Create a history document

[nebrius]

Purpose

We should create a short document that chronicles the history of this working group and how it came to exist. It's a rather interesting story, and members of the WG who weren't there from the beginning have found it informative.

Proposal

This document should contain a brief history that especially focuses on the initial creation at NodeConf Adventure 2015, and it's resurrection in October of 2015.

Focus

Discussion of the points of history that occured is encouraged, but criticism/praise/analysis of those events should be considered off topic. The purpose of this document is to give a factual account of how this group came to be, not a critical analysis of that process.

[ashleygwilliams]

a nit, but i'd like to see this in a doc directory as i don't think it should be a top-level file

[nebrius]

good idea, will do!

[varjmes]

Yes please! I've now read through every closed/open issue (still got pull requests to read!) on this repo to get the backstory but I'm missing a lot.

I think:

-> everyone met up at a cool conf and got talking about making a WG
-> life got in the way, but then people started it back up again
-> originally named diversity but changed to inclusivity
-> lots and lots of discussion about scope
-> chartered!!!
-> the future 🚀

What I'd also propose is to make it a living document, putting in any great milestones of the WG.

e.g.
-> all the history mentioned above
-> jan: chartered!
-> mar: [name] joined the group
-> apr: [name] joined the group
-> jun: WG wins a prize (an example)

[ghost]

@Charlotteis you're basically right, that's the history of this WG in 6 bullet points :P i also really like the milestone idea, but we need to avoid looking like we're showing off

[varjmes]

you're basically right, that's the history of this WG in 6 bullet points

💃

but we need to avoid looking like we're showing off

absolutely. With the right use of language, this could be great. Winning a prize was probably a poor example, but I couldn't think of anything better at the time.

[nebrius]

What I'd also propose is to make it a living document, putting in any great milestones of the WG.

Great idea! I especially like the idea of adding when people were added to the group. We can probably back-date everyone who's already a member by seeing when they joined the slack (if we can see that of course).

[nebrius]

Pull request open at #99

[williamkapke]

Hm.. It seems #99 finalized this topic?

Since this is still open, I'll use it to point out that the README.md has an "Initial Membership" section and history.md has a "Members" section.

That seems backwards to me.

[nebrius]

oh yes, #99 did finalize this topic. Are you suggesting we rename "Initial Membership" to just "Membership"? There's nothing initial about it, as it turns out 😅

[williamkapke]

Hm. I had realized just after my comment above that the "Members" in the history document is probably a historical list of people that were members. I just didn't get that at first.

My suggestions:
history.md
• Use: "Previous Members"
• Lists the dates they were active (YYYY-MM to YYYY-MM)
Currently there are dates but I'm not sure what they mean... probably date added?

README.md
• Use: "Members" or "Current Members"
• Lists current members. Maybe a start date if so desired.
• Link at the end: "View Previous Members" that links to the history.md#members

[nebrius]

I'm really wary of explicitly calling out when someone is not a member anymore. It singles them out and can make other people wonder "why did they get kicked out?" even if they left completely amicably.

[mikeal]

@nebrius good point. As more responsibilities get delegated to this group I would expect people to pop off and on more often based on their availability.

[nebrius]

The wording of "members" was cleaned up with #119, so I'm going to go ahead and close this issue.