18:03:04 <smichel17> #startmeeting 
18:03:04 <hcoop-meetbot> smichel17: Meeting started at 2022-08-06T18:03+0000
18:03:05 <hcoop-meetbot> smichel17: Current chairs: smichel17
18:03:06 <hcoop-meetbot> smichel17: Useful commands: #action #info #idea #link #topic #motion #vote #close #endmeeting
18:03:07 <hcoop-meetbot> smichel17: See also: https://hcoop-meetbot.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
18:03:40 <smichel17> #topic role call
18:03:54 <smichel17> or is there a specific command for that?
18:04:00 <unknown_lamer> #here clinton
18:04:06 <jackhill[hc]> #here jackhill[hc]
18:04:10 <unknown_lamer> also do we have any agenda
18:04:10 <keverets[hc]> #here keverets[hc]
18:04:14 <smichel17> #here stephen
18:04:14 <robin> #here robin
18:04:51 <smichel17> Layline is not here, might be able to swing by near the end of the meeting, but let's not count on it
18:05:00 <robin> unknown_lamer, not afaik, or not on the wiki at least
18:05:01 <keverets[hc]> https://hcoop-meetbot.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ has the command reference, btw
18:05:13 <jackhill[hc]> oh, I gueess the xmpp <-> irc renaming messed that up
18:05:17 <jackhill[hc]> #here jackhill
18:05:40 <smichel17> Yeah I just pulled it up, but looking it while trying to run the meeting is slightly difficult :P
18:05:40 <keverets[hc]> how did you avoid the translation?
18:06:50 <smichel17> jackhill: ^
18:07:19 <keverets[hc]> #here keverets
18:07:26 <keverets[hc]> (thanks jackhill[hc] 🙂 )
18:07:44 <smichel17> did he pm you, or did something not come through the bridge?
18:07:51 <keverets[hc]> any items of discussion to add to the (currently empty agenda)?
18:07:53 <keverets[hc]> he pm'd me
18:07:56 <smichel17> d
18:07:58 <smichel17> #topic agenda building
18:08:02 <jackhill[hc]> smichel17: how can I explain without running afoul of the tanslator … I used my xmpp-mapped irc name
18:08:19 <smichel17> ha!
18:08:30 <smichel17> No agenda planned in advance, but I have a few items I'd like to add:
18:08:48 <unknown_lamer> https://wiki.hcoop.net/IrcMeetings/20220806 stub page
18:09:18 <smichel17> - A little trouble with latency when scheduling the meeting— would be nice to have a backup contact where I can ping people in the event that emailing board@ isn't working
18:10:28 <smichel17> - It would be nice to make some QoL improvements around running the board. Things like having templates for the regular emails we send out, a list of the permissions that need to be granted to each member based on roles (e.g. so robin can update the public board page)
18:10:44 <smichel17> Those two are all I have
18:11:14 <keverets[hc]> perhaps also the state of members who are far negative?
18:11:19 <unknown_lamer> Work on the portal will require someone to fix mlt before we can do anything, it turns out it's been broken on Debian buster and later
18:11:35 <keverets[hc]> ouch. that sounds like a big impediment to progress
18:12:07 <unknown_lamer> But AFS ACLs allow editing docs, robin should have write permissions to the hcoop.net/board location now
18:12:31 <smichel17> It's funny that "we need to fix our stack to proceed" is the same problem here and at Snowdrift.coop
18:12:46 <robin> ty unknown_lamer
18:12:59 <smichel17> well, not quite the same, there it's more like "nobody on the team has the expertise to work with our current stack)
18:13:35 <keverets[hc]> are we out of agenda and on to a particular topic?
18:13:35 <smichel17> anyway, anything else? So far I see the two I brought up and state of negative members
18:14:13 <keverets[hc]> nothing else from me
18:14:15 <unknown_lamer> fixed the hcoop.net/board area, that was just oversight during the transition
18:14:51 <robin> for my part board@ will be high-priority mail now (i was misfiltering the mail), but in general backup contact info would be a good idea (maybe the portal contact info is enough? not sure if many people use it)
18:15:16 <smichel17> I'd like to introduce a social custom— if you're ready to move on to the next topic, drop a > in chat
18:15:18 <smichel17> e.g.
