Defining the Solid Culture

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

The Problem

Solid has grown to a point where it is not clear how to gather all the opinions from all the relevant parties on a specific subject and come to a legitimate route forward. This is particularly pertinent to the Solid specification.

A pattern has developed where suggestions are made in the form of pull requests and issues, conversations grow around these pull requests and issues, there is a general consensus as well as general uncertainty on how to legitimise the outcome. Additionally some conversations have happened via email or other channels, not on pull requests or issues in the Solid GitHub account, meaning that it is difficult to get a complete overview of all the conversations that have taken place.

Uncertainty around how to legitimise a route forward is especially pronounced when there is some difference of opinion. This results in pull requests and issues being left open for years (some date back to 2015).

Decisions are sometimes made by some parties to the point where they are implemented although this is not recorded meaning not all parties have the same understanding.

One part of the puzzle is to gauge an overview of the thoughts (i.e. the opinion of 'the community') the other is around how to decide on a route forward that is accepted as the official route forward to avoid fragmentation.

The question is how to process various opinions and legitimise decisions a wide range of questions around Solid, for example, around the Solid spec?

Conversations

There are several ongoing conversations which have all been concentrated in the culture repository.

There was a W3C call where many individuals who opened pull requests and issues presented them for discuss with minutes on https://www.w3.org/community/solid/wiki/Meetings

There are milestones set up in an attempt to work towards finding a solution:
https://github.com/solid/solid-spec/milestone/2
https://github.com/solid/solid-spec/milestone/1
https://github.com/solid/web-access-control-spec/milestone/1

Proposal

First do others understand and see the problem as explained above and if there are other related problems?

Second, what are our collective fears that we need to address in the process design? Let me start by listing a few that I've heard...

• an overly complicated process resulting in grinding to a halt because of all the bureaucracy
• a too dominant decision making process led by too few people resulting in forking
• no decision making process leading to stagnation through uncertainty
• overrepresentation of one profession leading to unbalanced decision making
• individuals who are not knowledgeable in an area having too strong of a voice in that area
• individuals who do not have skin in the game compromising the position of people who do have skin in the game
• a few bad actors playing the system to their personal advantage
• lack of accountability resulting in responsibilities falling through the cracks and it being unsure who is responsible and how to avoid problems repeating themselves

Third, to put forward a proposal. For example, by closing all pull requests and archiving .md files and milestones related to this conversation except one e.g. https://github.com/solid/information/pull/166/files#diff-898e7f1ceacb493c024554f5a7c87bdf where the final output can be collected, worked on together with all parties involved and submitted it to the Solid Leader for review and final merge.

Thoughts?

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

Much of the conversation is happening on #6 so I'll close this issue

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

I've reopened this issue to give an overview of the suggestions that are on multiple pull request.

A lot of conversation happened on Justin's proposal on #6

If you are new to this conversation, the way to work your way through the proposal is to start with the readme suggestion on:

#10

The various groups including their mandate and how they are appointed are explained on:
Solid Team
Solid Panels
Solid Community

A description of how the various groups make decisions can be found on Decision Making

In terms of practical implementation of the processes. You can find the table where actual appointed individuals would be recorded on Who Is as well as where decisions would be made on Decisions

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

Will close this as the content has moved to new proposal that @justinwb and I wrote together with input from others that is lighter midway version.