Abandoned projects

[Adrian Godwin]

In an effort to kickstart or purge some abandoned projects, I'm
proposing (with the help of some suggestions on IRC) that we operate
an equivalent to the 3-week box system for projects.

The principle is that a project which appears to have stalled may be
put up for disposal. The owner, or someone who is willing to take
responsibility, must then defend it by making some progress, showing a
plausible plan, or providing good reasons for giving it a longer
chance.

The hope is that the project will either be completed, or a lack of
interest will show that it should be abandoned and scrapped or
repurposed.

I have opened a wiki page to maintain status on these projects. Please
have a look at
http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/history/Projects_at_risk and
improve it if you can.

Note that the projects there are, strictly speaking, examples. I
haven't specifically informed the owners that their projects are
there, and until there is a consensus that this is a good procedure, I
won't be. However, if there are no major objections I may well follow
the procedure and then argue that the response justifies change -
especially in the case of the Stratasys.

-adrian

[Martin]

I think its a good idea, it gives people an idea of some very good projects that have been shelved, maybe so others can pick up the batton.  It goes along with the ideas of documentaton put forward recently.  With so many members now its really impossible for anyone to know all the projects that are going on, so this page can kinda be more of a 'what project can i rescue?' page

[Russ Garrett]

I think this is a fairly good idea for hackspace-related projects like
the vending machine and Stratasys.

The laser is mine, not the hackspace's. Given how busy I am, I can't
and won't commit to any timetable on it. Pushing this issue will just
result in me rekindling the discussion about paying more for more
storage again.

Also, threatening to throw away people's hard work because they don't
have time to work on it is probably just going to get people annoyed.
In a lot of cases this is just a case of transferring knowledge to
other people.

Russ

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Adrian Godwin]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 3:55 PM, Russ Garrett <ru...@garrett.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Also, threatening to throw away people's hard work because they don't
> have time to work on it is probably just going to get people annoyed.
> In a lot of cases this is just a case of transferring knowledge to
> other people.
>

Russ, I agree. One reason to propose this is so that there's a known
process rather than someone just doing it arbitrarily.

How can we adjust the process so that it's firm, but not drastic ?

-adrian

[Sci]

Maybe enforce a rule that any large project needs to be documented and
logged on the wiki? Would make it easier to judge which ones are abandoned.

Sci