Evan makes many useful points. I am the only official maintainer of the system and I only signed on to be backup. I just haven't taken the time to figure everything out.
What's wrong with the current system? - there are (rarely) messages that require moderation on the mailing list and that isn't being done in a timely fashion. We have volunteers but the board has not yet considered them (I asked the board to do so). - a particularly important example is that Alan hasn't been whitelisted for the announce list. I will endeavour to do this. I haven't yet invested the time to figure out how to do this. - Gitlab hosts our meeting minutes and agendas. The new board members, particularly Evan, don't seem to like that collaborative tool. (I'm comfortable enough with it; it seems easy to me.) - at some point we are going to have to update the system to a newer releases of software (mostly: debian, mailman). As usual, there will be unknown hazards there. (Scott has thought about this.) In my estimation, switching to a variety of other tools will cause at least as many problems as they will solve. The key issues are: - we need a way of attracting volunteers (and new members; I will pretend that that is a separate problem) - get volunteer time and effort to provide services that work for us. "Us" means maintainers and users. - get enough volunteers so the we can survive unexpected resignations. - help volunteers do the right thing: work towards positive goals. - select tools that provide good services, ones that the "users" are happy to use. - ease "users" into becoming comfortable and productive with the tools - the tools must have a path into the indefinite future. Forced migration is not fun. It seems that the scarce resource is competent admins. Someone with enough time can become competent, so the main scarcity is time. We do seem to burn out competent people. We all leave them to do their tasks until that happens. We really need a pipeline of people to step forward. The task are not all that hard but when a small number of folks take on all the load, we get problems because successors are not being trained. I personally think that the existing services are mostly fine but need more: - maintainer cycles (currently my fault) - opportunities for users to master I am not going to be an admin of a non-Linux solution. ================ Just because "we've always done it this way" is not a sufficient argument. I'm not engaged in Discord but maybe others are. That's why Evan's push to create Discord channels is worth a try. Especially since he did the work. ================ Most of the time I've spent as a volunteer has been attending board meetings. I am not a member of the board but am invited to attend. That shows how little time I've actually put into maintenance. I should have spent more; I should have fixed the whitelisting problem. It is a worrisome sign that the board meetings sometimes don't reach quorum. | From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <[email protected]> | To: GTALUG Talk <[email protected]> | Cc: Evan Leibovitch <[email protected]> | Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2022 16:36:05 -0500 | Subject: [GTALUG] At the GTALUG AGM: How we handle Internet services | | [Apologies if you received this message more than once] | | Hello everyone, | | By now you may have read or heard elsewhere about the announcement of the | Annual General Meeting (AGM) for the Greater Toronto Linux User Group | (GTALUG), to be held virtually <https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl> on | Tuesday December 13. | | Along with other AGM business, we will be discussing how GTALUG goes | forward with our online services. | | TL;DR: A number of the people who used to set up and run our online | services (mainly the website and mailing lists) have left the GTALUG Board, | and those who remain have neither the time to fix nor familiarity with the | tools currently running these services. | | As Google has provided to GTALUG its nonprofit services which include full | access to commercial Google Workplace (formerly G Suite), the Board has | been investigating migrating some of our online services there. | | While to some such a move would be controversial, the status quo is | unsustainable. So either we need new people to step forward to operate what | exists, or we need to move to a service -- provided free of charge -- that | can dramatically simplify operations. | | The Board wants to have an open discussion on the issue before deciding, | and the issue will be raised at the AGM. We look forward to hearing your | views. While responses to this email will certainly be read, the full | discussion will take place at the AGM. | | Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada | @evanleibovitch / @el56 | --- Post to this mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
