Board public IRC meetings

The Fedora Project Board holds at least monthly public meetings on IRC.

To participate, join. This channel is used by various Fedora community members and groups, similar to any public channel.

Meeting protocol
There is a meeting protocol to promote an orderly meeting that's helpful to all attendees as well as the Board. The Board has previously tried using no protocol, and those meetings are confusing and hard to discern where questions and discussions end. Therefore, please observe these guidelines during the meeting to ensure a good experience for everyone:

Meeting Structure
IRC meetings have a 50% structured agenda with predefined topics and 50% open format (usually Question and Answer). During the structured agenda portion of the meeting, only board members will be permitted to speak in the queue, unless the board requests input from specific community members. During the open format, any community member may ask a question or propose a topic.

General Rules

 * The meeting moderator will start ( ) and stop ( ) the meeting, and set the topic ( ) with the meetbot. (Information about Meetbot is available at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot ) This will put the topic in the IRC channel topic, so that it is clear (and that late arrivals know what the topic is).
 * Participants should refrain from going off the defined topic.


 * Participants may only speak when it is their turn. There is a speaking queue. The moderator will inform you when it is your turn to speak.
 * If you have a question, type ?. You will be added to the end of the speaking queue.
 * If you need to speak, type !. You will be added to the end of the speaking queue.
 * Note that it can speed things up if you have your question or comment typed in ahead of time and just send it when you get approval.


 * If you're done speaking, type eof. That will let others know you're done.
 * If you agree with a participant's statement, type username: +1. This can be done by anyone at any time, and does not require sitting in the speaking queue. Specifying the username of the participant whom you are +1ing helps make it clear what you are agreeing with.

Proposals

 * Any board member who wishes to propose an item for board approval may do so, but should make it clear that they are putting a proposal forward by starting their message with the meetbot keyword "#idea".
 * All proposals must be seconded in order to be considered by the board.
 * When a proposal is seconded, the moderator will set the proposal as the topic and open the queue to discussion of that proposal.
 * When the queue is empty (or at the moderators discretion), the proposal will be put before the board for a vote. The moderator will update the topic to indicate that voting is taking place.
 * All board members may vote either +1 (I support this proposal), 0 (I abstain from voting on this proposal), or -1 (I do not support this proposal).
 * All proposals must receive +1 votes from a majority of Board members (Since the Fedora Board has ten members, this means that there must be 6 +1 votes.)
 * -1 votes do not cancel out +1 votes.
 * If there are not enough board members present for an majority vote (6) or if there are absent board members whose vote might affect the result of a proposal, then that proposal will be moved to a trac ticket for the missing board members to vote on.
 * When the result of a proposal is clear, the moderator will record the result as an action with meetbot (e.g. "#agreed Proposal: Eat more bacon was approved (+1: 6, 0: 0, -1: 1)")

This setup promotes an orderly process and makes it easier to follow (and summarize later). We look forward to seeing community members at the meeting. We also hope you will enjoy having a look at some of the Board's work, and encourage you to ask questions.