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Stacks Governance - Standard Operating Procedures

This document contains recommended best practices for managing various aspects of the Stacks governance initiative.

Get Involved

From Stacks Governance Update #1 - 4 March, 2020:

Stacks governance is a community-run initiative! As such, it cannot work without your help, and without the input of as many community members as possible. You do not need anyone’s permission to get involved and contribute to the initiative. The #governance working group channel on Stacks Discord is a great place to begin getting involved, as many community members regularly share ideas, updates, and resources there. You can also find a number of topics under the governance category on the Stacks Community Forum which need your input.

Additional Outlets

More information about the Stacks Foundation and its mission can be found at the links below:

Governance Working Group Calls

Governance Working Group calls are held every other week, and follow the basic agenda format listed below:

  • A quick standup update from each attendee
  • Updates from the Stacks Foundation
  • Review of Action Items
  • Review of Discussion Items
  • Review of Miscellaneous Items

The meeting agendas and various topics discussed can be found on GitHub, under the issues tab of the stacksgov/pm repository. There are labels for each issue based on the agenda categories, and the issues tab can be filtered by each label for review.

Note: When using GitHub, the word "issue" also means "topic", "item", or "idea". Issues are used to track individual discussion items, and labels are used to help categorize and group the issues. More information can be found in the Mastering Issues guide from GitHub.

The notes and resources from previous calls are stored in the stacksgov/resources repository, and listed in a table on the Stacks Governance Resources - Calls Page.

Governance Working Group Call Procedures

Below are the steps for setting up, hosting, and following up on a call.

Preparing for a Call

  1. Create a new agenda by opening an issue based on template

    • ideally this is done right after the last call, to give people enough time to add agenda items for the next meeting
    • example of the issue template on GitHub:

    Agenda Issue Template Example

  2. Update the Date/Time to the future meeting date

  3. Create an Event Time Announcer link to help with time zone conversions

    • Access the Event Time Announcer form from timeanddate.com
    • Name the event, e.g. Stacks Governance Working Group Call #26
    • Set the Event Location to UTC
    • Enter the Month, Day, Year, Hour, and Duration values based on UTC
    • Add a link to the result following the Date/Time in the issue
    • e.g. in Markdown format: [time zone conversion](https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Stacks+Governance+Working+Group+Call+%2326&iso=20201022T16&ah=1)
    • example of the announcement after someone clicks on it:

    Event Time Announcer Example

  4. Update the roles, or list TBA if unknown

  5. Close the issue from the previous call (instructions below)

    • open the issue from the previous call
    • add a comment: "Closing in favor of #X" where #X is the issue number of the new agenda
    • click Close issue next to the comment button

  6. Share the new issue in the #governance channel on Discord

Reminders about the governance call and a link to the agenda should be shared in the #governance channel on Discord based on the following schedule:

  • After the new agenda is created
  • One week before the call
  • One day before the call
  • The day of the call

Note: do NOT post the link anywhere public, including on social media

A sample post is included below, but feel free to modify based on current events and/or tag relevant people based on the issues!

Reminder that our next governance meeting is scheduled for next Thursday - agenda here: #105

In the meantime, please update your issues with any progress you've made!

Hosting a Call

Moderator Responsibilities

Moderators act as the meeting host, which gives them additional abilities in the meeting software, and are responsible for stewarding the meeting.

The basic flow of moderating a call:

  • Wait until 5-10 minutes past the hour, or at least until there is a reasonable quorum, before starting the call.
  • Quickly scan the names of all Zoom participants to make sure the names are correct and that nobody's phone number is displayed publicly. As moderator, you can rename a participant if necessary.
  • Notify everyone before starting the recording, and that the rest of the call will be public and on the record.
  • Click Record then Record to the Cloud before starting the meeting.
  • State the date, time and meeting number, followed by introducing yourself as the moderator.
  • Ask if there are any new attendees, and if anyone else would like to introduce themselves to the group.
  • Share your screen with the current meeting agenda, and proceed through each agenda item with the group.
  • At the end of the meeting, summarize all topics discussed, and post the summary to the meeting agenda issue on GitHub.

Some helpful tips for being a moderator:

  • Keep an eye on the time. Don't spend more than 5-10 minutes max on any given topic. If the discussion of a particular topic goes over this amount of time, offer to reserve some time to continue discussing the topic at the end of the call, politely remind everyone that there are other items on the agenda to discuss, and introduce the next topic.
  • Let people speak freely, but feel free to cut someone off if they speak for more than a few minutes. Do so politely, and remind them that it's important that we give everyone a chance to share their thoughts. Suggest that, if they have more to say on this topic, they could write up their thoughts and post them to the forum and/or share them in the chat channel.
  • Try to keep the conversation focused on the present topic. Slight diversions are fine, but if the topic diverges too far from the current agenda item, bring it back on track by gently reminding the group of the question at hand - and offering to return to the new topic later, time-allowing.

