doc: improve transparency and inclusivity of TSC meetings #58837
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sorry I missed this last paragraph in my review:
- If there is an objection, the TSC chair should ask for a justification to not
switch to writing communication instead, before proceeding with the private
meeting without recording it.
as long as there is still a path to private meetings without recording I'm not -1 to the proposed changes.
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I'm +1, we should do this. It's very much possible for people to misquote and twist the words of participants in private unrecorded meetings and trouble them unnecessarily. That makes participation unsafe. Recordings are essential for effective assessment by trusted groups like Moderation and TSC. Safety comes first, so this should be done. |
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I'm not ok with the current wording - it does not meet my requirements for privacy. Moreover, this will prevent us to discuss anything security related.
To all intent and purposes, this ban private meetings (which I get is the intent). The net results would be that less things will be surfaced to the TSC / in the meetings.
Having said that, I think we should recommend recording things for topics where we need a log/minutes to be taken.
Establish the principal that TSC meeting should be public as much as possible and that decisions should not be made in meetings, and must be taken back to asynchronous communication for inclusivity and future reference. Also, summary should be posted for private meetings to ensure transparency and inclusivity, the visibility of the summary depends on whether the outcome of the discussion is public.
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This proposal was originally trying to implement two suggestions we were given. It seems difficult to get behind both at the same time, so I am now splitting the two. It seems the idea about recording private meetings is more debatable, so I'll defer the discussion about the recording to a follow-up PR. I also reworded the passage about written communication and decision making with a lot of inspiration from https://community.apache.org/contributors/mailing-lists.html#inclusion-and-transparency and https://github.com/rust-lang/leadership-council/blob/main/procedures/synchronous-meetings.md @ruyadorno @jasnell @mcollina Can those of you previously objected to recording of private meetings take another look since this PR now no longer mentions the reocrding? Thanks. Also @nodejs/tsc again for another look. |
joyeecheung
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Co-authored-by: Jordan Harband <[email protected]>
| While TSC meeting may be used to improve the efficiency of the discussion, | ||
| decision making must be taken back to asynchronous communication to ensure | ||
| that all members can participate and that the context of the decision is | ||
| documented for posterity. |
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I'm not in agreement with this change. If there is quorum, we should be able to deliberate synchronously.
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Agreed. That's why we have quorum rules in the first place. I would say that decisions can be made during meetings, the outcome of those decisions should always be documented and we should allow for a 48 hour grace period to give absent TSC members an opportunity to weigh in before the decision becomes binding.
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I agree that, if there's quorum and the decision is unanimous (among folks present at the meeting), going async provides less value. But if the goal is to discourage us to defer decisions until the next meeting, and to ensure "TSC decisions" are properly documented, that would be quite effective.
the outcome of those decisions should always be documented and we should allow for a 48 hour grace period to give absent TSC members an opportunity to weigh in before the decision becomes binding.
That seems to be inline with the PR: if we have to open an issue anyway and wait 48h, sure you can say the decision was taken during the meeting, or one could say it was taken in the issue thread – or is there a nuance I'm missing?
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I think we can probably make it close to the fast-track process: not only the decision itself needs consensus, but there should also be consensus that no more consensus seeking is needed outside the meeting (because it is trivial/obvious enough). Given how careful we are usually I am fairly certain for things that are controversial enough, someone at the meeting would raise that it must be taken back to async communication in the second consensus seeking process, just like how we treat fast-tracks.
| made public as well, even with a delay to prevent premature disclosure | ||
| (e.g. in the case of security), so that the community can understand the | ||
| context and decisions made, even if they cannot see the details of the | ||
| discussion. |
| member approvals and no TSC voting member opposition. | ||
| * If there is an extended impasse, a TSC member may make a motion for a vote. | ||
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| While TSC meeting may be used to improve the efficiency of the discussion, |
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| While TSC meeting may be used to improve the efficiency of the discussion, | |
| While TSC meetings may be used to improve the efficiency of the discussion, |
| Exception may be given to discussions related to security, legal matters, | ||
| personnel, or other sensitive topics that require confidentiality. In these | ||
| cases, the discussion should at least be summarized and posted to a written | ||
| channel. If the outcome of the discussion is public, a summary should be |
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"to a written channel" ... this should clarify that discussions about private matters should only be written to a private channel. It also would need to be clarified exactly what would be written. A literal transcript of what is said and exactly who said it can be just as bad as a recording as a form of surveillance and privacy violation. We need to be clear and have to recognize that there are very real practical limitations.
We also need to be sensitive to the reality that certain kinds of discussions are sensitive even among TSC members. If, for instance, we need to have a private discussion about a possible Code of Conduct report against a TSC member, then we cannot/should not document that in a channel where the TSC member in question has access to it.
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A literal transcript of what is said and exactly who said it can be just as bad as a recording as a form of surveillance and privacy violation.
The text says:
the discussion should at least be summarized and posted..
a summary should be...
I think it's fairly clear that it's a summary, not a transcript. I think anyone who looks at out our minutes and summit notes would be fairly certain to say that getting the TSC to produce a literal transcript without a recording is impossible even if we want to (I'd say even with a recording, it's impossible, because nobody would be willing to do that much work).
If, for instance, we need to have a private discussion about a possible Code of Conduct report against a TSC member, then we cannot/should not document that in a channel where the TSC member in question has access to it.
In that case the weekly TSC meeting is probably not the right place for that discussion in the first place and it has to be an extraordinary meeting, unless we tell that person "please don't come to the meeting this week", or not tell them and hope that they don't show up...
It's also worth noting that the if a discussion must exclude a TSC member, then the TSC is probably not the host of the meeting in the first place. In the example above, the host must be the moderation team and there might be some TSC members being invited as guests, but usually the TSC members invited are as few as possible. In those cases, it's not a TSC meeting, it's a meeting where some TSC members but not all are invited.
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I think it's fairly clear that it's a summary, not a transcript...
I've seen many meeting summaries that include literal quotes. We need to be clear what the expectations are. There's obvious lots of disagreement in this are so let's not assume that what is clear to one person is clear for another.
A summary could be, "We discussed dinner", or it could be, "James said pineapple on pizza is a good thing. Matteo started crying," which I'm sure we can agree are very different kinds of summaries.
When we're talking about private discussions around sensitive topics, we should be explicit what the expectations are.
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Either way, this is the more relevant part of my comment above:
"to a written channel" ... this should clarify that discussions about private matters should only be written to a private channel. It also would need to be clarified exactly what would be written.
For folks participating in a private meeting, it's critical that they can be assured that what they have to say is going to be held in confidence and not end up in a public writeup somewhere.
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Do you have a concrete suggestion using the GitHub suggestion feature?
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Easier to provide a concrete alternative in a separate PR: #58925
joyeecheung
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tsc-agenda
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Superseded by #58925 |
12 participants
Establish the principal that TSC meeting should be public as
much as possible and that decisions should not be made in
meetings, and must be taken back to asynchronous communication
for inclusivity and future reference. Also, summary should
be posted for private meetings to ensure transparency
and inclusivity, the visibility of the summary depends on
whether the outcome of the discussion is public.