[pydotorg-www] some requests for a meeting minuting feature on www.python.org

[M.-A. Lemburg]

On 12.06.2020 18:30, Sumana Harihareswara wrote:
> I spoke with Ernest a few weeks ago about how www.python.org could
> become a better home for public minutes of meetings. So here is my
> current thinking - this is long, but I want to share it in public in
> case it helps others understand the work.

You may have noticed: the python.org website has a completely
non-working CMS. If you want to achieve collaboration, I'd strongly
suggest looking for something different (e.g. the NextCloud/OnlyOffice
idea you're floating) and focus on that.

The documents would then appear under a subdomain, but at least
there'd be proper control over who gets to edit what and, what's
really more important, enables other people than the handful with
python.org editing rights to submit content in a user friendly
way.

BTW: I may sound a bit negative on all this. That's because I
had been fighting to make python.org more user (= people providing
and maintaining content) friendly for several years without
success. If you have more luck: more power to you :-)

> Context:
> 
> Right now, www.python.org hosts the board meeting minutes
> https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/minutes/ . We talked about
> maybe also making space for working group/project meeting minutes, like
> the ones I write up and currently host on the wiki (example:
> https://wiki.python.org/psf/PackagingWG#Dependency_resolver_and_user_experience_improvements_for_pip
> ).
> 
> In the call, Ernest asked me to list what would be important in a
> minuting package for www.python.org, distinguishing "required" from
> "heavily encouraged" to "dream features".
> 
> 
> Current workflow:
> 
> Right now, in order to minute meetings of Packaging WG-funded projects, I:
> 
> * use an Etherpad at pad.sfconservancy.org (just because it's a public
> and reliable EtherPad instance) and take notes with bullet points
> * after the meeting, use its Export function to export to plain text
> * mess with the formatting to adjust to MoinMoin wiki syntax
> * go to https://wiki.python.org/psf/PackagingWG and create a new
> placeholder link in the table of meeting notes, annotating with the
> description, type (meeting notes), and date
> * copy the text into that page, fix formatting, and hit Save
> * erase the meeting notes from the Etherpad and hyperlink to the
> archived notes
> 
> 
> What I want:
> 
> For the process in general, I have 3 core values:
> * Ease of writing: it should be easy for me and for other meeting
> attendees to collaborate on writing minutes, live, during the meeting,
> in a reasonably lightweight syntax (such as Markdown)
> * Privacy: as we write the minutes, they should be private to meeting
> attendees, so we can discuss things we then redact before sharing
> (vacations, burnout, criticism of other people or projects)
> * Transparency: the final minutes should be public where anyone can read
> them, without having to log in anywhere, and linkable
> 
> 
> As I understand it, a minuting system on www.python.org would have a
> hierarchy like PSF -> Working Group -> Project.  Example: PSF ->
> Packaging WG -> Pip dependency resolver & UX improvements.
> 
> 
> Required:
> 
> * Discoverability: the public minutes should be easy to find from a
> central project info hub, and show up in search engine results.
> * Linkability: each meeting should have some unique URL or anchor tag,
> so that it's easy to link to minutes within an issue or mailing list post.
> * Ease of formatting: some subset of HTML, Markdown, and
> reStructuredText should be supported.
> 
> 
> Heavily encouraged:
> 
> * Automated table of contents on the Project page. Should include (by
> default) date and title of meeting, and it should be possible for me to
> also manually append (maybe in a separate list) links to relevant blog
> posts, reports, podcasts, etc.
> * Automated table of contents on the Working Group page to all Projects
> underneath it.
> * Finding aid/intro: A structure on each Project page that includes a
> freeform text field but also encourages certain fields (project name,
> list of participants, estimated start and end dates).
> * Ease of formatting: Markdown support.
> * Ease of import: a batch process to import old minutes from
> wiki.python.org, even if I then have to mess with formatting.
> * Granular privileges: I'd like to let all my team members add minutes
> within our chunk of the site hierarchy.
> * Ease of sign-on: Single sign-on with other PSF systems.
> * Minutes structure: Structured text fields for meeting title, list of
> participants, discussion, and Next Steps/TODOs/Commitments.
> 
> 
> Dream:
> 
> * Ease of navigation: from a particular minutes entry, I'd love to be
> able to click Next or Previous to go to the next/previous entry within
> that project chronologically.
> * Ease of import: take an HTML import from Etherpad and strip the colors
> and other unnecessary syntax.
> * Ease of import: On some note-taking platform (could be HackMD,
> Etherpad, Dropbox Paper, Google Docs, Nextcloud, or something else), I
> could choose an option to export to a new www.python.org minute. The new
> draft would autopopulate, so I could make changes and click Publish, and
> then it would show up at the right URL and be present in a Table of
> Contents automagically.
> * Ease of formatting: support MoinMoin wiki syntax (so I can copy old
> stuff easily).
> * Ease of reporting: this is really out-there, but if I could use some
> feature to automatically pull out the top-level discussion headings from
> each minute, and make a list of "here's what we discussed", then I could
> use that when publicizing the meeting notes, and it would make people
> more likely to read them.
> * Analytics: so I could see who is linking to those notes and where
> they're being referred to.
> 

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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