Community Governance Meeting Takeaways

Introduction

As part of ongoing efforts to improve Drupal’s community governance, the Drupal Community Working Group (CWG) was tasked by the Drupal Association and Dries Buytaert with defining next steps in the process. The CWG solicited volunteers from the Drupal community interested in governance, creating a group of community members to strategize how to involve as many people as possible. This new group then decided to hold public meetings to get feedback on next steps from the community.

The group facilitated a series of meetings in an effort to solicit feedback from a broad range of community members. Meetings were held in Slack, were offered at different times to support differences in timezones, and were facilitated by community members from different regions of the world, including North America, Latin America, and South Asia. The group tried to create a space for as many different people to share their voice as possible (for example, one meeting was held specifically to hear from community members who identify as women).

As noted within this blog post, the goal of these meetings was to solicit actionable feedback from the community and provide results back to project leadership (Dries Buytaert) and the Drupal Association. We strongly encourage community members to read the full transcripts of the meetings, which we have captured below, and provide additional context beyond this summary.

While we felt it was important to distill the meeting transcripts into summaries, we also made a conscious effort to avoid adding personal bias by misrepresenting or distorting the voice of the community members who participated in this activity. Each facilitator, most with a review and voting of priorities from the meeting attendees, defined a set of takeaways from their meeting. Our group has subsequently added our perspective to an executive summary, in which we identify patterns and priorities community members raised. The key takeaways and executive summary are found in subsequent sections.

Our group held a total of 13 meetings, with a total of 102 attendees, representing 56 unique participants (many attendees participated in multiple meetings). Efforts were made to encourage participation from the global community, but we did not request participant demographics to share in this post (which, in hindsight, would have been helpful).

We encourage community members to review the key takeaways and our executive summary below with an independent and critical eye. We also encourage community members to share their perspectives as we continue on this important journey of evolving our community governance.

Executive Summary

The following points are grouped thematically, not by priority, though the members of this group agree that creation of a values statement is the highest priority:

• A community values statement is needed before making governance changes. This statement should come directly from leadership.
• Governance should evolve over time to remain sustainable. Consider a group of community members to regularly evaluate our policies, procedures, and governance structure.
• The Drupal Association, project leadership, and the community need to define the community, its membership, and its boundaries; at the very least for better communication and understanding of intentions and expectations. We need to define the communal roles for users, contributors, and maintainers.
• The Drupal Association, project leadership, and the community need to clearly define leadership, leadership positions, and the higher standard for those positions.
• The Drupal Association, project leadership, and the community need to clearly document governance structures, policies, and procedures so that anyone can find and understand them.
• The Community Working Group and the community need to improve the community code of conduct so that it is clearer and more actionable, particularly with regard to harassment. The Drupal Association should also review the DrupalCon Code of Conduct and its policies for enforcing it. Consider other tools that articulate the responsibilities of community participation like an etiquette guide, and conflict of interest policy.
• The Community Working Group and the community need to define the areas where community expectations exist (issue queues, camps, Slack, etc.)
• The Community Working Group and the Drupal Association needs to create  well-defined processes and procedures for when members violate these expectations.
• Community matters should have escalation points that go to groups, not individuals. Those groups should be representative of our community, but can also include outside experts.
• The community needs to improve its outreach to smaller local and regional communities around the world in a more structured and consistent way, providing resources that allow them to participate more fully in the global Drupal community with the same communal standards.
• The Drupal Association, project leadership, and the community should take greater responsibility in setting standards for events that carry the Drupal name.
• The community should develop a communication strategy around community documentation, dissemination, discoverability, organization, and ease of use for onboarding new community members.
• The community, project leadership, the Community Working Group, and the Drupal Association) should engage other communities and experts to be informed and identify best practices in governance.

As many of the items discussed in these meetings currently are the responsibility of the Drupal Association and/or project leadership, it is the recommendation of this group that they convene to discuss and process these takeaways, and then provide the community with a clear roadmap for what changes to governance they will take the lead on, and what role the community should play in helping to support those efforts. This roadmap should also be clear about what changes (if any) should be led by the community.

Key Takeaways From Each Meeting

Nikki Stevens / October 2 / Link to full transcript / 11 attendees

• We need to define what “contributor” means when we talk about “contributor community”
• We need to figure out where the community is/what its boundaries are.
• We need a values statement
• That values statement should include D&I as part of it, not as an addendum.

