Restructuring the forum categories

I would like to discuss the forum category structure, now that Social Coding is another top-level category to be added.

I think there are a bunch of top-level categories, that can be subcategories and still be intuitive (maybe even more than now). Just starting this topic, but some things also depend on another discussion I’ll create which deals with positioning all of the various collaborations that are taking shape now, but also ability to handle future ones.

New structure draft is here → :building_construction: Restructuring the forum categories (Wiki Post)

Structure of Governance section

Yes. Some place where I can get quickly informed about:

  • These are things that are important to the community.
  • These are things where I can make a contribution.
  • These are things I want to follow-up on and discuss/elaborate further.

There may be a Governance Log, which is a wiki post with a table of entries, pinned at the top of the Governance category.

There may be different Log Entry types:

  • Collective Decision: Something for the community to decide and/or vote on.
  • Call to Action: Something with high priority that needs urgent community attention.
  • Call for Help: Something valuable but not too urgent where contributors can jump in.
1 Like

I would like to see a Call to Action and Call for Help category :+1: However I don’t see how they relate to governance. I’d rather see those as sub-categories in the Workspace category, for instance.

I can imagine that adding them to the governance category could be an informal way to give those categories more weight, to encourage readers to pay attention. But since there is no way to explain why they belong to the governance category it may also have the opposite effect. Readers would rightfully ask about the rules to to follow to publish a call … but there are no rules, it is up to each individual. And then they would ask why it is in the governance category since there are no set rules to publish such calls. Do you see what I mean?

Governance can relate to two different things: 1) the rulebook 2) the day-to-day exercise of activity that steers community direction according to the rulebook. The rulebook is a formal document, a manifesto, while the exercise is the living representation of what is happening in terms of governance. Rulebook can be a site page, activities take place as forum interactions.

Wordnik defines governance as:

  1. The action, manner, or power of governing.
  2. Government; exercise of authority; direction; control; management.
  3. Behavior; manners.

What does a government do before a regulation becomes Law? There’s a process of governance to that involving multiple steps that everyone needs to be in the loop of to enable them to exercise their democratic influence.

If we agree to have different steps / activity types, when can then make a list of which to track and how name them best. A “Call for Help” as separate type is maybe not directly governance, though we might also call it “Call for Action” as well and add a Priority High / Low to it.

Some contributions can be requested in issue trackers, but others that are mentioned on the forum may best belong there. Like earlier discussion on organization improvements (e.g. better website). How do people find that now? That could be on the Governance Log (or whatever name it has) as entries that link through to the related forum topic.

1 Like

https://www.wordnik.com/words/governance

There are interesting definitions there indeed, thanks for the link. I tend to rely on wiktionary only :sweat_smile:

I get what you mean but I agree that it is not directly related to governance.

I agree there is value in organizing these call for help / action in categories dedicated to them, but I think doing so by creating sub-categories of the governance category is not justified because there is no direct link between the two.

I use wiktionary, wikipedia and free dictionary primarily, but I was lazy today. DDG integrates with Wordnik :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

No, different subcategories per activity type is not the best way. There’s several options to organize. Here are some that come to mind:

  1. “Governance” (sub?)category, with pinned Governance Log at the top, containing a wiki post with a table of entries and links to the relevant forum topic (can be anywhere on the forum).

    • Topics under “Governance” can still be only Decisions, like they are now.
  2. “Governance” (sub?)category and topics below that relate a particular governance type… Decision, Proposal, Call to Action (whatever we decide on), indicated with a tag on the topic, so they are distinguishable and can be easily filtered.

    • Governance topics can have a predefined topic template (add via category Settings), where the type is filled in, plus priority, etc. Instructions can be html comments (e.g. “start topic title with Governance Type, and add corresponding tag”.

    • If someone posts with Priority == High, then a mod or admin pins the topic to the top of the category for extra attention.

I added following to the top post:

New structure draft is here → :building_construction: Restructuring the forum categories (Wiki Post)

(Note the Wiki Post topic is closed so that it bumps to the top of the list on every edit someone makes)

@dachary shall we globally pin the wiki post to the top of the forum for 2 weeks?

This is the an idea I have regarding possible structure:

forgefed-forum-structure-idea

Remarks to the diagram:

  • This demonstrates the umbrella idea. The current forgefriends has become ‘forgeproxy’ (indicative name).
  • There’s a central square for common community stuff.
  • Governance takes place in top-levels, but decisions are moved / handled separately
  • Funding in governance relates to general stuff, but e.g. ‘forgeproxy’ can have its own funding subcategory.
  • There a bunch of current categories that are not needed separately, or are present here but with different name.
  • Sub-cats can be color-coded to indicate related types, like gitea / gitlab / heptapod cats, if more cats are added (e.g. funding).
  • Some (sub)categories may have a Category Template set up, sucha as “Governance” category.
  • A “Mark Solution” setting in categories such as “Governance” may be useful (requires theme component, I think)
1 Like

This is assuming the current scope and definition of forgefriends is changed first. I think your idea is to rename the current forgefriends into forgeproxy and to redefine forgefriends as an umbrella that includes forgeproxy. Am I right or do I misunderstand your intentions?

Yes, this is along the lines of that discussion. I’ll add a crossref to that topic for clarity. Though if you’d just change ‘forgeproxy’ to “ecosystem” it is the same as it is now. i.e without that repositioning in place.

(For reference, here’s discussion on positioning: Redefining and positioning the forgefriends project)

1 Like

Ok, I’m glad we’re on the same frequency :slight_smile: Since such an umbrella does not exist yet and has to be defined, it seems a lot easier to create it under a different name, don’t you think? I do not see the upside of renaming forgefriends (again :sweat_smile: ).

1 Like

In the umbrella concept forgefriends wouldn’t need to be renamed. It is the umbrella for a collection of “forge friend” initiatives. But the technical implementation (the FOSS project creating forge proxies) would have to be renamed. For instance along more of a ‘end-user perspective’, be something like “Forgefriends ProjectBridge” or whatever. And then you’d have “ProjectBridge for Gitea”, “ProjectBridge for Gitlab”, etc. The renaming would be for repo names, and changes to code to reflect that.

ForgeFed, being a spec, may become “Forgefriends Federation Protocol v1.0” and have sections for “Issue management”, “Merge requests”, etc. Or you could break those down into seperate document artifacts “Forgefriends Issue Management v1.0”.

(You might name apps along the domain of metal working e.g. IssueWelder, CodeMold, SparkReview, etc … can create some great mascotte avatars for that :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: See: Glossary of Blacksmithing and Metalworking Terms - English)

The umbrella concept is not in the definition nor in the scope of forgefriends. Do you mean that the forgefriends scope and definition should be changed to include the umbrella concept?

A post was merged into an existing topic: Redefining and positioning the forgefriends project

Renaming the “devops” category into “maintenance” makes sense to me :+1:

1 Like