Reporting

Abstract: who are the consumers of the reports we produce, and what are their needs/user-stories? Howe should we change our outgoing reporting so that we better satisfy these needs.

Minutes

Who writes reports?

• people who get paid, or people who need to get paid
• monthly reports mostly don't include people who aren't getting paid, so it does not reflect the (complete) status of Tor.

Why do we write reports?

• We don't know what they are used for
• What use is the 5pt done/todo format?
• Some kind of competition among who can add the most points

How we write reports/How we might write reports

• Tor Weekly News is a better comprehensive summary of what is going on.

  • Suggestion that we use/update TWN rather than write a report email
  • Others hate wikis and don't want to use them for reports.

• There is a template for reports, suggested by Andrew, where you list the top5 things that were done, and the top5 things that you are planning on doing.

  • Lots of simple bugs can create lots of points. Hard problems might only count as one point.

• Some use trac to determine what they have done.

• Timesheets (often) don't correspond to reports.

• People find high level descriptions more useful than a list of tickets that were completed.

• Agile scrum meetings? etherpad, mumble, etc

• Replying to a thread vs sending to black hole of tor-reports

• Weekly reports (avg contribution 1 per month) might get more participation because there is a less strict schedule.

• Tor Status Bot

  • must be in #tor-status
  • must be registered
  • must be whitelisted
  • adds the status line to a webpage you can query
  • more like a log, not a report

• Tor pre(ports)

  • talking about what we are going to do rather than have done

Public or Private?

• Some would prefer that Tor reports be private, public reports kill cameraderie/trust among people, or self-censor information because it will be made public.
  • e.g. my cat died, I was sick, etc
• "Miss the personal touch you have with private communication"
• "Do sponsors care about what every single person does? Do they read that?"
• Useful for new members of the community to learn what is going on.
• Many of us are not comfortable talking about our personal lives in public
• Balance - General idea that we have to open up, so that we are open to new people, but how do we do that without destroying a sense of community?
• We could have two types of montly reports (public/private)
• Reports could be private, and then digested into a weekly (monthly) news.
• What is the perception of taking reports private, after being public for a year?
• Some things aren't public, e.g. funder discussions, how do these fit into reporting?
• tor-reports used to be private, you could also cc tor-dev if you wanted to make it public