Adam Bergstein / October 6 / Link to full transcript / 10 attendees

• It strikes me that having all the information in a single place that is easily digestible would help a lot. I would be tempted to suggest talking with Gabor about his Rocketship thing and if it could be adapted to hold all the info and ongoing issues.
• It's a personal bugbear of mine that the way we disseminate info across the project is a bit unorganised. Very hard to find anything.
• I'd love to see drupal.org/community be reworked and owned by a working group
• What people often seem to devalue is discoverability. Lots of info is out there if you know where to find it. how do you find the things you don’t know exist. Like meetings. Having them all in one place like that would rock.
• I'm seriously open to having a community communication strategy created and implemented. Just wanted you all to know that. I've asked the team at a minimum to create a blog section on d.o/community so there is one place for community news from groups like CWG.
• My gut feeling is that we need to surface the current state of governance somewhere in the most clear way possible - then use that as a base to evolve governance to make it clear how a group is “official”.
• One of my learnings in Vienna is that sometimes, people need the DA or Dries to just name a group so the world knows a group is official and so that group feel empowered. So if this group needs that done, let me know. I don't want to overstep or assume or get in the way … just offering help where I can.
• I feel that if more people are present here, more perspectives from the community can be heard. Post to general before meeting starts.
• So, do we need to define Community as wider than DA membership? Does it include businesses etc? Does it include clients? Does it include DA staff? Does it include that Dries guy?
• Maybe we need to invite people to the meeting? Maybe the WeeklyDrop should have a little announcement about each governance meeting? there's also /r/reddit. Are we reaching out to all our different channels?

David Hernandez / October 7 / Link to full transcript / 8 attendees

• Define values before governance.
• Define who we are as a community. What does membership mean?
• What is the scope of the community?
• How do you a define groups or individuals that will be involved/appointed?

David Hernandez / October 7/8 / Link to full transcript / 5 attendees

• Governance needs to evolve over time.
• What are other orgs doing for evolving governance? We should look beyond open source and/or developer-centric organizations.
• We should bring it outside help/consultants.
• There will be some who resent/want to resist input from an outsider/expert while it would lend legitimacy to the process for others. Working with community members is essential.
• Forming a core group of DA/community/consultant with formal oversight of talks would allay some fears about wasting time talking.

Mike Anello / October 9 / Link to full transcript / 2 attendees

• There have been discussions in open source communities at the Sustain conference about what makes projects sustainable. These could be good concepts to embrace when evolving our governance structure(s).

George DeMet / October 12 / Link to full transcript / 14 attendees

• While the community may include anyone who interacts with Drupal in any way, there is a distinction between those who just use Drupal and those who deliberately choose to be a part of it in some way.
• Understanding the rights and responsibilities that come with being part of the Drupal community is a responsibility that’s shared between various institutions but also relies on how we hold ourselves accountable to each other.
• Leaders help set expectations by setting and upholding rules in a way that reflects the shared values of the community.
• Building an inclusive and diverse community requires being able to understand and appreciate those with backgrounds and cultures different from our own.
• We should support participation by positive people who represent the values of the project. Note: In post-meeting discussion, it was agreed that this point failed to capture an important aspect of the conversation that occurred, which was that we should also not be afraid to reject individuals who persist in engaging in toxic behavior after having received warnings about the negative impact their behavior is having on others.
• We should avoid a focus on “punishment” for those whose behavior has a negative impact on others, but we need processes and procedures in place to identify and deal with trolls and other bad actors.
• Governance will need to change and evolve over time as the project and the people involved with it change.

David Hernandez / October 24 / Link to full transcript / 10 attendees

• CWG needs some path of escalation to a group, not an individual, and that group should be made up of community members.
• The group of community members should also be qualified to handle these matters. Subject matter experts, experience, etc.
• The community needs some mechanism by which to know certain problematic community members exist.
• Camp organizers need a way to vet speakers, volunteers, and attendees.
• If the DA allows camps to use their financing, the DA should take a greater role ensuring the camps follow a defined standard.
• There may be value in having a blacklist of known bad actors that is public so the community is aware.
• Camp organizers should ensure safety at their event, as a requirement, not nice to have.
• The DA should leverage the licensing of the Drupal trademark to ensure events that use the Drupal name are safe.

Adam Bergstein / October 25 / Link to full transcript / 6 attendees

• i have seen some etiquette guides that have example interactions.
• Giving people guidelines on how to give feedback, for example, in the issue queues needs to be right in people’s faces as they are giving that feedback. It helps them do a better job.
• When you flag someone's post in various ways carefully scripted messages get put up that are designed to encourage positive behavior.
• We could do more to help onboard new members and provide them with resources to help navigate the community. Other communities have clearer documentation for getting started: https://kubernetes.io/community/ and https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/stateless-application/hello-minikub... I would respectfully suggest a section of d.o really isn't good enough. It needs to be the right messages in the right place throughout our infrastructure.
• Celebrate success (through recognition system?) when people improve. It's not enough just to tell people off all the time.
• Who in the community would perform this? it sounds like it would be self-monitored and we would just ask other community members to interact with specific interactions; enhancements to d.o and automation; allow the previous person to mark the reply as "helpful"; My understanding is that would mostly be dev workflow and issue queues.
• Drupal Association efforts may overlap with governance initiatives. Members should review https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/roadmap/community-initiatives and https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/roadmap
• The worst place on the internet /r/politics puts this above their comment forms "In general, be courteous to others. Attack ideas, not users. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, and other incivility violations can result in a permanent ban." Keep it short and simple.
• Regarding the issue queue commenting, don't forget the forums. they still exist. So it isn't just an issue commenting concern. gdo too. We should also include other community spaces like Slack, IRC, and in-person events.

