2023-09-29 CF Conventions Committee and Standard Names Committee Panel meeting

Attendees

Lars Bärring, Philip Cameron-Smith, Jonathan Gregory, David Hassell, Daniel Lee, Roy Lowry, Alison Pamment, Karl Taylor

Agenda

• Proposed changes to labels and use of repositories.

• Are moderators needed for issues for enhancements? Can the proposer of a change moderate by default? Are members of the committee willing to be asked to moderate? How should we prevent issues from going dormant? When should an issue be closed as dormant?

• Are members of the committee willing to be asked to draft PRs for defects, if the proposer doesn’t do it?

• After how long should we close answered questions? What should we do about questions that are not answered? Whose responsibility are these actions?

• Is the FAQ useful? Would anyone like to work on it? What should be added?

• Possible future rearrangement of the repositories.

• Any of the issues marked “discuss with cttee”.

• Should we have regular committee meetings of this kind? It has been suggested they could be open to the “public” to join.

Discussion

Proposed changes to labels and use of repositories.

• DECISION: duplicate label: Could be used as a reason for closing an issue as it informs the opener of the duplicate issue

• DECISION: dormant label: Having a dormant label is good, but it shouldn’t trigger the automatic closing of the issue.
  • Before a dormant issue is closed, actions should be taken to revitalise it, such as posting to the issue (multiple times) asking for more input and contacting the active participants directly, on the issue or by e-mail.

• Truly dormant issues should be closed after a defined period of inactivity. 9 months was suggested.

• Temporary labels for short-lived projects: These are useful for managing, e.g., large numbers of related standard name requests.
  • No label should be temporary, for future searching. Project-based labels could have a namespace (something like project_name:standard_name).
    • An alternative could be to edit the title, but if this is done then the old title should always be recorded in the title for future searching.

Are moderators needed for issues for enhancements? Can the proposer of a change moderate by default? Are members of the committee willing to be asked to moderate? How should we prevent issues from going dormant? When should an issue be closed as dormant? (This item overlaps with the agenda item 1.)

• DECISION: The proposer should not, in general, be the moderator.

• DECISION: The chair of the committee (Jonathan) can ask another committee member to act when an issue is need of some sort of input (such as contacting the proposer/moderator to request input).

Are members of the committee willing to be asked to draft PRs for defects, if the proposer doesn’t do it?

• DECISION: Yes. A committee member may well say “no”, though.
  • Training materials (such as a manual and YouTube video), and a comprehensive checklist in the PR template (updating the one that we already have).

After how long should we close answered questions? What should we do about questions that are not answered? Whose responsibility are these actions?

• Not discussed.

Is the FAQ useful? Would anyone like to work on it? What should be added?

• Not discussed.

Possible future rearrangement of the repositories.

• This discussion was taken much further at the 2023 CF meeting, however we discussed:
  • The current situation is confusing, especially when a PR is opened in one repository following a discussion on the other.
  • Making it clearer where you should ask questions. Could disallow them on the conventions repository. A separate vocabulary issue tracker is attractive. Could convert “discuss” to a “vocabulary” repository, and allow questions on both, depending on their nature.
  • Could use the GitHub discussions feature
  • Having multiple issue trackers is confusing: issues will inevitably get opened in the wrong place.

Any of the issues marked “discuss with cttee”.

• Not discussed.

Should we have regular committee meetings of this kind? It has been suggested they could be open to the “public” to join.

• DECISION: Committee meeting should be quarterly.
• DECISION: Committee meetings should not be open (in that the meeting URL will not be published), but will be advertised so anyone can ask to attend on a one-off basis.

Any comments welcome on any of the above.

Review previous action items

Not applicable.

New Action items

• (David) Find date for the next meeting in ~3 months time.

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