sorting proposal-based agenda items primarily by current stage

[michaelficarra]

What do people think about having a proposal-based agenda items section which is primarily sorted by proposal stage in descending order, then secondarily sorted by timebox? I vaguely recall briefly discussing this at a recent meeting.

[ljharb]

Would the goal be to prioritize later-stage proposals?

The non-timeboxed sections already have this, somewhat, in that the order is "advancement", "new proposals", and "updates".

I can see the value in effectively having multiple timeboxes, where each one represents a category like that.

[michaelficarra]

Something like this:

Agenda items

1. Opening, welcome and roll call

   1. Opening of the meeting (Mr. Jaeschke)
   2. TC39 follows its Code of Conduct
   3. Introduction of attendees
   4. Host facilities, local logistics
   5. Quick recap of meeting IPR policy (Daniel Ehrenberg)
   6. Overview of communication tools (Brian Terlson)

2. Find volunteers for note taking

3. Adoption of the agenda

4. Approval of the minutes from last meeting

5. Next meeting host and logistics

6. Report from the Ecma Secretariat (15m)

7. Project Editors’ Reports

   1. ECMA262 Status Updates (15m)
   2. ECMA402 Status Updates (15m)
   3. ECMA404 Status Updates (15m)
   4. Test262 Status Updates (15m)

8. Updates from the CoC Committee (15m)

9. Web compatibility issues / Needs Consensus PRs

   timebox	topic	presenter
   15m	Normative: Cleanup Time Values and Time Range Needs Consensus PR	Andrew Paprocki
   15m	Normative: Add export * as ns from "mod” to Export production and Module Semantics	Valerie Young, John-David Dalton

10. Overflow from previous meeting

    timebox	topic	presenter

11. Short (≤30m) Timeboxed Discussions

    timebox	topic	presenter
    15m	2019/2020 meeting scheduling update	Daniel Ehrenberg
    30m	Intl update (slides)	?

12. Proposals

    stage	timebox	topic	presenter
    3	15m	Optional catch binding for stage 4 (#1185)	Michael Ficarra
    3	30m	Numeric separators update	Sam Goto, Rick Waldron, Leo Balter, Dan Ehrenberg
    3	30m	Updates and a question to resolve on String.prototype.matchAll	Jordan Harband
    3	30m	BigInt status update at Stage 3 (slides, repository)	Daniel Ehrenberg
    3	30m	Class fields status update at Stage 3 (slides, repository)	Daniel Ehrenberg
    3	30m	Function.prototype.toString revision updates (slides) and stage 4 (#697)	Michael Ficarra
    3	45m	Approving a replacement name for Array.prototype.flatten (not smoosh)	Michael Ficarra
    2	30m	Symbol.prototype.description for stage 3	Michael Ficarra
    2	60m	Static class features for Stage 3 (slides, repository)	Shu-yu Guo, Daniel Ehrenberg
    2	60m	Decorators for Stage 3 (slides, repository)	Daniel Ehrenberg, Yehuda Katz, Brian Terlson
    1	30m	Object.fromEntries to stage 2?	Jordan Harband, Kevin Gibbons
    1	30m	Top-Level Await for stage 2	Myles Borins
    --	15m	Sequence properties in Unicode property escapes for Stage 1	Mathias Bynens
    --	15m	as destructuring patterns for Stage 1	Kat Marchán
    --	30m	Module Keys for Stage 1	Mike Samuel
    --	30m	Well-formed JSON.stringify for Stage 1	Mathias Bynens
    --	60m	Pattern Matching for Stage 1 (github)	Kat Marchán, Brian Terlson

13. Longer or open-ended discussions

    timebox	topic	presenter
    60m	Stopping exfiltration (Massive privacy violations vs boundaries)	Mark S. Miller

14. Overflow from timeboxed agenda items (in insertion order)

    topic	presenter

15. Other business

    1. Thank host

16. Adjournment

[ljharb]

Seems reasonable - let's get consensus on it in May.

[michaelficarra]

For future agendas of course.

[littledan]

Huge fan of the table layout. Makes the whole thing more readable. Minor suggestion: Add an extra column for "done" rather than crossing out the row (makes it easier to read old agendas).

What's the motivation for putting "discussions" at the top? I think meeting planning needs priority, but I'm not sure if all discussions do. For example, I was considering adding an open-ended discussion topic about what our way forward is in general about syntactic proposals, and how to analyze "cross-cutting concerns". However, I don't want this to be prioritized and push out other proposals.

Idea for discussions: Short discussions go at the top, long discussions go at the bottom.

[michaelficarra]

@littledan Updated to split the long and short discussions. I think a "done" column would be a bit heavyweight. Maybe just mark them with a symbol in the topic or timebox field?

[littledan]

Given the very heavy agenda for this meeting, I'm wondering if we should adopt this agenda organization for the May meeting. @michaelficarra Would you be interested in preparing this as a PR (against the current agenda items) so we can consider it for the May 2018 meeting? We can consult the committee during the meeting on the change to learn about any concerns with the reorganization.

[michaelficarra]

@littledan It's a decent amount of work, and I'd rather not do it unless we're pretty sure that it'd be accepted. Let's get some more feedback first.

edit: I did it anyway. Let's hope it wasn't a waste.