You are one of the owners of this project. Take initiative.

The tasks in the “Todo” directory are not started and not owned by anyone, you can take on any of them, pick the one that suits your skill and interest.

Put your name into the “in charge” field, and now you are in-charge of this task.

When you’re in charge of a task, it means you’re in-charge of it, like a group leader. You should continue to fill in all blanks on the card; the * blanks are mandatory. You may find some blanks are already filled, feel free to append or modify.

If you are confused how to fill in all the blanks, see below. Otherwise, if you filled in all the mandatory blanks, you may drag this task card into the “Reviewing” column. The admin will then drag it into the “In progress” column if it is reviewed to be good-to-go.

• title
  • a concise description of the task
  • people should have a rough idea of this task by reading the title alone
• status
  • not started = an icebox of things we need to do that haven’t started to do
  • reviewing = someone took on this task, filled in the blanks in the task card, waiting for admin to review and approve
  • in progress = in a well-checked status toward successful finish
  • done = although rework might occur in the future, now most people agree this task looks done
• due
  • a good estimation when will this task finish
  • ≠ deadline
  • but still try to treat it as a deadline
• in charge
  • like a group leader
  • one and only one person is in charge of each task
• helpers
  • although many people can and will help you
• description
  • a detail description of the task
  • if the title is too short, here you can say more
• why do this
  • the significance of this task
  • how is it related to other tasks
  • how it fits into the big picture
  • justify why we will not undo this in the future
  • if you really can’t say why, maybe we shouldn’t do this task to begin with —— don’t work on tasks that we will undo in the future (see “maybe better idea”)
• cases
  • divide this task into sub-tasks
  • then conquer them
• reference
  • cite papers, urls, books…
  • paste the url if you can
• loopholes
  • things that might go wrong
  • think about potential loopholes before they actually happen
  • Plan before taking action
• is serious
  • is this loophole really serious
  • will we suffer a great loss if it happens
  • is it practically unfixable
• success indicator
  • when this condition is satisfied, we can put this task card in the “done” status
  • a sufficient condition
  • a testable condition
    • can it be quantified by numbers?
• maybe better idea
  • maybe we shouldn’t work on this task, you have a better idea
• blocked by X
  • if task X is not done, this task cannot start