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.

[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

[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]

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.

[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.

[Stormheg]

If more volunteers are needed to help review PRs, issues, or maintenance in general; I'm happy to help out.

[pauloxnet]

I reviewed everything, and I added suggestions to speed up this process. Can we give us a deadline for this process of revision (e.g the end of November 2024)?

[sabderemane]

Can we give us a deadline for this process of revision (e.g the end of November 2024)?

I have reviewed some comments but having the deadline by the end of november is good, if it can be earlier it's even better. I'm planning to review it this week during a conference. I would like to bring it to december board meeting for approval if november (19th) is not possible.

[jacobian]

Some suggestions but nothing that should be considered a blocker - looks great!

[pauloxnet]

Thanks to @jacobian and @sabderemane comments and review.

@thibaudcolas in which way we're going to finalize the proposal, merging all the suggestions and asking for approval in the next DSF board meeting?

[thibaudcolas]

@pauloxnet good questions!

• Merging the suggestions is for the author of the proposal @ronnzw to take care of, or for someone else to take over otherwise.
• Asking for a Board review and vote is for the author to request to the board via the group’s board liaison (so @sabderemane). Though if @sabderemane believes the proposal is ready for a board review, I assume she can take the proposal further of her own accord.

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend taking the proposal for board review with so many proposed changes, particularly suggested changes from proposed group members and board members. That’s not to say changes have to be made, but it’d be clearer for everyone involved exactly what we’re reviewing if the suggested changes were either approved or rejected.

---

@ronnzw we’re arriving at about a year with this proposal open, and as of June we have @sabderemane listed as the proposed group chair. Would it be ok with you if she took over the proposal? We’ve had great discussions about this group at DjangoCon Europe 2024, and then at DjangoCon US 2024, so it feels like there’s clear interest here in the base concept, we just need refinements that she’ll be able to take ownership of.

The next board meeting is tomorrow, so I’d recommend instead to aim for the "next + 1" meeting on December 10th to integrate all the above feedback and send the proposal to the board for review at least a week ahead of the meeting (so December 3rd).

[ronnzw]

@pauloxnet good questions!

• Merging the suggestions is for the author of the proposal @ronnzw to take care of, or for someone else to take over otherwise.
• Asking for a Board review and vote is for the author to request to the board via the group’s board liaison (so @sabderemane). Though if @sabderemane believes the proposal is ready for a board review, I assume she can take the proposal further of her own accord.

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend taking the proposal for board review with so many proposed changes, particularly suggested changes from proposed group members and board members. That’s not to say changes have to be made, but it’d be clearer for everyone involved exactly what we’re reviewing if the suggested changes were either approved or rejected.

@ronnzw we’re arriving at about a year with this proposal open, and as of June we have @sabderemane listed as the proposed group chair. Would it be ok with you if she took over the proposal? We’ve had great discussions about this group at DjangoCon Europe 2024, and then at DjangoCon US 2024, so it feels like there’s clear interest here in the base concept, we just need refinements that she’ll be able to take ownership of.

The next board meeting is tomorrow, so I’d recommend instead to aim for the "next + 1" meeting on December 10th to integrate all the above feedback and send the proposal to the board for review at least a week ahead of the meeting (so December 3rd).

For me, l think the main problem is that people are making multiple suggestions on different areas, l know some people who suggested changes and came back to oppose their own changes. At some point we agreed to take what was there to the board, if you check we already had one approval. Then other comments don't have other people that are supporting them and personal l don't agree with them. I will make a run down of all the comments made here and l will add what l agree with and leave out what l don't agree with.

[ronnzw]

Thanks to @jacobian and @sabderemane comments and review.

@thibaudcolas in which way we're going to finalize the proposal, merging all the suggestions and asking for approval in the next DSF board meeting?

I have updated some suggestions and reviews.

[ronnzw]

@sabderemane Do we have anything that is holding us back from taking this to the board?

[thibaudcolas]

@ronnzw it’s looking very close but I still see two outstanding review threads: 1. permissions, 2. website usage vs. mailing list

[ronnzw]

@ronnzw it’s looking very close but I still see two outstanding review threads: 1. permissions, 2. website usage vs. mailing list

@thibaudcolas do you mind following up with the @django/ops-team to understand if they are happy with this. They can always respond to this PR.

2. website usage vs mailing, l think this was updated. We resolved to keeping both. Unless if l'm missing something.

[bmispelon]

Hi everyone, Baptiste here from the ops team.

