[gentoo-dev] New GLEP draft: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[gentoo-dev] New GLEP draft: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[Christian Hartmann]

Hi all,

as some of you might already know we are working on a GLEP that is about
the status of forums moderators and admins in the gentoo project. The
main goal of the GLEP is to create a kind of quality assurance and to
ensure that upcoming moderators know about the forums guidelines.
Furthermore it should improve the information flow and improve the
relation between forums and all the other projects.

I'm now sending this to you for further discussion. It has already been
discussed with all moderators and site admins as well as with devrel and
the glep guys. Devrel now agreed on the terms and conditions described
in the GLEP considering the process of aquiring new moderators as
developers.

The newest revision of the GLEP can always be found here:
http://download.iansview.com/gentoo/docs/glep-38/glep-0038.txt

Feedback is highly appreciated.

-- 
Kind regards,
Christian Hartmann

Broicher Str. 34
46049 Oberhausen
Germany

Mobile: +49 0173 20 71 871

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Re: [gentoo-dev] New GLEP draft: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[Jan Kundrát]

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Christian Hartmann wrote:
> Feedback is highly appreciated.

IMHO if you don't require moderators of Local Forums to accept and
follow same guidelines as the global moderators, you're actually against
the point of "Moderator as Gentoo authority".

Same applies for current moderators. I think that it's not so hard to
complete the staff quiz, btw, and there shouldn't be a need for the
one-month-long probation for existing moderators.

But I'm not a Gentoo developer.

WKR,
-jkt

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Re: [gentoo-dev] New GLEP draft: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[Jonathan Smith]

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Jan Kundrát wrote:
> Christian Hartmann wrote:
> 
>>Feedback is highly appreciated.
> 
> 
> IMHO if you don't require moderators of Local Forums to accept and
> follow same guidelines as the global moderators, you're actually against
> the point of "Moderator as Gentoo authority".
> 
> Same applies for current moderators. I think that it's not so hard to
> complete the staff quiz, btw, and there shouldn't be a need for the
> one-month-long probation for existing moderators.
> 
> But I'm not a Gentoo developer.
> 
> WKR,
> -jkt
> 

I agree that current moderatory should be greatly encouraged to take the
quiz and become official.

- -smithj
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Re: [gentoo-dev] New GLEP draft: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[Rob Cakebread]

Christian Hartmann wrote:

> Feedback is highly appreciated.
> 

Feedback:

I think the first sentence should say "staff" rather than "developer":

"Global moderators and site admins should also go through the mentoring
process and become official Gentoo developers."

Overall it sounds like a good idea as far as QA goes. I think this will
be your biggest obstacle:

"Recent events such as the election of trustees or the new metastructure
poll are effectively affecting the forums, so the wish to be part of the
decision as an equal member is present among the moderators."

How exactly did recent voting affect the forums and why should
Foundation members vote to give you voting rights because of what is
affecting the forums? (Assuming Foundation members would have to
vote to change who can vote).

Its arguable that moderators being non-staff is a good thing because its
non-staff essentially censoring and deleting other non-staff in the
forums, so make a good case ;)

"Forums don't really seem to fit into one of the current categories as
they are related to the infrastructure and the documentation project. We
suggest putting it in the other category or making a separate one for
the forums."

Seems like you'd fit perfectly under User Relations, wherever they fall
under the toplevel project structure.

-- 
Rob Cakebread
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Re: [gentoo-dev] New GLEP draft: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[Haas Wernfried]

On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 04:27:37PM -0400, Jonathan Smith wrote:
> Jan Kundrát wrote:
> > IMHO if you don't require moderators of Local Forums to accept and
> > follow same guidelines as the global moderators, you're actually against
> > the point of "Moderator as Gentoo authority".

The main problem with some of the local forums is that not everyone
there speaks English (well). That being a requirement would mean we'd
have to kick off people doing a good job just because they don't
fulfill a requirement for official Gentoo staff. That's why they were
excluded and becoming an official member is optional.

