> >> "However, having an idea of what red flags we're looking for >> in a project can be a helpful way to start looking for places to mentor, >> and sharpen, our projects." >> >> That is absolutely the wrong message to give. Who is "we"? This kind of >> thing sets the tone of the working group as some kind of external policing >> / inspecting function. That will not help. >
After a night’s sleep and pondering on what we’re doing here, I want to really encourage all of us to view this, in perpetuity, as a work in progress. If you see problems with the approach, please suggest solutions, rather than raging at the darkness. It’s ironic that the response to a list of things that a project can do wrong is to say that we’re doing it wrong, n’est pas? Having a list of “bad smells” is part of the process of getting to what work we want to do. It’s not the end product. What I’m really hoping for, out of this working group, is a unified approach that we can use to improve the Foundation as a whole, and sharpen one another, collectively, to make the ASF live up to its promise. That is always going to be aspirational. We’re not going to get there. Not for not trying, but because we are several thousand humans with egos and motivations. But we can work together to hone the edge a little. The work, for the moment, is achieving some rough consensus, and that involves respectful conversation. If we cannot sharpen ourselves, in this tiny group of folks who have known one another for a decade or more, we have very little chance of approaching a project full of strangers and trying to guide them.
