On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 12:14:01PM -0700, Allison Randal wrote: > On 08/29/2015 03:01 AM, Margarita Manterola wrote: > > When I advocate for the local team it's not for these people, but for > > the volunteers that will show up along the way. For those volunteers, > > joining debconf-team is traumatic. There's too many flamewars, too > > many things going on at the same time, and they have no idea how to > > fit into the already existing structures, they just want to help. > > One thing we need to work on is reducing those flamewars. They're not > helpful to anyone. We absolutely need to improve communication and > collaboration in the whole team. Remember, long-term team members aren't > immune to being driven away by an unhealthy environment.
I've been wanting to say much the same. The unhealthy environment is one of the main reasons I stopped participating for many months earlier this year. I'm sure I wasn't the only non-newcomer to walk away. I know that wasn't a helpful reaction. At the same time I felt that venting my frustrations and growing rage wouldn't have been helpful either. Also, non-local newcomers can be and probably have been put off by the disfunctions in the overall team environment. > > We need those volunteers, we need to be able to delegate stuff towards > > them, otherwise the DC16 organizing team has too big of a burden. But > > asking those volunteers to join debconf-team, follow the tons of > > discussions, follow the IRC meeting on #debconf-team, etc, has been > > proven to be too much. They just don't, which makes it much harder to > > integrate them so there's a high chance that you'll lose them. > > > > Of course, if any new recruits that join that local team feel like > > they want to integrate into the global structure they are totally > > welcome to join. It's not like being part of the local team precludes > > taking part in content, fundraising, or any other teams. It's just > > that it's not a pre-requisite to understand and fit into the structure > > in order to volunteer for working towards DC16. > > That point was mentioned too. But again, all that requires is for local > members of the DebConf team to make local volunteers feel welcome. > Defining a "local team" doesn't help with that. A safe environment to discuss DebConf in a given year's local language is one solid argument I've heard in the past in favor of a local team. I don't recall seeing that mentioned in this thread thus far. I think there have been more than a few years where many local newcomers, and consequently the conference as a whole, benefitted from being able to communicate about the conference in their native language. Perhaps that need can be met by an irc channel and list, without being a formal team. I honestly don't know. Not an issue for dc16, afaik, but should be kept in mind as we are talking about more than just the coming 10 months. -edrz _______________________________________________ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
