On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 5:20 PM, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:

I've been trying to encourage a certain structure to our weekly IRC meetings, by means of some brief statements in the meeting and by talking to people afterwards about what I was trying to achieve. But this approach has led to frustration and miscommunication. I think it's about time I wrote my thoughts out in full for everyone.

What I want is pretty modest and achievable.

I want to have a brief wrap-up period, lasting 5-10 minutes at the end of the meeting, where the regular flow of discussion is suspended, and we instead focus on helping the RFC author and other implementors, by producing action items, meeting summary notes, and if possible, RFC resolution (acceptance or rejection).

At the end of this wrap-up period, the #endmeeting command will be given. Then you are free to continue your discussions unlogged, without expecting all relevant parties to remain in attendance.

We are all engineers, and we love thinking about hard problems and clever solutions. That is why it is important that discussion be suspended. Otherwise, it is too difficult to focus on the meeting goals.

Thanks for sending this out Tim. I agree that your ask is both modest and achievable. I'll try to not only follow it but also help remind others during the meetings. It's easy to get caught up in debate/problem solving and miss the point that these meetings are to help the RfC author plan next steps towards getting their changes approved and implemented. I know I have myself been guilty of that in the past.

I think another modest change would be to begin the meeting with a clear statement from the presiding representative of the architecture committee (typically Tim) and the RfC author which parts to the RfC are most in need of feedback at the current time. I think that some meetings have been derailed by an early discussion of minutia and at the end of the hour both you and the author have been left wondering if any progress was made.

Bryan