I think Simon intends the spreadsheet to be the source of truth for votes by committee members, because he wanted something more explicit than just silence to indicate "I have no strong views on this proposal". FWIW I think it's reasonable to expect *some* action by committee members for each proposal. I'm not wildly enthusiastic about the spreadsheet because it's another thing separate from github and email, and it's a bit manual for my liking, but happy to go with it if that's what people want. One disadvantage of the spreadsheet is that it's not as transparent as the other mechanisms we use for this committee (email and It should probably be visible to all and linked from the docs on github? Cheers Simon On Sun, 10 Sept 2023 at 03:36, Moritz Angermann wrote:

Simon,

I think this is a good idea! Is my understanding correct that this is for record keeping by the shepherd only? It is not sufficient for steering committee members to go over the proposal and just fill out accept/reject/recuse in their respective column? Emails are still the authorative events?

Cheers, Moritz

On Sun, 10 Sep 2023 at 10:07 AM, Simon Peyton Jones < simon.peytonjones@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Dear GHC steering committee

Re GHC proposals I was talking to Simon M about

- Making the shepherd's job easier and quicker - Providing a way for members of the committee to say (explicitly) "I don't have an opinion about this proposal" and thus recuse themselves. Explicit recusal is better than "silence means assent" because silence can, and often does, mean "I'm under water and not listening".

With that in mind, I want to revive my suggestion of running an online spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e6GdwHmAjeDEUhTvP-b18MDkpTfH3SMHhFu5...to describe the state of proposals that are in our active purview. That is, I'm not proposing to show proposals that are under discussion by the community, or accepted etc -- just the ones that are in our inbox, *where the next action is ours.*

That makes it much easier to see our current inbox, without looking back for Jocahim's last email and then adding deltas for all the emails since -- which I cannot do in my head.

Specifically, I have *a column for each committee member's vote. * That should make it easy for the shepherd to see who is yet to express an opinion, which I always find difficult.

As I say above, I am very uncomfortable with "silence means assent" for any but the smallest proposals. *I suggest instead that if there is a proposal where you feel unable to offer an opinion, due to lack of expertise, or lack of time, you can say "recuse" meaning that you explicitly want to stand down from this particular proposal.* (Somehow "abstain" carries a connotation of conflict of interest or something, but it amounts to the same thing.) If you are too under water to even recuse yourself, maybe it's time to step down.

So in columns F to O we should see explicit responses from every committee member, in a timely way.

Joachim doesn't like spreadsheets like this because they can easily get out of date. But it must be better than manually trawling email. *And it is up to each of us (not Joachim) to fill in our own column for proposals in our inbox.*

If we don't like it, we can change it. You all have edit rights.

I have populated it with data from Joachim's message of 2 Sept, but there has been some action since then, so shepherds please update it. This is not Joachim's task!

Thanks

Simon

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One disadvantage of the spreadsheet is that it's not as transparent as the other mechanisms we use for this committee (email and github). It should probably be visible to all and linked from the docs on github?

I wasn't really suggesting that a committee member can say absolutely nothing, and simply update the spreadsheet with their vote; rather, they should say (as now, by email) "I support" or "I am lukewarm but will not stand in the way" or "I don't like this" -- or (new) "I recuse myself". But in addition take 30s to record that result in the spreadsheet. In short, zero impact on transparency. All I'm after is a way to see the status quo on one page, rather than by composing a zillion deltas. Simon On Mon, 11 Sept 2023 at 10:48, Simon Marlow wrote:

On Mon, 11 Sept 2023 at 10:46, Simon Marlow wrote:

...

I think Simon intends the spreadsheet to be the source of truth for votes by committee members, because he wanted something more explicit than just silence to indicate "I have no strong views on this proposal". FWIW I think it's reasonable to expect *some* action by committee members for each proposal. I'm not wildly enthusiastic about the spreadsheet because it's another thing separate from github and email, and it's a bit manual for my liking, but happy to go with it if that's what people want.

One disadvantage of the spreadsheet is that it's not as transparent as the other mechanisms we use for this committee (email and It should probably be visible to all and linked from the docs on github?

That should have read:

One disadvantage of the spreadsheet is that it's not as transparent as the other mechanisms we use for this committee (email and github). It should probably be visible to all and linked from the docs on github?

...

Cheers Simon

On Sun, 10 Sept 2023 at 03:36, Moritz Angermann < moritz.angermann@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Simon,

I think this is a good idea! Is my understanding correct that this is for record keeping by the shepherd only? It is not sufficient for steering committee members to go over the proposal and just fill out accept/reject/recuse in their respective column? Emails are still the authorative events?

Cheers, Moritz

On Sun, 10 Sep 2023 at 10:07 AM, Simon Peyton Jones < simon.peytonjones@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Dear GHC steering committee

Re GHC proposals I was talking to Simon M about

- Making the shepherd's job easier and quicker - Providing a way for members of the committee to say (explicitly) "I don't have an opinion about this proposal" and thus recuse themselves. Explicit recusal is better than "silence means assent" because silence can, and often does, mean "I'm under water and not listening".

