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The board meeting page's tools section describes whimsy; describe the tool the board uses - #720

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The board meeting page's tools section describes whimsy; describe the tool the board uses#720
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@sstriker sstriker commented Aug 9, 2026

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The problem

/foundation/board/meeting.html#tools
opens with "With the creation of the Apache Whimsy project, we now have a number of tools
that aid in creation and management of the agenda; workflow functions for submitting,
commenting, and approving reports". None of that is whimsy's any more - the
Board Agenda Tool does it, and the same page already says so
twice, once in "How To Attend" and once in a closing section whose entire content is
"The Whimsy Board Agenda tool has been deprecated." So the page contradicts itself, and the
section a reader lands on from the #tools anchor is the wrong half.

What changed

One file, content/foundation/board/meeting.md, three places:

Where Was Is
#tools whimsy creates and manages the agenda the Board Agenda Tool does, and here is what it does through the month
"After the previous month's meeting" reports submitted "via the mailing list and by checking into Whimsy" reports are posted in the agenda tool
#whimsy "the Whimsy Board Agenda tool has been deprecated" that, plus where the tool's own documentation, its maintainers and its chat channel are

The #tools rewrite follows the shape the rest of the page already has - a month, in
order - rather than a feature list: the agenda is assembled a day after the previous
meeting, chairs post reports into it, directors pre-approve and flag and comment, the Chair
runs the meeting from it, the Secretary records the minutes in it and works the post-meeting
checklist. It keeps the point the old text made about the underlying files, because it is
still true and still matters to the people who rely on it: an agenda is a plain text file in
the foundation's private SVN repository, the tool commits in the name of whoever made the
change, and command line users can carry on as before.

What deliberately did not change

The categorized minutes listing still points at whimsy. That view is served from whimsy
today - https://www.apache.org/foundation/board/minutes/ 404s - so pointing at it now
would ship a broken link. The section says the listing is being moved onto this site;
#715 is the wiring for that, and the links here change in the same pass that turns it on.

The {#whimsy} anchor is kept as-is, since it is a published anchor and may have inbound
links, even though the section is no longer about whimsy.

Noticed while in here, not touched

Out of scope for this PR, but each is a real inaccuracy someone should pick up:

  • reporting.md still says "post your report in Whimsy, then refresh the page" when
    explaining how to check that <private> markers render.
  • records/index.md, governance/corporation.md and the three calendar-*.md pages all
    link the categorized minutes view on whimsy. Those follow the same rule as the link here -
    they change when the pages move, not before.
  • This page says meetings use "IRC for backchannel"; that has been Slack for years.
  • It also says the next agenda "is assembled and checked into our code repository" a few
    days after the previous meeting, which is now a daily job rather than a person.

Review

The branch is preview/, so .asf.yaml's autostage builds it at
https://www-striker-board-meeting-tools.staged.apache.org/foundation/board/meeting.html.

Draft: per the repository README, content changes are the VP, Marketing and Publicity's call.
Opening it as a draft so the text can be read and argued with before it is proposed for merge.

The "Board meeting tools" section still describes the Apache Whimsy project as
the thing that creates and manages the agenda and carries the report workflow.
That has not been true since the Board Agenda Tool took over; the page already
says as much in two other places, which is how it came to contradict itself.

Rewrites the section around the tool the board actually uses, and fixes the two
other stale references on the same page:

- report submission is "via the mailing list and by checking into Whimsy" -> a
  report is posted in the agenda tool;
- the "Help and Tips" section said only that whimsy's tool is deprecated; it now
  also points at the tool's own documentation page, which is where the role by
  role account of the workflow lives.

The categorized minutes listing is left pointing at whimsy, because that is
still where it is served from today. The section says it is moving here; the
wiring for that is www-site#715, and the link changes when those pages go live.

Fixes apache/tooling-agenda#525

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Pull request overview

Updates the board meeting documentation to consistently describe the current Board Agenda Tool workflow (replacing outdated Whimsy-centric wording) while preserving existing anchors and noting the public minutes/categorized views transition.

Changes:

  • Rewrites the #tools section to describe the Board Agenda Tool’s monthly lifecycle and roles.
  • Updates the report-submission description to point to posting reports in the Board Agenda Tool.
  • Expands the {#whimsy} section with pointers to the tool’s documentation, maintainers, and support channel.

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Comment on lines +73 to +74
volunteer nature of Apache PMCs. Projects typically submit their reports
by posting them in the [Board Agenda Tool][2] anywhere from
tool commits to it in the name of whoever made the change - so command line users can
carry on as before. What the tool adds is the workflow around that file:

- it **assembles each month's agenda** a day or so after the previous meeting, from the
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2 participants