[pydotorg-www] some requests for a meeting minuting feature on www.python.org

[Sumana Harihareswara]

I spoke with Ernest a few weeks ago about how www.python.org could 
become a better home for public minutes of meetings. So here is my 
current thinking - this is long, but I want to share it in public in 
case it helps others understand the work.

Context:

Right now, www.python.org hosts the board meeting minutes 
https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/minutes/ . We talked about 
maybe also making space for working group/project meeting minutes, like 
the ones I write up and currently host on the wiki (example: 
https://wiki.python.org/psf/PackagingWG#Dependency_resolver_and_user_experience_improvements_for_pip 
).

In the call, Ernest asked me to list what would be important in a 
minuting package for www.python.org, distinguishing "required" from 
"heavily encouraged" to "dream features".


Current workflow:

Right now, in order to minute meetings of Packaging WG-funded projects, I:

* use an Etherpad at pad.sfconservancy.org (just because it's a public 
and reliable EtherPad instance) and take notes with bullet points
* after the meeting, use its Export function to export to plain text
* mess with the formatting to adjust to MoinMoin wiki syntax
* go to https://wiki.python.org/psf/PackagingWG and create a new 
placeholder link in the table of meeting notes, annotating with the 
description, type (meeting notes), and date
* copy the text into that page, fix formatting, and hit Save
* erase the meeting notes from the Etherpad and hyperlink to the 
archived notes


What I want:

For the process in general, I have 3 core values:
* Ease of writing: it should be easy for me and for other meeting 
attendees to collaborate on writing minutes, live, during the meeting, 
in a reasonably lightweight syntax (such as Markdown)
* Privacy: as we write the minutes, they should be private to meeting 
attendees, so we can discuss things we then redact before sharing 
(vacations, burnout, criticism of other people or projects)
* Transparency: the final minutes should be public where anyone can read 
them, without having to log in anywhere, and linkable


As I understand it, a minuting system on www.python.org would have a 
hierarchy like PSF -> Working Group -> Project.  Example: PSF -> 
Packaging WG -> Pip dependency resolver & UX improvements.


Required:

* Discoverability: the public minutes should be easy to find from a 
central project info hub, and show up in search engine results.
* Linkability: each meeting should have some unique URL or anchor tag, 
so that it's easy to link to minutes within an issue or mailing list post.
* Ease of formatting: some subset of HTML, Markdown, and 
reStructuredText should be supported.


Heavily encouraged:

* Automated table of contents on the Project page. Should include (by 
default) date and title of meeting, and it should be possible for me to 
also manually append (maybe in a separate list) links to relevant blog 
posts, reports, podcasts, etc.
* Automated table of contents on the Working Group page to all Projects 
underneath it.
* Finding aid/intro: A structure on each Project page that includes a 
freeform text field but also encourages certain fields (project name, 
list of participants, estimated start and end dates).
* Ease of formatting: Markdown support.
* Ease of import: a batch process to import old minutes from 
wiki.python.org, even if I then have to mess with formatting.
* Granular privileges: I'd like to let all my team members add minutes 
within our chunk of the site hierarchy.
* Ease of sign-on: Single sign-on with other PSF systems.
* Minutes structure: Structured text fields for meeting title, list of 
participants, discussion, and Next Steps/TODOs/Commitments.


Dream:

* Ease of navigation: from a particular minutes entry, I'd love to be 
able to click Next or Previous to go to the next/previous entry within 
that project chronologically.
* Ease of import: take an HTML import from Etherpad and strip the colors 
and other unnecessary syntax.
* Ease of import: On some note-taking platform (could be HackMD, 
Etherpad, Dropbox Paper, Google Docs, Nextcloud, or something else), I 
could choose an option to export to a new www.python.org minute. The new 
draft would autopopulate, so I could make changes and click Publish, and 
then it would show up at the right URL and be present in a Table of 
Contents automagically.
* Ease of formatting: support MoinMoin wiki syntax (so I can copy old 
stuff easily).
* Ease of reporting: this is really out-there, but if I could use some 
feature to automatically pull out the top-level discussion headings from 
each minute, and make a list of "here's what we discussed", then I could 
use that when publicizing the meeting notes, and it would make people 
more likely to read them.
* Analytics: so I could see who is linking to those notes and where 
they're being referred to.

-- 
Sumana Harihareswara
Changeset Consulting
https://changeset.nyc