The forked elephant in the room

[Mike Parker]

On Tuesday, 16 January 2024 at 10:45:18 UTC, Paolo Invernizzi 
wrote:

>
> My humble proposal is to add another, language maintainer with 
> good social and technical abilities, (like Steven), and more 
> delegation (and trust!) towards 'experts' (Timon ...)

I'd just like to say something about this. I've seen it repeated 
that we should delegate, as if we aren't aware of this, or are 
afraid to do it, or whatever. Well, we are aware of it, and we 
aren't afraid to do it.

We do it when we can. Two examples currently in progress: Mathias 
is steadily chipping away at dub issues and Robert is working on 
the Bugzilla to GitHub migration. These are people working in 
their own time, on their own dime, to handle things the DLF asked 
them to handle. Once they became regular members of our monthly 
meetings, then over time they became integral members of the 
team. That makes it a lot easier to ask them to get things done. 
We know what they'd be willing to do.

I periodically reach out to people and ask if they're interested 
in helping us tackle something. Some tell me they'd like to, but 
just don't have the time for it. Others tell me they're happy to, 
then in practice they never find the time for it. That tells me 
they said yes with good intentions, but weren't particularly 
motivated to work on that task.

And that's no slight on them. I totally get it. I might ping a 
time or two over a few weeks, but I'm not going to be pushy about 
it. Very often, they're contributing to the broader community or 
ecosystem in other ways already, anyway.

One of my goals is to alter that situation such that when we have 
any given task, we have a general idea of who would be motivated 
to work on it. To that end, I've been reaching out to some 
long-time D users to expand membership in our monthly meetings 
for the past several months. As a result, we've seen some great 
contributions that otherwise probably wouldn't have materialized 
(and that's in addition to the valuable insights and feedback 
they provide on the topics we discuss). I anticipate that not 
only will we see more such, but we'll be in a better position to 
find alignment with things we need to do and the things those 
members want to achieve, and so we'll be able to delegate more 
tasks more often, and they'll be more willing to get them done.

Of course, I can't expand the monthly meetings indefinitely, so 
I'm also reaching out to chat with other members of the community 
to get a feel for who's interested in doing some of the work we 
need done and what kind best suits them. The more we can make 
that kind of match, the more likely they'll be willing to 
prioritize that work over something they might otherwise be doing 
with their time.

So yes, we want to delegate. We just have to have the right 
environment and the right people to do it. We're working on 
creating that environment for those people.

>
> I think UCORA can really help on that, but you all should first 
> recognise that this is a problem, and ask them directly for 
> suggestions.

Yes, we are working with Ucora already. Walter and I are 
participating in their executive coaching program. We just had a 
few weeks off for the holidays, but we're back in the saddle this 
week.

>
> My impression is that this change is happening, slowly but it's 
> happening.

Yes. Unfortunately, slowly is the name of the game for now. But 
I'm optimistic we'll pick up momentum over the next few months. 
We've got Ucora's advice and guidance, but they aren't pushing 
any sort of structures or frameworks on us. We (the DLF) have to 
build up our processes ourselves in a way that makes sense for 
us. It's not going to happen overnight, nor anywhere as quickly 
as we'd like it to. But we are finding our way.

>> Perhaps we need to update the contributor guide.

That's one of the things on our TODO list. That falls to Razvan 
and Dennis as our pull request and issue managers. I've discussed 
it with them already in our regular weekly meetings.