With that in mind, I want to revive my suggestion of running an online spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e6GdwHmAjeDEUhTvP-b18MDkpTfH3SMHhFu5...to describe the state of proposals that are in our active purview. That is, I'm not proposing to show proposals that are under discussion by the community, or accepted etc -- just the ones that are in our inbox, *where the next action is ours.*

That makes it much easier to see our current inbox, without looking back for Jocahim's last email and then adding deltas for all the emails since -- which I cannot do in my head.

Specifically, I have *a column for each committee member's vote. * That should make it easy for the shepherd to see who is yet to express an opinion, which I always find difficult.

As I say above, I am very uncomfortable with "silence means assent" for any but the smallest proposals. *I suggest instead that if there is a proposal where you feel unable to offer an opinion, due to lack of expertise, or lack of time, you can say "recuse" meaning that you explicitly want to stand down from this particular proposal.* (Somehow "abstain" carries a connotation of conflict of interest or something, but it amounts to the same thing.) If you are too under water to even recuse yourself, maybe it's time to step down.

So in columns F to O we should see explicit responses from every committee member, in a timely way.

Joachim doesn't like spreadsheets like this because they can easily get out of date. But it must be better than manually trawling email. *And it is up to each of us (not Joachim) to fill in our own column for proposals in our inbox.*

If we don't like it, we can change it. You all have edit rights.

I have populated it with data from Joachim's message of 2 Sept, but there has been some action since then, so shepherds please update it. This is not Joachim's task!

Thanks

Simon

_______________________________________________ ghc-steering-committee mailing list ghc-steering-committee@haskell.org https://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-steering-committee

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I suspect we might want to consider a hybrid -- if so, do we need to find an assistant to Joachim to maintain the spreadsheet? (Let's not add to Joachim's workload but share it.)

Aha -- I should have been clearer. I never intended to suggest that Joachim alone would maintain the spreadsheet. We all will! It took me about 20 mins to put together the entire status quo before sending my email. I think it would take an extra thirty seconds or so for us to each update it with our votes, and view others. For me it'll reduce my workload, because I won't have to scroll through dozens of messages to reconstruct the current state of play. I'm going to give it a try anyway. Even if no one else joins it, it'll be helpful to me. But I hope you will. Simon On Mon, 11 Sept 2023 at 04:48, Chris Dornan wrote:

While I think the spreadsheet is really nice, I have to say I am personally comfortable with Joachim's periodic summaries and his ability to read the room as to whether a proposal has the support of the committee.

If folks don't have time to respond for feedback then that is just the way it is and enough of the remainder of the committee have weighed in then I think we just move on. If Joachim is aware of missing coverage in any response then he waits until we have satisfactory coverage.

I am not saying we could not do better, but, for my needs, Joachim is managing everything pretty optimally.

Of course we all have way of working so it would be really good if folks could indicate whether they want (1) the old way (2) the way of the spreadsheet or (3) some hybrid.

I suspect we might want to consider a hybrid -- if so, do we need to find an assistant to Joachim to maintain the spreadsheet? (Let's not add to Joachim's workload but share it.)

Chris

On 10 Sep 2023, at 03:06, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

Dear GHC steering committee

Re GHC proposals I was talking to Simon M about

- Making the shepherd's job easier and quicker - Providing a way for members of the committee to say (explicitly) "I don't have an opinion about this proposal" and thus recuse themselves. Explicit recusal is better than "silence means assent" because silence can, and often does, mean "I'm under water and not listening".

With that in mind, I want to revive my suggestion of running an online spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e6GdwHmAjeDEUhTvP-b18MDkpTfH3SMHhFu5...to describe the state of proposals that are in our active purview. That is, I'm not proposing to show proposals that are under discussion by the community, or accepted etc -- just the ones that are in our inbox, *where the next action is ours.*

That makes it much easier to see our current inbox, without looking back for Jocahim's last email and then adding deltas for all the emails since -- which I cannot do in my head.

Specifically, I have *a column for each committee member's vote. * That should make it easy for the shepherd to see who is yet to express an opinion, which I always find difficult.

As I say above, I am very uncomfortable with "silence means assent" for any but the smallest proposals. *I suggest instead that if there is a proposal where you feel unable to offer an opinion, due to lack of expertise, or lack of time, you can say "recuse" meaning that you explicitly want to stand down from this particular proposal.* (Somehow "abstain" carries a connotation of conflict of interest or something, but it amounts to the same thing.) If you are too under water to even recuse yourself, maybe it's time to step down.

So in columns F to O we should see explicit responses from every committee member, in a timely way.

Joachim doesn't like spreadsheets like this because they can easily get out of date. But it must be better than manually trawling email. *And it is up to each of us (not Joachim) to fill in our own column for proposals in our inbox.*

If we don't like it, we can change it. You all have edit rights.

I have populated it with data from Joachim's message of 2 Sept, but there has been some action since then, so shepherds please update it. This is not Joachim's task!

Thanks

Simon

_______________________________________________ ghc-steering-committee mailing list ghc-steering-committee@haskell.org https://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-steering-committee