> > Same applies for current moderators. I think that it's not so hard to
> > complete the staff quiz, btw, and there shouldn't be a need for the
> > one-month-long probation for existing moderators.
> I agree that current moderatory should be greatly encouraged to take the
> quiz and become official.

I do so as well, but we cannot force it on them. If i have to choose
if someone who has done great work has to become offical and decides
to leave because of that or just stays non-offical, i'll choose the
second option.

In any case all members of the moderation staff, official or not, are
bound to our moderation guidelines anyway.

cheers,
	Wernfried (amne)

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Re: [gentoo-dev] New GLEP draft: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[Haas Wernfried]

On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 01:29:32PM -0700, Rob Cakebread wrote:
> I think the first sentence should say "staff" rather than "developer":
There also was a little discussion on irc about this topic a few
minutes ago. Please refer to this part of the glep:
"In this document the term developer is used for every person being an
offical member of Gentoo Linux such as people working on
documentation, people working on the infra team or the people
working on ebuilds (who could be considered real developers)."

Please s/developer/staff if you're uncomfortable with this abuse of
the term developer. The main purpose of the glep is to make the people
working on the forums offical and not to taint the term developer -
which has already happened:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/roll-call/userinfo.xml
The term developer seems to be used for people working on docs and
infra or even just recruiting people as well. I have no problem being
a developer or staff or whatever you call it, this is about being an
official member of the team. This seems however be an issue that
shouldn't be addressed in _this_ discussion. For your convenience,
we'll change the term to staff in the document.

> "Recent events such as the election of trustees or the new metastructure
> poll are effectively affecting the forums, so the wish to be part of the
> decision as an equal member is present among the moderators."
> How exactly did recent voting affect the forums and why should
> Foundation members vote to give you voting rights because of what is
> affecting the forums? (Assuming Foundation members would have to
> vote to change who can vote).

Theoretically the trustees can decide to do whatever they want with
the forums. They probably won't, but if anyone else who may be
affected by their decisions is allowed to vote, why shouldn't we?
The metastructure poll is affecting the forums in terms of us not even
knowing where we fit into the metastructure even though f.g.o is in
the offial domain gentoo.org.
Becoming developer^wstaff should give us the right to vote. Since
every other developer, infra staff, docs-writer or other person
contributing time to gentoo as part of an official project, this
should would be fair enough imho.

> Its arguable that moderators being non-staff is a good thing because its
> non-staff essentially censoring and deleting other non-staff in the
> forums, so make a good case ;)
That's why the glep was written.

> Seems like you'd fit perfectly under User Relations, wherever they fall
> under the toplevel project structure.
I don't really have a clue myself, so you name it. ;-)

cheers,
	Wernfried

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Re: [gentoo-dev] New GLEP draft: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[Rob Cakebread]

Haas Wernfried wrote:
> 
> Theoretically the trustees can decide to do whatever they want with
> the forums. They probably won't, but if anyone else who may be
> affected by their decisions is allowed to vote, why shouldn't we?
> The metastructure poll is affecting the forums in terms of us not even
> knowing where we fit into the metastructure even though f.g.o is in
> the offial domain gentoo.org.
> Becoming developer^wstaff should give us the right to vote. Since
> every other developer, infra staff, docs-writer or other person
> contributing time to gentoo as part of an official project, this
> should would be fair enough imho.
> 

Ok, I'll buy that. This part wasn't clear to me:

"Recent events such as the election of trustees or the new metastructure
poll are effectively affecting the forums"

What you explained above is a lot clearer now, thanks.



-- 
Rob Cakebread
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Re: [gentoo-dev] New GLEP draft: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[Roy Marples]

On Fri, 2005-06-17 at 20:44 +0200, Christian Hartmann wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> as some of you might already know we are working on a GLEP that is about
> the status of forums moderators and admins in the gentoo project. The
> main goal of the GLEP is to create a kind of quality assurance and to
> ensure that upcoming moderators know about the forums guidelines.
> Furthermore it should improve the information flow and improve the
> relation between forums and all the other projects.

