Governance Taskforce Recommendation "Create a Community Governance Group"

Having a BDFL model means loyalty, time, and attention is divided. There is often frustration as pressure for change and decisions reach an individual bottleneck. There is a strong feeling that any community change or action requires Dries’ approval before commencing let alone expanding. The project is bigger than one individual; it’s time to recognise that and place a community group at the center.

What we heard:

The Drupal community needs to simultaneously distribute authority and establish a framework for ongoing improvements.

Distributing authority would ensure that Dries, as the Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), is not the single point of authority. This would mitigate concerns around bias and potential conflicts of interest, and is vital for community credibility.

We heard clearly that Dries is highly respected. However, realistically, being one person he is a blocker to community progress. Dries was interviewed as we created this proposal; he is positive and open to community needs. However, we recognize that for any of our recommendations to be implemented we will need him to endorse and prioritise recommendations to direct resources and focus. This is a risk, because there are many critical priorities competing for his time and focus.

But where can the focus and movement needed for community change come from if not from Dries?

We heard community change is necessary, and that working towards it is exhausting. We also heard that it has been a challenge for far too long. We caution that working on community issues and community action burns people out, especially when only limited progress towards change is made.

What we recommend:

We recommend that a new group focused on community governance be given responsibility for managing the changing needs of the community as it grows, and for developing processes that will foster participation and collaboration. This group will work with people in the community to help make connections and scale ideas.

The responsibilities of this Community Governance Group may include such things as consolidating and clarifying community-based standards, advising other community groups, and serving as an escalation point for any issues outside of existing group charters (e.g. serving as the point of escalation for the Community Working Group or CWG).

As previously mentioned, we recommend an initiative to help create the chartered group and define how to recruit members. Some potential responsibilities of this proposed group are articulated in other sections of this proposal that can help inform the future charter.