18:15:20 <smichel17> >
18:15:29 <unknown_lamer> that is why we have the contact db in the portal even
18:15:33 <smichel17> or >> if you want extra emphasis :)
18:15:48 <smichel17> so we're not sitting around waiting, wondering if anyone else is still typing/thinking
18:16:05 <keverets[hc]> >
18:16:13 <robin> smichel17, i'll update the board wiki so the permissions change is clearer
18:16:15 <robin> >
18:16:24 <robin> s/board//
18:16:25 <smichel17> Let's do state of members first, since that seems fairly self-contained
18:16:38 <smichel17> #topic state of members who are far negative
18:17:10 <keverets[hc]> noticed the last round of emails that there were a few people again deep in the negative. Did we want to have some process/procedure/timeline to handle that?
18:17:22 <keverets[hc]> Seems in the past that it just fell on unknown_lamer to handle when available to do so
18:17:56 <robin> #link https://members.hcoop.net/portal/money?cmd=nbals
18:18:13 <unknown_lamer> I am supposed to hassle each person once manually a week after dues are run and then freeze them (the unfreeze script does not quite work correctly and breaks a bunch of stuff unfortunately), and then a few days before the next dues run bring them up for expulsion and then expell them
18:18:17 <keverets[hc]> just wondering if there's something we can do there to help prod people more directly to get up-to-date, let a set amount of time pass, then do the usual de-listing. Could spread the work out a bit
18:18:33 <unknown_lamer> so just behind. also i forgot to pay my dues, which will be corrected soon
18:19:21 <smichel17> unknown_lamer: "I am supposed to hassle each person" in your role as treasurer, or in your role as de facto person who picks up everything that falls through the cracks?
18:19:28 <keverets[hc]> that's fair. just don't want it always falling on you, as you seem to carry most of the load of the board work and the admin work
18:19:38 <unknown_lamer> I see at least 7 people that are still active on the list (two linked to one account) including me, the rest are probably people that paid once and then never used services
18:19:45 <unknown_lamer> smichel17: as treasurer
18:20:02 <unknown_lamer> if I kept on top of it it's not hard (like not waiting until the end of the month to run payments...)
18:20:47 <smichel17> This seems like something we could reasonably automate… actually IIRC it is already automated, I'm pretty sure I've received "negative balance" emails in the past
18:20:54 <unknown_lamer> anyway, I can plan to stop putting that off this month and email everyone tomorrow and then starting freezing/expelling folks, but that's about all I can commit to this month (have to finish writing and recording an album for October release... last bit of backlog from when I slashed my leg open and got nothing done for three months)
18:20:55 <keverets[hc]> do you want to distribute the responsibility?
18:21:13 <unknown_lamer> smichel17: it's automated, but because it's automated people ignore the automated email
18:21:38 <smichel17> This seems like a good transition into my second topic
18:21:48 <smichel17> QoL improvements for running the board
18:21:58 <unknown_lamer> so before expelling them, usually sending a personal mail gets their attention
18:22:29 <unknown_lamer> anyhow that's all I had for that, emailing everyone will take like 20 minutes tomorrow I've just been slammed with catching up from being offline for the first quarter of the year
18:22:39 <unknown_lamer> and also the worst ticket volume at work I've experienced yet...
18:22:42 <smichel17> Maybe we could make the automatic email slighly lower frequency or something?
