The Scientific Python Blog is a consensus-based community project. Anyone with an interest in the project can join the community, contribute to the project design, and participate in the decision making process. This document describes how that participation takes place, how to find consensus, and how deadlocks are resolved.
The Scientific Python Blog has the following roles and responsibilities.
The Scientific Python Blog community consists of anyone contributing blog posts as well as commenting on and reviewing proposed or published posts. Community members must adhere to our code of conduct.
Reviewers are community members that have demonstrated continued commitment to the blog through ongoing contributions.
Reviewers are responsible for reviewing blog submissions to the blog repository. They have triage rights.
A new Reviewer can be nominated by any existing Reviewer. Discussion about new Reviewer nominations is one of the few activities that takes place on the Editor’s private management forum. The decision to invite a new Reviewer must be made by “lazy consensus”, meaning unanimous agreement by all responding existing Editors. Invitation must take place at least one week after initial nomination, to allow existing members time to voice objections.
Editors are Reviewers who have who have additional responsibilities to ensure the smooth running of the blog.
Reviewers are responsible for accepting new Reviewers, Editors, and Editors-in-Chief. They are are responsible for merging blog submissions to the main branch of the blog repository. They have write rights.
A new Editor can be nominated by any existing Editor. Discussion about new Editor nominations takes place on the Editor’s private management forum. The decision to invite a new Editor must be made by “lazy consensus”, meaning unanimous agreement by all responding existing Editors. Invitation must take place at least one week after initial nomination, to allow existing members time to voice objections.
The Editor-in-Chief oversees the functions of the entire blog. They have admin rights.
A new Editor-in-Chief can be nominated by any existing Editor. Discussion about new Editor-in-Chief nominations takes place on the Editor’s private management forum. The decision to invite a new Editor-in-Chief must be made by “lazy consensus”, meaning unanimous agreement by all responding existing Editors. Invitation must take place at least one week after initial nomination, to allow existing members time to voice objections.
The Editors use a consensus seeking process for making decisions. The group tries to find a resolution that has no open objections among community managers. Editors are expected to distinguish between fundamental objections to a proposal and minor perceived flaws that they can live with, and not hold up the decision making process for the latter. If no option can be found without an objection, the decision is escalated to the Editor-in-Chief.