Okay, It's been about a week since I sent my Ombudsman GLEP out for comments, so it's time to summarize the comments so far. The original GLEP may be found at http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep. So far there have been comments only by tberman, klieber and, indirectly, seemant. (For the existing thread, see http://news.gmane.org/onethread.php?group=gmane.linux.gentoo.devel&root=%3C1057613345.3127.3.camel%40localhost%3E. Kurt noticed that the GLEP fails to accurately document the role of the ombudsman, which is to "mediate" disputes, not "settle" them. The ombudsman has no actual power other than persuasion; his or her role is to facilitate finding common ground through discussions and negotiations. Kurt asked about when it is appropriate to use the ombudsman, to which I replied that the ombudsman's services may be used at any time simply by sending an e-mail to ombudsman@gentoo.org. I gave examples of user-developer and developer-developer conflicts that might occur, and suggested that the role of the ombudsman is first to listen, and then to try to mediate. Kurt also addressed the issue of logging or making public disputes, to which I suggested that disputes should be logged, but not public unless all parties wish it to be so. (I also clarified that the ombudsman's role is to handle interpersonal disputes, not policy disputes.) From tberman we have the helpful suggestion that the ombudsman should rotate every 3-to-6 months, with the backup ombudsman taking over from the current ombudsman. Todd also suggested g2boojum and absinthe as the first ombudsman and backup omudsman, respectively. I have mixed feelings on the idea of rotation. I agree that for an ombudsman position to be effective the ombudsman has to be considered impartial (and by having a backup one can avoid most conflicts of interest), but I'm not sure that regular rotations actually help that cause. If we should find a dev who's already well regarded as being impartial, keeping that dev as an ombudsman may be more useful. Kurt also had a number of worries about the ombudsman proposal. Summarizing, he feels that the ombudsman is likely to get overwhelmed, that having the position encourages whining more than fixing problems, and that ideally the ombudsman should really be listening to people and then proposing big-picture fixes. After a lot of reflection, I think Kurt may be correct, but that none of his worries are actually _bad_ things. If the ombudsman gets overwhelmed, then that _is_ a sign that things need to be fixed, and I have no problem adding to the GLEP a section documenting that one of the roles of the omubudsman is to look for trends in interpersonal conflicts and work on finding more global solutions. As for encouraging whining, I still tend to think that the requirement that the person with a complaint submit a written complaint to the ombudsman will help to set the bar high enough that most of the disputes will be more than whining. Assuming that nobody objects, I'll add a comment to the GLEP stating that e-mails to the ombudsman may be rejected outright if they are not well-written or they contain an excess of vitriol or abuse. Seemant has proposed an ombudsman subproject to the devrel project (http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel), so if people have comments on this proposal it would be very helpful to make them soon. Please feel free to reply to this message (to gentoo-dev@gentoo.org), and I'll cheerfully put together another summary if needed. Best, g2boojum -- Grant Goodyear