp as we are now entering a new phase with the company. Should we also specify tasks for directors ?

[drjwbaker]

Directors will have minimum requirements for running a company. These will be clear once we have the structure in place. They will be light.

[walshbr]

This seems fine.

[acrymble]

I've moved these now to the Wiki:

https://github.com/programminghistorian/jekyll/wiki/Privileges-and-Responsibilities-of-Membership

[drjwbaker]

With apologies for reopening this ticket, I note that..

Average response times to direct @ requests on Github of one week or less.

..and..

A duty to inform the team of any absences that will exceed two weeks (eg, planned vacations)

..are incompatible.

Can we comprise and adjust both to 7 working days? (so, excluding weekend and public holidays in our respective places of work)

I know many of us work on the project outside of working hours, but doing this both pegs our responsive time to leave we request from work and encourages a culture of respecting each others downtime.