Shyamala Rajaram/ October 26 / Link to Full Transcript / 4 attendees

• The DA or someone helping send experienced contributors to smaller events. Provide grants and scholarships to bring people to more Local events.
• Importance being placed on local communities and in-person connections.

Fatima Khalid / October 27 / Link to Full Transcript / 7 attendees

• There’s a fundamental need for a values statement. It’s critical that project leadership put out a strong statement of values. Ideally we’d like to see our values statement include more than one-word descriptors
• Discussed the equality vs equity comic: `https://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/ajAerM1_700b_v2.jpg ` We need to define that equity is a value we want to see achieved - this the kind of thing we would like to see in a values statement. We want to see systemic barriers to participation removed. It would help to also define those barriers
• We want a governance policy:
  • A statement of values (see above)
  • Define the leaders and groups that uphold those values,
  • Define the code of conduct that ensures those values are maintained
  • Define the consequences for not meeting those values through code of conduct violations.
•  We want a conflict of interest policy
  • Mediation between two parties isn’t always appropriate when there is a big power differential between
  •  individuals or when the issue is problematic actions one person did towards one person or multiple people or actions that affected an entire community.
  • Documentation of who handles what kind of issues
• We need a model for better communication.
  • We want standards for what people can expect to be communicated, how, and when, because our communication processes are not well-known or well-defined.

Shyamala Rajaram/ October 28 / Link to Full Transcript / 6 attendees

• Inside out approach (instead of bottom up or top down) and is about looking at what's strong and what works in a community and how to get more of it.
• Need for Paid  “Community Organiser” roles
• Toolkits as distributions and collaboration platforms as ways to have connection and sharing of information
• Common the Drupalers regularly conducting meetups for GTD and code sprints -  starting meetup, code sprints with a slide on Drupal Governance, Code of conduct is a way to create awareness.
• Recognise that any volunteer tasks are difficult and imperfect. That we need to support volunteers at all times. know that the community cares and we do. More ways to recognize!
• Look to other processes in similar communities to identify strategies that could work for us" (edited)

Alanna Burke / October 30 / Link to Full Transcript / 6 attendees

• This was a meeting for women-identified participants only. There were 7 total participants.
• We need a clear values statement, which should include why this statement is necessary - why not having one is adversely affecting the community and what the purpose is.
• Instead of worrying about getting the whole community on board, the statement should reflect how things are going forward, full stop.
• We need a very clear CoC, which should include as much as we possibly can (look at examples like Geek Feminism) (most agreed to this, one did not) to be clear so there is no question what is not allowed and what the consequences will be. Use language like "includes but is not limited to"
• Implementation details to be worked out later (do you agree to CoC by creating a d.o account? downloading Drupal? etc)
• It is also important that the CoC not be worded in a way that it can be applied differently to different people. There should be tiered consequences appropriate for the action.
• We should have some kind of mechanism for changing and improving the governance systems we put in place, so that they don't become stale or malfunction when something comes up. We are a community that practices agile development, so why not extend the process to include our governance? It should be flexible & resilient.
• Reach out to other communities - what have they dealt with? How? What are gaps and strengths? There must be things that we can learn from other similar communities. Maybe we could start a team to work on this.

Kenny Abarca / November 03, 2017 / Link to Full Transcript / 15 attendees

• People agreed that Drupal CoC should apply on Drupal Camps and other Drupal events throughout the world.
• From the above, the conversation went on to discuss the approach and complexity of having it implemented globally and even criteria for defining what a Drupal event is.
• When organizing Drupal community events, people should be aware that there’s a set of standards that apply and they should commit or at least be aware of them before putting together an event.
• “Drupal governance should automatically apply to events containing the word Drupal”. Attendees discussed the approach.
• Involvement of CWG in matters related to Drupal Camps.
• Attendees discussed Dries ownership of the Drupal trademark and how governance would be applied under those circumstances.
• Defining guidelines to solve issues at Cons & Camps, who to contact and where to go.
• There should be some control or moderation over events that get created on groups.drupal.org

Facilitators

Listed alphabetically by Drupal.org username:

• aburke626 - Alanna Burke
• davidhernandez - David Hernandez
• drnikki - Nikki Stevens
• gdemet - George DeMet (CWG)
• kabarca - Kenny Abarca
• nerdstein - Adam Bergstein
• shyamala - Shyamala Rajaram
• sugaroverflow - Fatima Sarah Khalid
• ultimike - Michael Anello (CWG)