Cleaning up the core teams

[axel-lauer]

The ESMValTool proto-Steering Group proposes to start enforcing our no-activity policy, i.e. cleaning up the core teams and removing members who have been inactive for more than 2 years. In particular, we propose the following:

• Enforcing our no-activity policy, members of the Scienctific Lead Development Team, the Technical Lead Development Team, and the User Engagement Team who have not been active for more than 2 years will be removed from these teams. All members removed from these teams will remain in the ESMValTool Development Team.
• The GitHub team ESMValTool-CoreTeam became obsolete will be removed.
• The startup message listing the ESMValTool-CoreTeam and contacts in _main.py will be replaced by the three mailing lists for the Scienctific Lead Development Team, the Technical Lead Development Team, and the User Engagement Team.

All of this would be implemented for the next release, which is currently scheduled for April 2024.

Please give us feedback on this idea and share your thoughts or concerns on this proposed cleanup.

@ESMValGroup/esmvaltool-developmentteam
@ESMValGroup/esmvaltool-coreteam
@ESMValGroup/scientific-lead-development-team
@ESMValGroup/technical-lead-development-team
@ESMValGroup/userengagementteam

[valeriupredoi]

my feedback: 🧹 👍 x3 - well done! Note that the April release will be a bit delayed, possibly May 🇬🇧

[bouweandela]

Sounds good to me! We should be careful that we do recognize all kinds of activity, not just activity on GitHub, but also e.g. help with finding funding.

[bouweandela]

Would it make sense to list the members of the respective teams on our website or on readthedocs? Or are the GitHub teams sufficient? Note that we currently have this page, which would need to be updated. @ehogan recently suggested that we could write downs somewhere what people's specific skills or interests are, so it would be more clear to everyone who to contact for what.

[bouweandela]

Here are some examples of how other projects list teams/roles and people:

• astropy
• sunpy
• rucio
• The Turing Way roles, collaborators, contributors

[axel-lauer]

I propose to keep this discussion open until the upcoming workshop in May 2024 (see #141) and then start enacting (i.e. contacting non-active members) what we decide then.

[headmetal]

Perhaps for long-term (but currently inactive) contributors, a new group called something like "Founding members" could be established?