Re: [gentoo-dev] GLEP 38: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[christian.hartmann@email.de]

> You want to become official.

We are official. It's not just the way things should be.

> In that regard, you do not get to take care of your own things anymore.

We will still recruit new mods/admins and take care of them. We will still moderate and administering the board and the software. We will still vote on new policies and guidelines. I fail to see what you mean by saying that.

> If that was the case, there would be no control over the direction developers take [...]

At this point there is no direct control over the direction Gentoo goes. But thats something completly different.

> If we say half of the global moderators are staff, and the other half
> are not, how are users supposed to know the difference?

That would be problem. - That's why all global mods/admins should become staff members. (As described in the GLEP.)

> Once you become official, the statements made by the forum moderators/administrators are
> pretty much official statements of Gentoo (to the user anyway).

That's the way it is already.

> Every developer and staff has taken the quiz [...]

Sorry, but thats not correct (at least to my knowledge). - Back in the good ol' days most of the developers knew each other and knew who was doing what. Taking a quiz became mandatory back in 2003 iirc. Devs who were already aboard did not need to take the quiz.

> [...] I fail to see what makes forum mods so special they deserve an exception;

We don't want to be treated special. Most of us (global mods/admins) are doing this job since years. Most of us joined before the quizes and the recruitment process were established.

> Again, I fail to see why the forum staff deserves an exception to the
> rules that every other person that is either staff for Gentoo or a
> developer for Gentoo has to follow.

Well.. that's right. Rules should be followed.* If it would be up to me everybody of us would take that quiz and we could stop this discussion. But it's not up to me. - It's not that simple.
Long time contributers don't see why somebody wants them to take a quiz just to be allowed to continue the work they did for years. Nobody knows the forums and the community that well as these people do.
Of course we could make taking the quiz mandatory for all moderators. But this would probably mean to lose some great contributors.
Again: Old devs did not need to take the quiz. New ones (usually) need to take the quiz.
The same rules should be applied to the forums-staff. New members do need to take the quiz as described in the GLEP and recruitment process.

[*] BTW: Check some new devs and their devbugs (if any) and you'll see that these rules do not apply to everyone. I'm not saying that this behaviour is correct; just wanted to mention that.


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