Decisions ========== This document is intended as a guide for newer contributors to the SciPy Conference. Over the years we have developed a way of working that has until now not been written down. At the central core of running the conference is accepting the responsibility to your community to create an open, inviting space for all to contribute. With that said conflicts do arise and here we outline the preferred way to mediate problems. ------------------ Guiding principles ------------------ A few guiding principles to get started: * Decision-making process is “do-ocracy” - if you’re willing to make the effort to do something, do it! * If it’s a decision that affects other people, look for informal agreement among working groups or the SciPy organizers as a whole. Informal agreement typically means sending an email and waiting 24 hours to see if anyone objects. * If a problem arises, contact the SciPy organizers list or if a more private channel is needed contact the Co-Chairs directly. Please be respectful of others time and input. --------- Structure --------- At it's core, SciPy has a hierarchy of decision processes. Since the conference is almost completely volunteer and we have strict deadlines to adhere to, it is the job of the exectutive committee to help unblock folks as quickly as possible. Thus for each committee, the overseeing executive chair is responsible for any decisions requiring consent from other committees. Furthermore, the chair is responsible for conflicts that arise. The executive committee provides oversight for the individual committees and Enthought's leadership provides oversight for the executive committee. Typically, the committee chair will try to find consensus for any decision made. On some occasions the chair might need to make a quick decision or one that goes against their committee due to extraneous situations, e.g. the group decides to pay for everyone's lunch but the financial chair has no room in the budget. Consensus --------- “Getting consensus” does not mean that every member of the group has to agree enthusiastically, or even agree at all. What it means: Anyone who cares about the decision has had the option of being part of the consensus process. (Anyone who doesn’t care can abstain!) “Being part of the consensus process” means that everyone participating who wants to make their opinion heard can do so. Ideally discussion focuses on clarifying disagreement and seeking compromise. The outcome of a consensus discussion is a proposal (often this is the initial proposal that began the discussion, but is also frequently a modified or alternative proposal). The group should aim to make sure discussion is finished before bringing the proposal to a vote. Participants are asked to vote for or against, abstain, or block the proposal. Some threshold/percentage of for vs against votes, pre-determined by the group, ensures the proposal’s passage. "Voting for” participants want the proposal to pass and be enacted “Abstain” participants do not care enough about the proposal to vote either way “Voting against” participants do not want the proposal to pass but will accept the outcome “Block” participants are very strongly against the proposal. Blocking should only be done on issues where the blocker is willing to leave the group over the disagreement. When a proposal is blocked, a second round of consensus-seeking occurs, with the goal of formulating a new proposal that addresses the blocker’s objections. Members of the group who had not been participating may be made aware of the seriousness of the disagreement. After discussion, another vote happens. ------- License ------- This work is licensed under a `Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License `_ and is based on work by the `Open Science Collaboration `_ and other volunteers in `"OSC blog decision making process" `_, which is licensed under a `Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License `_