As an ex site/forum admin (non Gentoo) I really have to ask what kind of
"quality assurance" you're dealing with here.

Are we talking profane language or just about moving a post of "how do I
install do xyz" to the right forum?

And I do have to ask - what information flow? At the most, Gentoo devs
read the forum and post there. After that, forum users have to contact
devs via IRC or b.g.o - at best both parties have to read the forums or
use IRC, at present people post bugs to get attention. I fail to see how
forums can improve the "information flow" when a vast proportion of devs
don't even read the forums. I do, but after a year and a bit of being on
the forums I think I can safely say that most devs involved with
networking don't post in the network forum or read it.

> 
> I'm now sending this to you for further discussion. It has already been
> discussed with all moderators and site admins as well as with devrel and
> the glep guys. Devrel now agreed on the terms and conditions described
> in the GLEP considering the process of aquiring new moderators as
> developers.
> 
> The newest revision of the GLEP can always be found here:
> http://download.iansview.com/gentoo/docs/glep-38/glep-0038.txt

After reading that, I get the impression that forum admins/mods want
better recognition within the Gentoo realm. I would argue that they are
the most visible to start with. Heck, I first checked out the forums,
downloaded the CD, tried it out, discovered that wireless networking
sucked and the rest as they say is history.

Maybe I'm getting old or summat, but isn't this more of a "Here's how we
want to recruit for the forums mods" proposal rather than a "Gentoo
Linux Enhancement Proposal"?

> 
> Feedback is highly appreciated.

Cool - here's the feedback in a nutshell.
Thumbs up aside from once thing - why the need for a GLEP?

Roy

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Re: [gentoo-dev] New GLEP draft: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[Haas Wernfried]

On Sat, Jun 18, 2005 at 02:15:22AM +0100, Roy Marples wrote:
> As an ex site/forum admin (non Gentoo) I really have to ask what kind of
> "quality assurance" you're dealing with here.
Our current procedure is that we think quite a lot about whom to make
moderator and whom not. This procedure has never been written down, so
theoretically one of the admins _could_ make some random asshat with 4 posts
administrator as well. Writing down the procedure should keep
something from that from happening.

> Are we talking profane language or just about moving a post of "how do I
> install do xyz" to the right forum?
You may want to take a look at the current version of the forum
guide: http://curtis119.no-ip.org/forum-guide.xml
People get upset about being treated unfair pretty fast [1] and
every deleted post raises the conspiracy thread level by 1, so having
clear rules where to move a post may be more important than you
think. ;-)

[1] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-341099.html

> And I do have to ask - what information flow? At the most, Gentoo devs
> read the forum and post there. After that, forum users have to contact
> devs via IRC or b.g.o - at best both parties have to read the forums or
> use IRC, at present people post bugs to get attention. I fail to see how
> forums can improve the "information flow" when a vast proportion of devs
> don't even read the forums.

I think it's pretty clear, b.g.o is for bugs and forums for
support. Reading forums isn't required for developers. The information
flow thingie works in both directions though. Personally i'm not
really comfortable with getting to know things the same moment a user
gets to know them, because some things are discussed on -core,
etc. Some devs may not even know us forums guys as well as we don't
know all developers - which greatly reduces the information flow as
well.

> Maybe I'm getting old or summat, but isn't this more of a "Here's how we
> want to recruit for the forums mods" proposal rather than a "Gentoo
> Linux Enhancement Proposal"?

> Cool - here's the feedback in a nutshell.
> Thumbs up aside from once thing - why the need for a GLEP?

First we thought about sending a mail to gentoo-dev with "Hi, we wanna
be official gentoo staff as well, kthxbyebye", but that might not have
been very productive. A glep was chosen because it seems to be the
best way to change something in the organisation of Gentoo:

"We intend GLEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing
significant new features, for collecting community input on an issue,
and for documenting the design decisions that have gone into Gentoo
Linux. The GLEP author is responsible for building consensus within
the community and documenting dissenting opinions." [2]

[2] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0001.html#what-is-a-glep

cheers,
	Wernfried (amne)

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