FutureDirectionDiscussion - coin-or-foundation/tlc GitHub Wiki

Opening up the Discussion on "Future Directions" to the Community

  • As a follow-on to Multifario leaving COIN-OR
  • Start a mailing list for discussion about the "future" of COIN-OR
    • Goals: nuture community input & participation
    • Open-up the discussions on the big issues
    • Combat unintential (perceived) biases

Action Items - for those with interest

  1. Decide on content for list announcment
    • Add your proposals/feedback (FutureAnnouncement)
    • Add your availability for a call to close on content (FutureAvailability)
  2. Robin -> schedule conference call, hopefully no later than 12/5ish
  3. Matt -> set up a new mailing list, e.g., "[email protected]"
  4. Send out announcement. TARGET DATE: Tues, 12/12

Ted's Comments

Just some random thoughts to contribute to the discussion:

  1. I'm not sure another mailing list is the best way to get feedback from the community for two main reasons:

    • In my experience, people are very hesitant to subscribe to YAML (yet another mailing list). I don't think most users will want to actively participate in the discussion. We need to give them a way to make suggestions and give feedback without commiting to further participation.
    • The users who are willing to put in the time to participate will be a small minority who may bias the discussion away from the concerns of casual users who just want to "gran and go."

  2. I also believe we should frame this discussion not as a one-time thing or as a reaction to "problems," but as an ongoing process of community involvement and improvement. For this reason, i would name the mailing list "coin-suggestions" or something similar. Also, allowing posts by non-subscribers would encourage more participation, but then we mmay have trouble with SPAM.

  3. Given the above two points, I would suggest creating some sort of suggestion/complaint box that is easily accessible from the main COIN page. We could ask for people's ideas and suggestion without asking them to commit to participating further or subscribing to a mailing list. This could be set up as a Wiki or as a form that copies the suggestion to the mailing list.

  4. I think we should also keep in mind that we also serve the project managers and that they should have a say in COIN's future. The departure of multifario was in large part due to the fact that our policies have been biased towards making life easier for users at the expense or project managers. We have to find a blanace between the needs of users and project managers. I'm not sure we can reasonably expect users to be able to assess this tradeoff.

  5. We cannot forget that there are other factors that will drive the future of COIN that should also be taken into account, such as

    • The interests of those who are willing to do the work, and
    • The availability of required funds.