Uploading Call Videos

A basic outline of the process is outlined below, however more details will be added at a later date.

  • Download files from Zoom
  • Upload files to Youtube Studio using the template below

    • Log into Youtube Studio and select the Stacks Governance channel

    • From the dashboard, click CREATE then Upload videos

    • Select the downloaded video file from Zoom

    • Fill in the information below while the video processes

      Title: Stacks Governance Call #X [YYYY/MM/DD]
Description:
  Agenda: [link to agenda issue]
  Links shared on call:
    - Link 1
    - Link 2
  Playlists: Stacks Governance Calls

    • Set the visibility to Public

    • Publish the video

  • Save the Youtube link to add to the stacksgov/resources calls table
  • Share link in #governance discord channel

Note: It is really helpful to review the video, in particular, the very beginning and end. Make sure that there isn't too much silence or banter in the recording before the actual meeting begins. Trim the video if necessary.

Updating Resources Call Table

All governance working group calls are documented in a markdown-formatted table on the stacksgov/resources repository, and displayed publicly via GitHub Pages.

Updating this information requires making changes to the repository on GitHub, followed by submitting a pull request for the changes. The general procedure is:

  • Fork the stacksgov/resources repository
  • Make the changes to your forked version of the repository
  • Submit a pull request with your changes back to stacksgov/resources

More information on the markdown syntax and collaborating with issues and pull requests can be found in the linked GitHub tutorials.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out in the #governance channel of Discord, too!

Formatting Tips

The key element to understand when updating the content is the structure of a markdown table and a markdown link.

Tables use a pipe | to separate data in columns, such that:

| Heading 1 | Heading 2 | Heading 3 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Content 1 | Content 1 | Content 1 |
| Content 2 | Content 2 | Content 2 |

Which produces:

Heading 1 Heading 2 Heading 3
Content 1 Content 1 Content 1
Content 2 Content 2 Content 2

So to add a new row, we just have to match the number of columns:

| Heading 1 | Heading 2 | Heading 3 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| New Content | New Content | New Content |
| Content 1 | Content 1 | Content 1 |
| Content 2 | Content 2 | Content 2 |

Which produces:

Heading 1 Heading 2 Heading 3
New Content New Content New Content
Content 1 Content 1 Content 1
Content 2 Content 2 Content 2

For links, square brackets are used for the link text, followed by parentheses for the link destination.

This is [a link](https://stacksgov.github.io/resources) in markdown.

Which produces:

This is a link in markdown.

Publishing Call Updates

Publisher Responsibilities

This person will create an official, high-level update for the community and general public summarizing the actions of the Stacks Governance Working Group.

Ideally, this will be posted to the Stacks Forum within one week of the original meeting. Previous updates can be found in the stacksgov/updates repository.

Once posted, the update should be shared with the community via the #governance category. Please make sure the update includes a link to the agenda and notes for the most recent call, as well as a brief update on each of the main initiatives the working group is working on.

Governance Working Group Resources

Working on the items above will require access to the related software and services, listed below. If you do not have access and would like to contribute, please reach out via the Stacks Discord server in the #governance channel.

GitHub Pages and Docsify

All content in the resources and pm repos are available on GitHub pages, and most links point to this website instead of forcing a user to navigate around GitHub.

GitHub pages are updated whenever a change is pushed to the master branch of the repository.

The content in the repository is automatically turned into a web page via Docsify.

  • all links must be absolute (i.e. start with https://)
  • configuration can be found in index.html for the repo, sample below

Markdown pages are converted into a link without the extension, i.e.

/interviews/interview-001.md becomes https://stacksgov.github.io/resources/#/interviews/interview-001

To directly link to a file in the repository, the # must be removed, i.e.

/survey/20200213_community_call_001.pdf becomes https://stacksgov.github.io/resources/calls/20200213_community_call_001.pdf

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1">
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/docsify/themes/vue.css">
</head>
<body>
  <div id="app"></div>
  <script>
    window.$docsify = {
      repo: 'stacksgov/pm',
      subMaxLevel: 3,
      logo: 'https://github.com/stacksgov/resources/blob/master/brand/stacksgov_greensquare_150x150.png?raw=true',
      name: 'Stacksgov Community Governance Project Management',
      auto2top: true
    }
  </script>
  <script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/docsify/lib/docsify.min.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

Licensing

This repository and all contributions herein are licensed under Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal. Please note that, by contributing to this repository, whether via commit, pull request, issue, comment, or in any other fashion, you are explicitly agreeing that all of your contributions will fall under the same permissive license.