Documentation on working groups and teams operations

[thibaudcolas]

There are two opportunities for more docs on how we operate:

• General documentation on what is available behind-the-scenes, so new working group / teams charters have an easier time reusing what is already set up
• Group-specific documentation

General docs

This could be just a new file or folder in this repository? Listing fundamental tools, and also nuances within those tools (related: #12). Thinking in particular of:

• Google Groups on the DSF Google Workspace, how they can be used as a public or private inbox, or for file permissions
• Google Drive folder structures and permissions management - in the shared drive, and group-specific private drives if needed
• DSF Slack channels, public, group-private, shared between groups
• DSF Slack groups, that make the above easier to manage
• Google Forms for group membership applications

In addition to facilitating the setup of the groups, having more documentation would encourage consistency, which would make common onboarding / offboarding tasks much simpler. For example noting we have to update the Foundation Teams page.

Group-specific docs

There is a natural need for groups to maintain documentation that isn’t a good fit for the main Django docs. I’m not sure what we should encourage here exactly, but most groups I’m on have a need for:

• Internal docs that go beyond the charter. Just more of the same with more details.
• Public docs to share information with other contributors in the areas the group operates.

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I’d like to write some of those docs, not sure which exactly just yet, but it’d be great to get feedback from others on what specific needs they might have / thoughts on how to do this well.

[nanorepublica]

Just a note that we (OCWG) were discussing the different roles Discord vs Slack yesterday. Clear Documentation was suggested as part of the discussion in terms of who should have access or not etc.

See our minutes: https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/online-community-working-group-meeting-notes/42156/4

[ulgens]

+1 for the general idea.

This could be just a new file or folder in this repository?

I think so.

Public docs to share information with other contributors in the areas the group operates.

Is there a documented expectation of what type of information should be kept in public, or is this entirely at the discretion of the WG?

[thibaudcolas]

@ulgens the documented expectation for public docs is pretty minimal:

• Charter in this repo per our template
  • Which evolves a bit towards higher expectations, see #49
• What the charter says about reporting per group, at the discretion of the group
• Blurb + membership list on the teams page

Beyond that, I think there is a cultural expectation to have documentation that is publicly-visible whenever possible? Though inconsistent track-record on how well that works in practice. For "Foundation" considerations in particular, we have a lot of docs that are publicly-available if you know where to look but that won’t make too much sense without context for a broad audience.

[thibaudcolas]

Noting other group pain points that could be worth documenting more as abstract "recipes":

• Budget management and requests
• Membership applications and the balance between giving priority to capacity vs. internet vs. expertise