Look at the structure of our current forum: Rings is only part of it and do not contains all Topics. There is life out of Rings.
We have interesting topics in Primordial Soup - and they do not belongs explicitly to any Ring, but worth of discussion, like “Meta: we should value privacy more” or “EEP-5: Ethereum Hardfork Process - request for collaboration”
Some topics are formally in the EIPs, but related to many Rings. Examples? Here they are: Immutables, invariants, and upgradability (Rings: EIPs, Security, EVM Evolution) or EIP-1102: Opt-in provider acces (Rings: EIPs, Security, Wallets). So it is in nature of our topic to be in no Rings (at very beginning) or to be related to many of them if interdisciplinary.
I am quite neutral to see Rings as Topics or as a Work Groups. But somehow we should assign time slots to important topics even they are out of any Rings or in many Rings. In the model Rings==Topics proposed by @mariapaulafn those topic should be either discussed multiple time in each Ring, assigned to one of possible Rings (ignoring other aspects) or create a new Ring dedicated to topic. Not really ideal.
I would propose to have both:
- Topics may be proposed for discussion in some Ring internally (as usual)
- Topics may be proposed out of any Rings or as interdisciplinary topics (many Rings).
- Rings may claim responsibility for Topics.
Ring-internal topics will be grouped. For interdisciplinary Topics we will try to make joint-sessions with many Rings.
My proposal is topic focused: I would like to see discussions about topics that are hot right now, no matter what Ring they are in.