Add members to and remove members from the Technical Working Group [#3252921]

Problem/Motivation

Coding Standards issues needs some love. The Technical Working Group is down to one remaining member, Alex Bronstein. Governance changes for the TWG at least technically require signoff by the Drupal Association.

See the two related issues.

xjm suggested making a patch in this
project.

Steps to reproduce

Coding Standards issue queue has a growing number of issues not being resolved.

Proposed resolution

Dries has authorised the core committer team to act as designates as regards the Technical Working Group up to and including dissolving the group and incorporating it back into the core committer team. Since dissolving the group may not be an immediate step, for now:

Add the following core committers to the Technical Working Group, with an initial focus on unblocking coding standards issues that are blocking core development:

catch
longwave
larowlan
quietone
(possibly others - comment here and/or update the issue summary to add yourself).

Remaining tasks

Create MR, review commit.

What we have done or are doing

Start a coding-standard channel in slack
Hold regular meetings, the first meeting was held in June 2022 and they continue.
Issue targets are set so that we focus our time on getting issues to RTBC.
Reviewing the easier issues and taking them as far as possible. Some issues require Coding Standards committee agreement to complete.

User interface changes

N/A

API changes

N/A

Data model changes

N/A

Comment	File	Size	Author
#2	3252921-2.patch	685 bytes	quietone

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Comments

Comment #1

6 December 2021 at 23:03

quietone created an issue. See original summary.

Comment #2

quietone commented 6 December 2021 at 23:08

Issue summary:

View changes

Status	File	Size
new	3252921-2.patch	685 bytes

A simple patch that removes non active members and starts a place to add people to the Coding Standards Committe.

Comment #3

quietone commented 14 December 2021 at 00:06

In a conversation in #coding-standards the following people put their hand up to be on the coding standards committee.

Dave Long (longwave)
Björn Brala (bbrala)
Victoria Spagnolo (quietone)
Derek Wright (dww)

Comment #4

quietone commented 8 January 2022 at 06:35

Also, AaronMcHale, has put their hand up to join the committee.

Comment #5

urvashi_vora commented 21 June 2022 at 12:23

Hi @quietone,

I also want to be a part of it. Can you please let me in? I don't have an @association.drupal.org email address.

Thanks

Comment #6

quietone commented 23 August 2022 at 03:19

A dedicated Slack channel was created on 2021-11-08 for work on the Drupal coding standards. Regular fortnightly meetings began in the channel starting on 2022-06-07. I am adding the first one as a related issue for you reading pleasure, the subsequent meetings are children. The slack channel now has 46 members.

In the early discussions we talked about how we want to work together and the limitations because the CS Committee is not active. Out of those discussion it was clear that the most active people were also keen to not take on too much. Therefor we are focusing on slow steady progress in all areas. With that in mind the meetings have just a small number of discussions and follow up work.

Other accomplishments so far are;

#1539712: [policy, no patch] Coding standards for breaking function calls and language constructs across lines has been re-scoped and split into small discussions
low hanging fruit being reviewed and, usually, close
Establishing a pattern on monitoring core CS scheduled to go in at beta

Comment #7

quietone commented 23 November 2022 at 22:14

Issue summary:

View changes

The group is cn

Comment #8

gábor hojtsy

he/him

Hungarian

Hungary

commented 16 January 2023 at 14:54

Status:

Active

» Needs work

I went to search for the governance definition of the Drupal "Coding Standard Committe" where Google gave me this issue: #2824047: Who is part of "the coding standards committee"?, which is I think the exact same issue from 6 years ago? I think that itself can be closed as a duplicate?

In the Techincal Working Group Charter (https://git.drupalcode.org/project/governance/-/blob/master/charters/tec...) the committee is not defined, so I assume the members of that committee would be appointed the same way at the TWG itslef by the BDFL? Or otherwise we should add language to the charter about the committe and how they are appointed from the members of the TWG by the lead of the TWG or somesuch?

If we are to update the list of names only, then it sounds like BDFL sign-off would be needed. If we are to change the charter, then also BDFL sign-off would be needed, so it would be best to define what exactly is that's needed :)

Comment #9

quietone commented 17 January 2023 at 22:55

@Gábor Hojtsy, thanks for asking.

This issue is not about changing the charter. This is about adding people to the coding standards committee. I thought, and there was agreement, that it would be quicker to stay within current policy instead of working to change policy first. At the time it seemed the quickest route to unblock work.

Comment #10

quietone commented 17 January 2023 at 23:42

Status:

Needs work

» Needs review

Comment #11

gábor hojtsy

he/him

Hungarian

Hungary

commented 18 January 2023 at 14:49

Status:

Needs review

» Needs work

In that case I think the patch would be great to complete with the list of confirmed names and RTBC for the project lead to sign off. The patch currently adds the committe but without members and also leaves @effulgentsia the only member of the TWG altogether. Based on the other comments that's not what is intended to be signed off on?

