2025-05-13 CC Working Group Meeting Notes

Date

May 13, 2025

Participants

@Jorge Londoño
@Xavier Antoviaque
@Santiago Suarez
@Maksim Sokolskiy
@Edward Zarecor

🎥 Recording

Overview

The meeting was primarily focused on reviewing the current status of various initiatives on the working group's board, particularly examining items in the "in progress" column.

Also, the working group members agreed that, since most coordination now happens asynchronously in GitHub tickets and other working-group channels, the standing monthly call will be retired and ad-hoc meetings will be scheduled only when a topic truly requires live discussion; before removing the recurring event, Jorge (with Xavier’s help) will update the group’s charter to reflect an “async-first” workflow, publish the change on community forums, and propose simple “good-meeting” guidelines to help other Open edX groups phase out unproductive calls. At the same time, the team also committed to working with the Maintainers WG on clearing long-stalled pull requests by incentivising core contributors to assume ownership of neglected code areas.

Detailed Notes (LLM-generated)

Moving to Asynchronous Work Model (11:56 - 12:20)

Xavier and Jorge discussed transitioning the Contributor Coordination Working Group from regular monthly meetings to a primarily asynchronous work model. Xavier noted that regular interaction and updates were already happening on tickets, making the monthly meetings less necessary. He suggested that the group should organize meetings only when there was something specific to discuss that couldn't be handled asynchronously.

Jorge agreed with this approach, stating that it "delivers the right message of prioritizing asynchronous work over synchronous" work. He mentioned that this was a natural evolution as many conversations had already migrated to various working groups. When Ed joined the call, he expressed support for the proposal, noting that he was late to the meeting because of another meeting.

Ed added an important point about "zombie meetings" that continue simply because they're on the calendar rather than because they create value. He suggested developing guidelines about what constitutes a good meeting while still giving people permission to meet when necessary.

Actions Before Transitioning to Async Model (12:20 - 12:25)

Jorge highlighted several prerequisites before fully transitioning to an asynchronous work model: 1. Updating the charter 2. Reviewing roles and responsibilities of group members 3. Sharing the responsibility for asynchronous follow-ups (currently done by Xavier) 4. Posting in the community forums about these changes

Jorge volunteered to update the charter and post about the changes in the community forums.

Issues with Pull Request Reviews (12:25 - 12:35)

Xavier raised concerns about old pull requests (some 1-2 years old) that remained unmerged. The core issue identified was areas of code with no clear ownership where maintainers don't reply and no core contributors feel comfortable reviewing the code. This was particularly prevalent around the platform code.

Ed noted that some code areas weren't just suffering from psychological hesitation but were genuinely complex with no single person understanding all aspects. Maksim suggested that areas where nobody can review might indicate code quality issues that need refactoring.

Ed proposed a two-pronged approach: 1. Short-term: Find ways to unblock reviews of these difficult areas 2. Long-term: Identify gaps in critical pieces of the platform and incentivize core contributors to become experts in those areas

Xavier connected this discussion to the ongoing "partners as maintainers" initiative, noting that the solution might require significantly increasing the time maintainers spend on their maintenance duties.

Updates on Ongoing Tasks (12:35 - 12:39)

Xavier provided brief updates on various ongoing tasks: - Better ways to get feedback: Ali was working on revising the proposal - Working group update new section: Marked as completed - OSP management: Progress made, with Jill planning to allocate time within a couple of weeks - Experts: Still under discussion with Ed and Bis - Handbook: Cassie had been making progress with the documentation working group

Agreed Next Steps

Jorge to update the charter to reflect the new asynchronous work model
Jorge to post in the community forums about the changes to the working group
Xavier to continue discussing with the team about creating a group of core contributors willing to invest time in reviewing code in areas with unclear ownership
Ed to potentially prepare a summary of the proposed model for experts
Xavier to find a way to provide summaries of task updates outside of meetings

Discussion topics

Discussion topics for the agenda are tracked at https://github.com/orgs/openedx/projects/62/views/1. To add a topic to the agenda, add a ticket to the project in the column “Upcoming meeting agenda.”