On 01/09/11 20:14, Rob Weir wrote:
On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 2:56 PM, Terry Ellison <te...@ellisons.org.uk>
wrote:
OK, Rob, I now understand your point. I will do as you request.
However,
it seems to me that by making this request you are creating an
interesting
catch-22: I far as I can see there are two facets to this invitation.
* *Sufficiency*. These forums are closed because this gives the
attendees freedom to discuss matters (such as individual poster
behaviour) that shouldn't be discussed on a public forum. We only
invite "trusted" forum members to join these lists. (That's is
that they've demonstrated that they are responsible and have built
up a body of "karma" with their forum contributions.) I would
have thought that being elected a committer could reasonably be
deemed to be sufficient to show such trust.
* *Necessity*. You seem to want to discuss policy on the governance
of the forums from within this DL or ooo-private. I also recall
some of your previous comments which indicate that these people
(who have committed hundreds if not thousands of hours to
supporting this service) do not merit committer status unless they
have a wider engagement in the project, and they are therefore
excluded from any ooo-private discussions. Yet, it seems to me
that it is entirely reasonable that anyone contributing to this
discussion should at least have a working knowledge of how the
forums operate in practice and currently govern themselves. So I
do think it necessary as well.
This is incorrect. We're obviously discussing the policy on the
public list. We have not discussed this on ooo-private. Discussion
of policy regarding the treatment of confidential information is
itself not confidential. In fact, such discussions should probably
always be public.
You are also incorrect in your assumption that volunteers need to
contribute in several areas in order to be committers. Someone who
makes substantial contributions as a support forum moderator could
make a great committer candidate. Ditto for a documentation writer, a
tester, a translator, etc. Committers are not just coders. It is
about commitment to the project.
You are suggesting two problems:
1) We have forum moderators who understand how the forums work, but
have not made visible contributions to the project yet, so they are
not currently being nominated as committers.
2) We have committers who are not familiar with how the forum operates.
And I'm raising the 3rd issue:
3) How the forum operates should not be something that occurs in private.
There is a clear solution here:
1) Have those who understand how the forum operates today write this
up in detail as a contribution to the project's website
2) This would help other committers understand how this works and
avoids the newbie problem you are concerned with, though we are
probably not half as dumb as you seem to be assuming. I, for example,
have run a phpBB board before.
The issue isn't about phpBB, its more about we operate *these* forums.
3) This also gives the PPMC and Mentors an opportunity to review the
forum procedures and ensure they conform Apache expectations, etc.
This is something we should be doing anyways.
4) This effort, both in writing up the procedures, and educating the
existing committers, and through this mutual discussion, would
probably be a sufficient sign of commitment to get the moderators who
are do this work to be nominated as project committers.
So a win-win situation, all around.
Rob, I think that on your last comments we are lot closer than on your
first reply. However, we can either choose to make this change:
A) a disruptive one: that is we lay down some (from the perspective of
the volunteers who are currently doing this work) arbitrary and seemly
irrational new rules on a love it or leave it basis. In my experience
many or most will leave given this sort of diktat. It's a good way to
kill off a service.
B) an evolutionary one: that is we engage constructively and get to
understand the range of perspectives then move the service incrementally
to an end-point that is mutually acceptable.
In my experience many or most supporters will leave when faced with the
(A) sort of diktat. (B) works a LOT better, especially when the people
involved are making their commitments pro-bono. So I tend to feel that
people who start with (A) really have an agenda of shutting down a
service and those who start from (B) want it to prosper.
//Terry
