[arch-dev-public] discussions to death, rules - no innovations?

[Damir Perisa]

Wednesday 24 October 2007, Aaron Griffin wrote:
 | On 10/23/07, Damir Perisa <damir.perisa at solnet.ch> wrote:
 | > however, it lacks things, that i usually specify in my SRs:
 | > deadlines on when something will be decided.
 |
 | I was on the fence about this. The reason is that I/we already
 | have so many normal deadlines doing other things, one or two more
 | might be "too much",
 
true. i am sure you are capable of ballancing this right. not an easy 
task :)

 | The intent, of the "short term" tasks, was to address them as soon
 | as possible, and the long term ones would be more lax. In a way,
 | the intent was to provide an unofficial and nebulous set of
 | deadlines.
 
the problem with this kind of deadlines is, that they are not 
documented and fall out of mind easily. it's not needed to specify a 
date and time for the exact second to be held as valid but to just 
write a rough date/time that is kept somewhere and that people see. 
people like symbols for milestones. 

if not, (especially) the (low priority, longterm) issue creeps around 
on the mailinglist and comes to the surface every 3 months or so 
without being resolved (switching from CVS to something else was 
suggested years ago.. yet again everything is discussed again from 
tabula rasa - i'm simplifying here, i know). 

another thing is: as soon as possible is tricky for 

 | The problem is, most of us are not action oriented. And this is a
 | big problem.

not (immediate) action oriented people. you cannot point to asap, but 
you can point to a date. the date functions as a symbol, a landmark 
that separates the not-decided state with the decided one. if 
somebody feels its too short, it is always possible to say, lets 
prolong it for 3 days... but every 3 days moving the date has to be 
agreed on or decided (question: are we capable of deciding now? no? 
ok, in 3 days maybe - if in 3 days nothing happened, it will be 
decided - if lots change, there is enough to decide now).

to take an example: [extra] mutation to [mantle]+[crust]. 
the discussion took place, there are for days no new comments, but 
there is no decision. you asked the question in the SR, but no date 
was set. 
often it helps to say: on 28. october we will have this decided. if 
not in plenum, i (you) will decide it. it anchors the whole issue to 
a date and anchors (associates) it also in our brains with all the 
discussion, that behind this date, this is either an archived concept 
somewhere in the archives, or it is realised. it is not any more 
laying around for people to fall over it, if they walk around 
uncarefully. we let our toys laying around like small children :)
 
- D


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