18:22:54 <smichel17> To make it less tune-out-able
18:23:12 <smichel17> I imagine having some kind of base template for the personal email would make it easier to get to them
18:23:21 <keverets[hc]> humans are pretty good at ignoring things
18:23:29 <smichel17> At least, I know that's the case for me with stuff like announcing this meeting
18:24:07 <unknown_lamer> smichel17: I have a template somewhere actually, and a little shell script hack to generate them (then just have to copy and paste into gnus and send)
18:24:35 <unknown_lamer> I can add that to the hcoop scripts dir when I deal with this, but it's very much a quick hack (copy in the negative balances table into a text file and run)
18:24:39 <smichel17> It does seem like the treasurer has a larger share of responsibilities than some of the other roles
18:24:55 <keverets[hc]> so I guess it's up to unknown_lamer ... if you could use help on handling this, then we can make a decision on it. If you're fine with it for now we can probably move on
18:25:06 <smichel17> But I guess it's good to have variance, allows people with varying levels of commitment to run for the board
18:25:16 <smichel17> s/commitment/availability/
18:25:29 <unknown_lamer> can move on for now, if we had like 50 negative balances I'd probably want to split things up between a few people but there aren't *that* many
18:25:40 <jackhill[hc]> smichel17: FWIW, in my other organization, the treasurer also has outsized responsibilities
18:26:08 <smichel17> >
18:26:09 <keverets[hc]> ok, good to know
18:26:10 <keverets[hc]> >
18:26:12 <robin> >
18:26:16 <jackhill[hc]> >
18:26:18 <unknown_lamer> tbh treasurer isn't a *huge* responsibility except I never automated paypal... so there's that manual work. If we had integration into the portal like for stripe then it's just checking the numbers match up and clicking apply.
18:26:37 <unknown_lamer> >
18:26:47 <smichel17> oh, for some reason I always thought paypal was the easier one and stripe was more work
18:26:52 <keverets[hc]> (side topic for later perhaps... but mlt seems to be packaged in guix ; idly wonder whether that would help with portal stuff)
18:26:58 <smichel17> I'll send balances via stripe from now on :P
18:27:10 <robin> keverets[hc], yes i was just thinking about that, and guix is in debian now
18:27:27 <jackhill[hc]> keverets[hc]: I think that's a different mlt
18:27:56 <keverets[hc]> if we have a preference between paypal & stripe (such as less work) then we may want to put some emphasis on the payment page. I'd like guidance in terms of which is easier for the hcoop when submitting dues
18:28:16 <keverets[hc]> jackhill[hc]: ah, sorry. I didn't look too close. package name collisions are annoying
18:28:37 <keverets[hc]> "multimedia framework" ... I should have noticed
18:28:48 <smichel17> #accepted no changes for now, just monitoring the situation if the backlog of overdue members gets longer
18:29:01 <smichel17> #topic QoL improvements for running the board
18:29:31 <keverets[hc]> I'm fine for poking by email and irc/xmpp
18:29:33 <smichel17> I thought of this yesterday when sending the announcement email about the board meeting
18:29:36 <smichel17> I always go search in my history for previous announcements, copy-paste, and tweak from there
18:29:48 <keverets[hc]> there are some templates for presidential notices
18:29:50 <keverets[hc]> buried in the wiki
18:30:08 <unknown_lamer> even I had no idea and I was president for forever
18:30:19 <unknown_lamer> should probably link those in from BoardMemberDuties at least so it's visible
18:30:30 <smichel17> It would be nice if we could surface all the relevant info to one wiki page, where I can start when I'm looking to find that stuff
18:30:36 <keverets[hc]> #link https://wiki.hcoop.net/BoardMemberDuties
18:31:01 <keverets[hc]> links to, eg, https://wiki.hcoop.net/HCoopElectionProcedures that has some email templates
18:31:13 <smichel17> e.g. for Snowdrift.coop we made https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/resources
18:31:22 <unknown_lamer> I think putting templates into code blocks on the wiki would be a good start?
18:31:32 <unknown_lamer> copy and paste and search and replace
18:31:32 <keverets[hc]> though I found the method of variable substitution mildly annoying (so I screwed at least one up by not replacing the proper thing)
18:31:41 <smichel17> "If you're on the ~~team~~ board and you are looking for something, start on this page"
18:32:40 <unknown_lamer> maybe there's a CLI tool that can do a mail merge type operation (read a document and collect all the variable references and prompt for values?)
18:32:41 <keverets[hc]> smichel17, any particular ones you want added to that wiki?
18:32:45 <smichel17> Even for stuff like, when I wasn't getting a response to the scheduling emails, I wanted to go look and find the list of everyone who's actually on the board
18:33:26 <keverets[hc]> once https://hcoop.net/board/ is updated that should be easier. Fair point about maybe making the current board names into mailto links
18:33:28 <smichel17> https://hcoop.net/board/ wasn't up to date, but even when it was up to date, it doesn't link to people's hcoop or irc usernames, so it's hard to cross reference and find contact info in the portal
18:33:57 <smichel17> ("when it was up to date" = my previous board term in 2018 or whatever it was)
18:34:36 <smichel17> I typically would start by looking at the election links because those were the easiest to find
18:34:51 <keverets[hc]> I looked at the board meeting minutes
18:35:00 <keverets[hc]> What was last up to date in 2018?
