delvingbitcoin
Workgroup lifecycle
Posted on: February 22, 2024 05:53 UTC
The lifecycle of the cluster mempool working group showcases a strategic approach to managing group discussions and output for a technical project.
Initially, the working group was established as a private entity around November 1, 2023. A dedicated category named wg-cluster-mempool was created to facilitate the posting of ideas and ensure that these remained accessible and searchable over time. This was complemented by setting up a private group under the same name and making the category exclusive to group members. To jumpstart the discussions, content was seeded into the category by transferring over a previously created gist.
Transitioning into a more open phase, by around November 30, 2023, there was a desire among group members to share their discussions with a wider audience without expanding group membership. Consequently, the decision was made to make the existing topics publicly readable while maintaining restrictions on new posts and replies to only group members. This change caught the attention of optech, which reported on these discussions, highlighting the group's work to a broader community.
The final stage in the working group's lifecycle came about as the project transitioned from a research phase to being proposed as a priority project for Bitcoin Core 28.0, as noted in a GitHub issue comment. With the move towards release, it was deemed appropriate to close out the working group since there was no longer a need to limit discussions. All discussions were recategorized into the main implementation category, removing any previous restrictions on access or contributions. To assist future researchers or interested parties in locating these discussions, a specific tag (wg-cluster-mempool::tag) was retroactively applied to all relevant posts and locked to admin edits to prevent its use in unrelated future discussions. Although the original category was retained, it now only contains an "About" post, which provides a link to the tag for easy access to historical posts. Documented on February 22, 2024, this process exemplifies a structured method that could be beneficial for other projects seeking to manage their discussion lifecycle effectively.