WG Naming Meeting Notes + Recording – August 10th, 2020

[Celeste Horgan]

Meeting notes are also available in the agenda

August 10, 2020 (recording)

Host: Celeste Horgan

Note Taker: Jaice Singer DuMars

Attendees:

• Jenny Warnke

• Jaice Singer DuMars

• Stephen Augustus

• Zach Corleissen

• Jordan Liggitt

• Aaron Crickenberger   

• Nader Ziada 

• Celeste Horgan

• Aaron Crickenberger

• Benjamin Elder

• Karthikeyan Govindaraj

• Noah Kantrowitz

• Christoph Blecker

• Adolfo García Veytia

• Lubomir I. Ivanov

• Swarna Podila

• Savitha Raghunathan

• Add your names here

Recurring Topics [30 min]:

• [Celeste] Welcome to the WG

  • Governance and Purpose

  • How monthly meetings will work 

    • Meetings as status update rather than discussion

    • Work needs to take place asynchronously – Slack is important, lang discussions on the ML first!

    • Anonymous comments will not be considered due to trolling

  • [Jaice] Working agreements

    • AI: Copy to the top of the document

• Goals Overview

  • [Celeste] Language goals

    • Need to remove language that is directly harmful to URM/groups

    • Remove inaccurate analogies

    • Create a list of recommendations and actions

  • [Stephen] Tooling and processes: How do we make this maintainable? 

    • In PR reviews, we often run into things that can be fixed via tooling, e.g. pre-submits 

    • The ability to check for reserved words can be integrated into testing

    • Can be implemented incrementally: people, process, tools in that order

    • Wordlist, suggestions, and multiple ways the tools can operate, e.g. advisory, suggesting state, enforcing state - these could be applied to repos throughout the org in these states

    • The same mechanisms for reviewers/approvers would apply

• [Celeste] Backlog / Next steps

  • We’re a little behind: We’d like to tackle the obvious candidates ASAP, (allowlist/denylist, primary/replica), then talk about what process we think needs to be around such changes once we’ve learned more.

    • Please start being mindful around language as you traverse the project

    • Ask “is this the best/most accurate way to describe this?”

    • Suggestions can come from top down

    • We’re not touching the repo first, but need to understand the scope of work first, as well as how the work breaks down (e.g. coordination with OWNERS)

    • This will help us catch up

    • AI: Start 2 discussion around both terms [ Celeste ] with o(weeks) horizon

      • We need to understand both the work and the process

      • Not starting from zero - there are already PRs in flight from the community, so we will dive into these directly so we can better define and document the process

      • AI: Issue in GH admin side around branches [ Stephen ]

        • Need support in git

        • For existing repos there is guidance but we also need tooling to help make the transition easier ~ not developed by us, but more industry wide

        • Will pick some repos for pilots

        • Maybe be different approaches, e.g. start with new repos, but tooling will get better with time - the GH team will be tracking this

        • CNCF advice: if you feel confident in the change, do so, but you should likely wait until tooling exists

    • Need guidance on how we refer to the “main branch” 

      • AI: Send to the list [ Aaron ]

      • AI: Open the K org issue [ Stephen ] 

  • What you can do:

    • Search repositories you participate in for blacklist/whitelist and master/slave

    • Open issues and tag them /wg naming

    • Mention them and other PRs/questions in #wg-naming so we can start to crystalize our recommendations. 

Open Discussion [30 min]:

• How and where would you like to see language decisions recorded/stored? 

• Ideas around process?

• Ideas around tooling?

• How do we make sure the community is aware of our status, efforts, and needs? The Code of Conduct Committee also had this challenge of “invisibility”

Noah: Where should discussions go?

A: Mailing list is most inclusive

Jenny: How do we plan on tracking the process?

A: There is a project board tied to the #wg-naming label (board link)

Jordan: While the charter was being put together, we talked about clear guidance on how we decide on language (1, 2). Tackling continued work on specific terms is fine, but it would be helpful if we don’t forget the guidance/evaluation aspect to apply to future terms that are considered.

We need to understand the principles as much as the process, e.g. when we cannot reach consensus, how do we still act? 

Status update is already scheduled. We should be sending a post-meeting update with key points and meeting notes. 

AI: Need a way to record decisions, process, etc. Should this be in k/community? another repo? format? Perhaps something like an architectural decision record [ Celeste ] 

Leads need to protect themselves, e.g. 2FA, contribx will help

Please note we have to enact many systems of protection o