Comment #12

gábor hojtsy

he/him

Hungarian

Hungary

commented 18 May 2023 at 10:02

Status:

Needs work

» Postponed

FYI opened #3361198: Discuss the future of the Technical Working Group (TWG). Postponing this on that issue. If/when that is resolved as proposed, this issue should be closed as duplicate.

Comment #13

catch

he/him

English

commented 24 May 2023 at 08:57

Status:

Postponed

» Needs review

#3361198: Discuss the future of the Technical Working Group (TWG) has turned out to be even more complicated than we originally thought. As a short term measure at least, I think we need to re-open this issue.

Quoting myself from there...

...there is a line in the current TWG charter that says:

Members are appointed by Dries Buytaert and/or his designate(s).

I think Dries' decision last week also applies to the core committer team being 'designates' as regards the TWG. This means that we should be fine to appoint people to the TWG without explicit sign-off on each new member from Dries.

Therefore the next steps probably look like:

1. Core committers, acting as 'designates' appoint a subset of core committers to the TWG.
2. The new TWG membership can start unblocking specific issues.
3. Sort out the governance changes in parallel.

I'm therefore putting myself forward as a member of the technical working group to work on the coding standards committee.

I believe @larowlan is also volunteering for the same thing, and other core committers may also join.

Since we're acting as Dries' designates, we can then add that list of core committers to the TWG/coding standards committee and begin unblocking issues. From there, we can look at adding other members (who don't need to be core committers, it just has to be Dries or core committers for now adding people), and/or continuing trying to restructure the group.

Comment #14

larowlan

🇦🇺🏝.au GMT+10

commented 24 May 2023 at 09:16

Confirming I'm also volunteering per above

Comment #15

longwave

he/him

English

commented 24 May 2023 at 09:17

As in #3 I would also volunteer for the TWG.

Comment #16

catch

he/him

English

commented 24 May 2023 at 11:26

Title:

Add members to the Coding Standard committe

» Add members to the Technical Working Group

Re-titling since the coding standards committee doesn't exist independently of the TWG due to related Governance blockages.

Comment #17

catch

he/him

English

commented 24 May 2023 at 15:37

Issue summary:

View changes

Comment #18

gábor hojtsy

he/him

Hungarian

Hungary

commented 24 May 2023 at 16:27

I think the quickest route forward would be to rebase the MR on the current version of the repo or open a new MR and get the names in there that are still confirmed. We can get that in as designates of Dries and move forward with resolving issues with that team. We can figure out the charter changes separately.

Comment #19

21 June 2023 at 11:26

quietone opened merge request !2

Comment #20

quietone commented 21 June 2023 at 11:44

Issue summary:

View changes

I've made an MR that replaces the existing committee with the people listed in the proposed resolution, all of which are core committers. And as confirmed at the off-site meeting these are 'designates of Dries'.

For the other people who put their hand up, Björn Brala (bbrala) and Derek Wright (dww), Aaron McHale and urvashi_vora, the change being made here is a first step. It is being done to ensure that the existing governance processes are followed, as best we can. Once the group is formed we can address the various governance issues and change the membership.

Comment #21

effulgentsia commented 21 June 2023 at 16:59

Title:

Add members to the Technical Working Group

» Add members to and remove members from the Technical Working Group

I'm in full agreement with the current MR. Both with regards to me and the other inactive members being removed and with the currently proposed 4 people being added.

Comment #22

gábor hojtsy

he/him

Hungarian

Hungary

commented 21 June 2023 at 17:01

Status:

Needs review

» Reviewed & tested by the community

Yay thanks for all confirmations!

Comment #23

21 June 2023 at 17:03

168cf8eb committed on main

Issue #3252921 by quietone, Gábor Hojtsy, catch, larowlan, effulgentsia...

Comment #24

21 June 2023 at 17:09

Gábor Hojtsy credited Dries.

Comment #25

gábor hojtsy

he/him

Hungarian

Hungary

commented 21 June 2023 at 17:09

Status:

Reviewed & tested by the community

» Fixed

Landed this, thanks all!

The charter does not define how coding standard issues are resolved, whether they are delegated or not from the TWG, so to adjust that process does not require a change to the charter as far as I see. In practice coding standards issues were delegated in the past to the maintainers of https://www.drupal.org/project/coding_standards, not all of whom were TWG members. Now the updated members of the TWG are empowered to make adjustments to the member list there and to the processes in https://www.drupal.org/project/coding_standards as appropriate, or can even decide whether that process is even used or not.

While the coding standard process does not require amending the charter as far as I see, the charter as-is does not give members the power to disband the group or to change the charter without Drupal Association signoff (see at the bottom). I was separately in contact with the chair of the board at the DA @baddysonja to try to figure out a designate from the DA to discuss changes with, but we don't know what those changes may be, so it may be best to reopen that conversation when/if there are actual charter changes needed? (Not in this issue).