[...] following up with the @django/ops-team to understand if they are happy with this.

I'm not sure what "this" is referring to here (disclaimer: I have not read the whole discussion on this page). Are we referring to Thibaud's comment https://github.com/django/dsf-working-groups/pull/10/files#r1777690928? If so, why are these changes not part of the PR (and what about the rest of that comment about ad-hoc resources, is that also something that should be reviewed)?

Speaking for myself, I find it hard to judge the merits of the proposed changes with regard to giving merge/review rights to people because I just haven't seen enough of their activity.
Using a mixture of git log analysis and GitHub API, here's the activity over the last 6 months restricted to the 11 people mentionned in this proposal:

COMMITS:
     11 Mark Walker
     12 Paolo Melchiorre
      1 Saptak Sengupta
      1 Sarah Abderemane
      4 Tobias McNulty

PR COMMENTS:
      2 alexgmin
     30 marksweb
     22 pauloxnet
      6 sabderemane
      8 tobiasmcnulty

That doesn't seem like enough activity for me to be able to judge of someone's contribution.

As a current maintainer of the site, I'm also curious about what it is with the proposed work group structure that will attract more contributors? To put it a different way, what would the WG structure offer the 11 people in this proposal that currently prevents them to contribute in the existing structure?

[marksweb]

...what it is with the proposed work group structure that will attract more contributors? To put it a different way, what would the WG structure offer the 11 people in this proposal that currently prevents them to contribute in the existing structure?

I'm not sure there is incentive to contribute or grow contributors from the WG. But I suspect a WG will provide the structure to evaluate/discuss the site, issues raised, features requests etc.

Perhaps in conjunction with the social media team issues & features could be publicised in order to gain some traction for contribution?

[jacobian]

As a current maintainer of the site, I'm also curious about what it is with the proposed work group structure that will attract more contributors? To put it a different way, what would the WG structure offer the 11 people in this proposal that currently prevents them to contribute in the existing structure?

It's a good question, because I think on the surface the answer is "nothing" — contributing to the site is relatively easy technically, you and the rest of the team do a great job reviewing PRs quickly and providing actionable feedback, and there's tons of opportunity to make an impact and be recognized.

Except … people mostly don't contribute. There's a perception — deserved or not — of a really high bar to contributions to the site. People see all sorts of things wrong but mostly don't feel empowered to do anything about it. When I see this sort of dynamic — something that "insiders" see as more open than "outsiders" do — often what's lacking is a sort of permission-giving, actively making space. So that's what I see as the primary value of this working group: explicitly signalling that we're open to help, and explicitly giving permission to the folks in the group to make changes. They don't need the permission strictly speaking but giving it will (I hope) help.

(The other major benefit has to do with DSF internals: moving the decision-making about the site away from the board and into the WG. That's unlikely to make a difference to random contributors but it makes a big difference to streamlining workflow and making the board less load-bearing where it doesn't need to be)

[sabderemane]

To put it a different way, what would the WG structure offer the 11 people in this proposal that currently prevents them to contribute in the existing structure?

To me, it's not only about contributing here, it's having a real structure to get opinions and move to something that is defined for everyone. IMO, and I'm not the only one, there are many things on the website that could be changed/improved but it's not individual changes that will help, it's having a group of people who have conversations and reflections to define the goal and how to change things.

People will be more inclined to do changes if they know what is the goal and the purpose of the change. DSF has made a study through 20Tab and improvements are definitely needed but this can't happened without a group and common work.

We don't have a budget defined yet but things could be considered to test and improve the usability and the user experience of the website.

[...] the proposed work group structure that will attract more contributors?

To partially answer this, if the website is more attractive and accessible, people will be more tempted to contribute. As a Django accessibility member, the accessibility of the website is really frustrating and I can't suggest people to contribute without considering to review the whole design theme. This is something which has been already discussed and reviewed with the accessibility team, including Saptak, co-chair of the working group.

I find it hard to judge the merits of the proposed changes with regard to giving merge/review rights to people because I just haven't seen enough of their activity.

Part of the members have already the rights with the initial group @django/djangoproject-com-maintainters but they have the rights because they contribute over a long period and some of us didn't contribute directly to the website but contribute in other places or Django itself.
My point here is, not the best way to define how someone is qualified but the fact that the working group will help to give the ownership to a group of people and contribute to make the group responsible and answerable to questions. This will also help to share knowledge between us to make the best decisions.