Keeping IRC meetings moving

[Lucas Kanashiro]

Hi,

Em 28/11/2022 17:22, Robie Basak escreveu:
> In today's meeting, as a follow-up to limiting meetings to one
> applicant per meeting, we talked about how we could keep meetings moving
> along.
>
> A common frustration seems to be when waiting for other DMB members to
> respond in the past, for no apparent reason. When that happens, we don't
> know if they're preparing a long answer, have become absent, or just
> aren't paying attention.
>
> We acknowleged that it's not really a problem, on occasion, to be
> unavailable for a meeting, or to mention that someone has their
> attention elsewhere and will be slow to respond. As long as it doesn't
> hold up the meeting, and as long as it isn't frequent enough that we
> struggle to make quorum.
>
> But just being slow to respond, especially after having gotten involved
> in a topic, causes long delays, and there's general unhappiness about
> this.
>
> We agreed we'd like to socially encourage people who aren't available to
> not waste everyone's time.
>
> To try and turn this into concrete proposal, I suggest that:
>
> 1) We accept that it's OK for DMB members to be absent or distracted for
> whatever reason, but not to hold up meetings because of this. Corollary:
> if as a DMB member you are so distracted that you're holding up the
> meeting, then maybe you should consider yourself to be actually absent,
> and conscious to not hold the others up waiting on you.
>
> 2) We think that three minutes is about the *maximum* that should
> normally be acceptable for a response from a DMB member, with the
> majority of responses expected to be much quicker than that.
>
> 3) If a DMB member holds up meeting progress for more than three minutes
> because we're waiting for a response from them, then the chair should
> consider that person to be absent and move on. This includes voting: if
> that means the vote wasn't quorate, then we will end the vote and
> continue as if that person was absent anyway.
>
> 4) DMB members should prepare questions and comments in advance as much
> as possible to avoid holding up meetings while they research, think and
> type.
>
> 5) However, we don't want to prevent people from taking their time to
> research, think or or type long answers when this is actually required -
> for example in response to something that happened during the meeting
> itself. So a DMB member can indicate that they are genuinely active in
> the meeting but not ready to speak yet by sending "...", or a longer
> explanation if they wish, at least once every three minutes. This can
> include thinking time, doing research on an application, working on a
> long answer, etc. We will take "..." to mean "I'm still here, working on
> my next message to the channel, extending my timeout by another three
> minutes". The meeting will normally then wait for their message before
> moving on, subject to the chair's discretion.
>
> 6) For the avoidance of doubt, the above applies to DMB members only,
> not to anyone else, and certainly not to applicants. We've not seen an
> issue with applicants being unreasonably slow to respond, and want them
> to give us thoughtful responses and not feel under any additional
> pressure. They should respond as feel appropriate and as they always
> have done.

+1 for the proposal made here.

-- 
Lucas Kanashiro