18:35:13 <smichel17> I don't know where those are off hand :|
18:35:23 <smichel17> https://hcoop.net/board was up to date in 2018
18:35:24 <keverets[hc]> https://wiki.hcoop.net/IrcMeetings
18:35:30 <keverets[hc]> maybe we could link that more prominently
18:35:47 <smichel17> keverets[hc]: I mostly want one single page where I can go to find out all things board. Preferably a wiki page because that's easier to edit.
18:35:48 <keverets[hc]> smichel17 ? It's updated as of 2021, and is 4 months out-of-date at the moment
18:35:55 <unknown_lamer> https://wiki.hcoop.net/BoardArea
18:36:07 <smichel17> Once we have that, I can start adding stuff that's missing to it
18:36:19 <unknown_lamer> if you are logged in there's a setting to add pages to the quick links too, I have AdminArea + DomTool + BoardArea pinned there
18:36:25 <smichel17> Okay, /BoardArea works
18:36:45 <smichel17> I have bookmarked it now. Maybe we can also link it from the board elections page?
18:37:13 <unknown_lamer> it is
18:37:18 <keverets[hc]> I'm still confused about the 2018 reference
18:37:21 <unknown_lamer> And it's on the main page
18:38:16 <smichel17> keverets[hc]: I was on the board in 2018. I was the president, so I was also scheduling meetings then. I looked at hcoop.net/board to see who was on the board. That page was up to date, but still not helpful because it only had real names, not hcoop usernames.
18:38:35 <robin> i'll add updating BoardArea as a secretary duty
18:38:37 <smichel17> ^that's the full 2018 context without other messages interspersed between, hope it's clear now
18:38:48 <robin> (i just updated it today poking around the wiki)
18:38:48 <smichel17> I mean linking to BoardArea from e.g. https://wiki.hcoop.net/Election2022
18:39:07 <keverets[hc]> smichel17, ok. I didn't realize you were talking about the last time you looked at it (a few years ago). That makes sense now. Thanks
18:39:15 <unknown_lamer> I don't see a need to link to the board member area from election result pages like that personally
18:39:39 <smichel17> unknown_lamer: e.g. "To learn more about what joining the board involves, see BoardArea"
18:39:52 <unknown_lamer> Could just throw a link to it on BoardOfDirectors which is linked and won't require editing existing pages
18:40:00 <smichel17> Maybe even replacing BoardOfDirectors
18:40:09 <smichel17> That page is basically just a stub
18:40:13 <keverets[hc]> and BoardOfDirectors isn't too useful atm
18:40:39 <unknown_lamer> Can just replace it with a ##redirect BoardArea or whatever the syntax was then
18:40:53 <keverets[hc]> sounds like a good plan
18:41:13 <smichel17> #accepted Redirect BoardOfDirectors wiki page to BoardArea
18:41:40 <smichel17> I also think it would be nice to standardize our processes a little more
18:41:42 <keverets[hc]> might be more of a #action than #accepted
18:41:48 <smichel17> err, right
18:41:56 <smichel17> #action Redirect BoardOfDirectors wiki page to BoardArea
18:42:17 <smichel17> e.g., after the board is elected, we need to update perms so the secretary can update /board
18:42:35 <keverets[hc]> I thought that was already covered in the actions?
