Finally found the time to reply to your mail.
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 01:39:26 +0200, Beth wrote:
Okay, there's little way I can reply to this without my normal ugly
"[beth]" comments.
Yes, they really are ugly. Especially since my mail client does not
support them.
[beth] I'll jump in here... one of the biggest frustrations I have is
those
that aren't currently doing edits/voting/actively working with the
database
veto things, and do so without being clear on what they are vetoing.
(Don, yes this is directed at you partially, but it's also in general)
Robert and Don neither actively edit/vote/work with the data as much as
other active moderators. This has been admitted by Don. Though, they are
the two making final decisions. I think this is a somewhat concerning
practice.
I am not making style decisons. I am moderating the decision process.
Everytime I come near to making a decision there is an uproar, which I am
very thankful about.
As for Robert, he is the maintainer of MusicBrainz. If you are unhappy
with him, you can take the data and the code and do your on project. I
know that is a harsh reply, but it is the truth.
Potential solution? Find someone that is actively deeply involved, and
trusted to start overseeing final decisions. As well those that are more
actively reading the discussions. (no, I am not suggesting myself)[/beth]
I think you are forgetting something very important here: _Continuity_.
People who are not active editors any more but know the history of the
project are important.
What would the SC be if noone was there who could step in and say "We had
a two weeks debate about this just half a year ago. Please do not dig this
out again unless there is a really good reason to"?
It would change direction following the group of newbs that shoult loudest.
One thing that might have gone unnoticed is that many of these oldtimers
have left the council in the last half-year. This is as much of a
challenge to the project as the growth in new users.
I do not agree with your solution, becuase I think your description of the
problem is wrong.
In terms of kybernetics the SC needs three things: vaiation, selection,
and stabilisation.
- Variation is how new ieas and new issues come in.
- Selection is how those that are not helpful get sorted out.
- Stabilisation is how the decisions are kept so that they become history.
Our problems are mostly in the realm or selection and partially with
stabilisation.
We do not have the most basic means of filtering an uninformed newbies
comment out of a style disucssion. And by "We" I include the newbie
himself. How should they know that going off on tangents is a bad idea?
Nobody ever told them.
This last point is very important, because most people who go on tangents
are _not_ cluesless newbs. They are intermediary users, but still they do
not know what kind of behavior is expected from them (that is what I
gathered).
Stabilisatin is an issue, too. People are joining and leaving the project
at a pace that many informal decisions are likely to get lost. I realised
that this is part of the secretary's job, too.
Now a solution might be to make more explicit decisions and to have a form
of automaically archiving them. I am not talking about more formalization!
This is where we just came from half a year ago, and I do not want to go
back.
I will dig into the way the real RFCs are done over at the internet
engineering task force. I surely can learn something from them.
DonRedman
--
Words that are written in CamelCase refer to WikiPages:
Visit http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/ the best MusicBrainz documentation
around! :-)
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