Closing loops Concluding discussions in non-face-to-face communities
Channel: FOSDEM
Date: 2018-03-12

by Greg Sutcliffe

At: FOSDEM 2017

How do we decide when a discussion is complete? How do we know we've heardfrom enough people, or that the topic isn't dead yet? Deciding how to takedecisions in a community is hard - in this talk, I'd like to ways to handleit.

Figuring out when to close a discussion is really hard - and more so if allthe participants are only using forums/mailinglists/chat rather than beingface-to-face. Knowing that you've heard from the right people, trying toensure quiet voices are heard, and making sure you're not cutting thediscussion too early (or too late) really matters. In this "talk" I'd like tobring some examples of such discussions from our community (e.g. things whichcaused conflict, things which caused communications blocks, and so on), talkabout how we handled them, and discuss ways in which we could improve -hopefully to the benefit of everyone present.


Room: UD2.119 (Moved from AW1.124)
Scheduled start: 2017-02-05 08:00:00