18:42:37 <smichel17> Maybe that's documented somewhere, but documentation doesn't mean much if we don't actually follow it
18:43:07 <keverets[hc]> 2.1.2. Post Election on https://wiki.hcoop.net/BoardMemberDuties
18:43:10 <smichel17> Let me poke around BoardArea just a little more so I'm not flying blind
18:43:33 <unknown_lamer> it was just human error this year, I was not feeling well still in april
18:43:46 <keverets[hc]> though that may have been my action to do and I didn't
18:43:52 <unknown_lamer> keverets was still on the board, so just blipped and forgot oh yes need to change that to the NEW secretary
18:44:06 <unknown_lamer> keverets[hc]: it's for any of the admins really, since you need admin perms on the dir to change the acl
18:44:10 <robin> that's on BoardArea but buried a bit (it's really a post-officer-election task)
18:44:14 <keverets[hc]> ah
18:44:31 <unknown_lamer> It's a wiki, so if someone wants to reorganize to make it clearer no one is stopping you ;)
18:44:34 <smichel17> Right, okay, I think all of this is actually covered already, just I didn't know about it because I hadn't found BoardArea
18:44:51 <smichel17> I am happy to move on now, any future issues can be addressed in the docs as they come up
18:44:57 <keverets[hc]> >
18:45:01 <smichel17> >
18:45:01 <robin> >
18:45:04 <unknown_lamer> >
18:45:07 <jackhill[hc]> >
18:45:15 <smichel17> #topic board contact info
18:45:35 <smichel17> As I mentioned at the beginning, I had some latency issues when emailing everyone at board@
18:46:02 <keverets[hc]> oh, that was what I thought I was responding to earlier with my note about email or irc/xmpp being preferred
18:46:03 <smichel17> Yes, I know there were some one-off things like Robin not having an email filter set up yet…
18:46:23 <smichel17> but I think it's important to have backup contact info, because stuff happens
18:46:57 <smichel17> keverets: Yes, I think most board members have responded there by now
18:47:06 <smichel17> I was thinking maybe we could make this an explicit post-election task
18:47:15 <unknown_lamer> I think it's reasonable to require board members to have a good backup contact listed in the contact directory (can be set private so only board can see it afaik)
18:47:23 <smichel17> - All board members make sure their contact info is listed in the directory
18:48:09 <smichel17> - All board members state which channel they'd prefer to be contacted by (e.g. "don't text my cell except in an emergency")
18:48:47 <robin> i'm collecting BoardArea edits for post-meeting fwiw
18:48:49 <keverets[hc]> sure, putting a post-election task in with the method for updating the contact directory sounds like a good plan
18:49:07 <keverets[hc]> once somebody does that, poke the rest of us to take the action
18:49:15 <smichel17> I also think I either missed or did not recieve an email about availability from layline, otherwise I would have chosen a different day… need to look back and figure out what happened there
18:50:01 <robin> (currently those two + post-election ACL change + secretary updates BoardArea post-officer-selection)
18:50:02 <unknown_lamer> https://members.hcoop.net/portal/dir?id=10 question, can anyone else see my signal # there (set to admins only)
18:50:14 <smichel17> As in, he replied saying today doesn't work for him after I scheduled, I responded with something like "would have been nice to know that beforehand", and he responded with "I did tell you beforehand!"
18:50:14 <unknown_lamer> not sure board has access, the UI is clunkier than I remember
18:50:15 <robin> unknown_lamer, t
18:50:35 <smichel17> I see it
18:50:54 <keverets[hc]> I see an empty Signal directory
18:51:18 <unknown_lamer> Ok, so portal will need a "Board Only" contact preference, also could extend the db table to have a note field
18:51:41 <unknown_lamer> it's not actually difficult to do that, once we fix mlt (portal has a decent ACL system)
18:52:04 <unknown_lamer> but for now can email smichel17 directly sounds like?
18:52:18 <smichel17> yeah. and I think most of you have by now
18:52:28 <smichel17> just didn't hear from robin I think?
18:52:56 <smichel17> Well, and I didn't see layline's email, but as mentioned, I might have missed it
18:53:06 <smichel17> I don't think we *need* to make it board-only. If someone else *wants* to fill it out, I don't see anything wrong with that
18:53:23 <smichel17> Yes, for now emailing me is fine
18:53:58 <smichel17> #action smichel will follow up with robin and layline to make sure he has their contact info
18:54:29 <keverets[hc]> >
18:54:37 <smichel17> What action do we want to take for the portal contact category?
18:55:17 <unknown_lamer> I won't have time for working on it until september probably (time crunch with aforementioned album and I am not good at writing lyrics heh)
18:56:03 <smichel17> Any volunteers to write lyrics for unknown_lamer so he can work on the portal? /s
18:56:09 <unknown_lamer> although if robin wanted to try fixing mlt at least that would help, since the actual change is maybe an hour of work
18:56:25 <robin> lol
18:57:18 <unknown_lamer> I'll need a deconstructive parody of the song "Dr. Stein" by Helloween
18:57:28 <robin> unknown_lamer, unbreaking the debian package? i can probably do that before september
18:58:07 <smichel17> I do have a long-running project to re-write the entire hcoop wiki. Still in *very* early stages (have not worked on it for a few months)
18:58:11 <smichel17> #link https://git.sr.ht/~smichel17/hcoop-wiki/tree
18:58:24 <smichel17> s/re-write/re-organize/
18:58:24 <robin> (or attempt to, at least, depending on how broken it is)
18:58:32 <unknown_lamer> robin: no, mlt broke from smlnj changes again
18:59:13 <unknown_lamer> I just hadn't recompiled anything after the buster upgrade and discovered it a few months ago when trying to make a small text change
18:59:31 <robin> ah, so mlt itself needs updating? that's probably easier than debian packaging for me :)
18:59:38 <smichel17> #info When I find useful stuff from the board pages, I'll probably duplicate it over in that project
18:59:38 <unknown_lamer> I dunno I might look into it after I run some errands, it could just be a 20 minute fix but if it's not that's it for me until september unfortunately
18:59:44 <smichel17> hopefully higher signal:noise ratio
19:00:16 <smichel17> >
19:00:41 <unknown_lamer> >
19:00:44 <keverets[hc]> >
19:01:00 <jackhill[hc]> >
19:01:15 <smichel17> #topic open discussion
19:01:16 <robin> #action robin will attempt to update mlt
19:01:17 <robin> >
19:01:33 <smichel17> ahh I counted wrong :|
19:01:41 <unknown_lamer> ?
19:01:53 <smichel17> I put a new topic before robin was done typing…
19:01:57 <robin> no worries, might as well be open discussion :)
19:02:16 <smichel17> Also adding a new custom: open discussion round at the end, just for anything else you want to say quickly before we wrap up, that didn't fit into an existing topic well
19:02:51 <smichel17> I just want to mention one other thing: I've found that at least for snowdrift.coop social support makes a *huge* difference in my likelihood of working on the project
19:03:31 <smichel17> like, I'd been planning to write this post for at least 2 months
19:03:33 <smichel17> I just want to mention one other
19:03:40 <smichel17> aah, copy-paste
19:03:42 <smichel17> https://community.snowdrift.coop/t/plan-for-moving-off-haskell-part-2-technical-details/1846
19:03:49 <smichel17> And putting it off for one reason or another
19:03:56 <jackhill[hc]> yep, I'm much more likely to work on things together
19:04:27 <smichel17> then one day at our "coffee shop" (mumble server), I was chatting with one of the other team members, wasn't really feeling like doing anything and was going to get off
19:04:34 <smichel17> he prompted me to at least just start
19:04:42 <smichel17> I did, and two weeks later I finished the post
19:05:04 <keverets[hc]> might want to just have open discussion after the board meeting ends... keeping people around without an agenda may not be the best course of action
19:05:06 <smichel17> Which maybe is still slow but ~infinitely faster than I was going before
19:05:30 <smichel17> I'd like people around
19:06:03 <smichel17> Anyway, to the point: I wonder if there's anything we could do to get some more comeradery / social spaces with hcoop folks
19:06:09 <keverets[hc]> that's fine, but I've got other things to be getting to, and it's not clear when or how to drop off if the meeting is ongoing
19:06:33 <smichel17> In snowdrift meetings, we limit open discussion to 5 min
19:06:48 <smichel17> maybe slightly longer in a text meeting
19:07:04 <smichel17> I'll call it at 10 after if conversation is not done by then
19:07:20 <unknown_lamer> I do have to run in a few as well, don't have much to add today
19:07:39 <smichel17> I've also said my bit, maybe we can think of it and discuss next meeting :)
19:07:41 <smichel17> >
19:07:51 <keverets[hc]> >
19:07:56 <smichel17> s/of/on/
19:08:00 <jackhill[hc]> sajith: I've seen various hack on thins together in Guix as well
19:08:04 <jackhill[hc]> >
19:08:05 <unknown_lamer> >
19:08:13 <robin> >
19:08:19 <smichel17> #endmeeting