To what end?? Are we going to kick out people who aren't performing up to some predefined amount of work?? I find it awfully difficult to justify adding yet more overhead to people who are already working (and most likely quite busy)
Suppose, someone is not any more interested contributing, neither they plan to do it again in future.
What we currently do is to keep their junk pages in the wiki. People coming for help visits them, mails for help and get no reply.
Should not we ping our ambassadors periodically and ensure they are still contributing or atleast interested in contributing? If someone is contributing, fine. If someone is not available for sometime, let him/her reply back that he/she will be unavailable for a specific period of time.
Someone may be busy for a certain period of time, but that does not mean he/she can not reply back his/her unavailability. If someone does not reply in a month, it is for sure that he/she is not interested any more.
What we can do is mail all the ambassadors asking if they are still "alive", if someone does not reply in a couple of week, send him/her another ping and even he/she does not reply in a month, remove him/her.
My suggestion is not to kick out people, for a start, identify those who are dead for Fedora and remove them.
Don't get me wrong, I think accountability is a good thing - and in volunteer organizations it's the way to ensure that things get done, but not sure that mandatory reporting is the way to go. Generally I have found that within a volunteer organization the people who are going to do the work are going to go and get it done, occasionally they need some motivation. Periodic meetings are great from that, but I'd say that probably less than 10% of Ambassadors attend their regional meetings, and reporting would likely have even less effect.
On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 9:35 AM, susmit shannigrahi thinklinux.ssh@gmail.com wrote:
To what end?? Are we going to kick out people who aren't performing up to some predefined amount of work?? I find it awfully difficult to justify adding yet more overhead to people who are already working (and most likely quite busy)
Suppose, someone is not any more interested contributing, neither they plan to do it again in future.
What we currently do is to keep their junk pages in the wiki. People coming for help visits them, mails for help and get no reply.
Should not we ping our ambassadors periodically and ensure they are still contributing or atleast interested in contributing? If someone is contributing, fine. If someone is not available for sometime, let him/her reply back that he/she will be unavailable for a specific period of time.
This is exactly right. Here is an example of someone still listed as an ambassador but who claims to be a "former" ambassador on his wiki page linked from the ambassadors list.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BobJensen
I would assume he would be perfectly happy to be removed from the ambassador list.
There are many examples of others who don't even provide the courtesy of saying they are no longer involved but rather just don't give any reply to attempts to contact them and give no other indication of their availability on the wiki.
Should not we ping our ambassadors periodically and ensure they are still contributing or atleast interested in contributing? If someone is contributing, fine. If someone is not available for sometime, let him/her reply back that he/she will be unavailable for a specific period of time.
Someone may be busy for a certain period of time, but that does not mean he/she can not reply back his/her unavailability. If someone does not reply in a month, it is for sure that he/she is not interested any more.
What we can do is mail all the ambassadors asking if they are still "alive", if someone does not reply in a couple of week, send him/her another ping and even he/she does not reply in a month, remove him/her.
I think I can agree with this more easily. This sort of housecleaning could be done periodically and probably wouldn't need to be done that often. I would think once a year or one a release cycle would help matters a lot.
My suggestion is not to kick out people, for a start, identify those who are dead for Fedora and remove them.
I agree with this, they might well not be dead for Fedora. Bob who I singled out above is not at all dead for Fedora, but isn't interested in the ambassadors program any more as I understand him.
John
(Removing famsco-list from the Cc)
On Tue, 17 Feb 2009, inode0 wrote:
There are many examples of others who don't even provide the courtesy of saying they are no longer involved but rather just don't give any reply to attempts to contact them and give no other indication of their availability on the wiki.
You have touched on the key distinction between Ambassadors and some of the other parts of the Fedora Project, which is that Ambassadors are a high-touch entry point to the community, where *personal interaction* is more common than just getting on a mailing list.
You become a contributor after meeting someone at an event. You form a cluster of contributors who all are in the same region, or who are all in Fedora because another Ambassador recruited them. Look at all the people that Gerold and Joerg have recruited into the project, for example.
=======
The CountryList page shouldn't just be a page. It should be a little web form where people give their location and get back a list of the Ambassadors who are closest to them. Then the potential contributor can talk with that Ambassador, learn more about Fedora, and be put into contact with the right other people who can help them be successful.
Ambassadorship and mentorship are very similar, and Ambassadors are in some ways the "guidance counselors" of Fedora. They need to know enough about everything going on in the Project to speak intelligently and point someone in the right direction.
So yeah, knowing who is active or dormant in the *AMBASSADORS CONTEXT* is an important thing.
The distinction that John (inode) and Susmit make is a good one.
=======
Someone may be busy for a certain period of time, but that does not mean he/she can not reply back his/her unavailability. If someone does not reply in a month, it is for sure that he/she is not interested any more.
What we can do is mail all the ambassadors asking if they are still "alive", if someone does not reply in a couple of week, send him/her another ping and even he/she does not reply in a month, remove him/her.
I think I can agree with this more easily. This sort of housecleaning could be done periodically and probably wouldn't need to be done that often. I would think once a year or one a release cycle would help matters a lot.
I think this is one useful action item, good for someone who enjoys policy and process.
I think that making the CountryList page more interactive is another, and that is good for someone who wants to work with the Fedora Account System, or who wants to bribe one of the Websites/Infrastructure/FAS guys to help them out.
--Max
The CountryList page shouldn't just be a page. It should be a little web form where people give their location and get back a list of the Ambassadors who are closest to them. Then the potential contributor can talk with that Ambassador, learn more about Fedora, and be put into contact with the right other people who can help them be successful.
[snip]
I think that making the CountryList page more interactive is another, and that is good for someone who wants to work with the Fedora Account System, or who wants to bribe one of the Websites/Infrastructure/FAS guys to help them out.
Couldn't it be a nice interactive map showing where our contributors are ?
Like say, what I'm trying to build here: http://fedorahosted.org/shomyu
----------
Mathieu Bridon (bochecha)
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin
On Tue, 17 Feb 2009, Mathieu Bridon (bochecha) wrote:
Couldn't it be a nice interactive map showing where our contributors are ?
Like say, what I'm trying to build here: http://fedorahosted.org/shomyu
Yes, yes it could! Good work! Is there anyone else helping you? Don't you eventually need to get data out of the FAS for this to really work?
--Max
On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Max Spevack mspevack@redhat.com wrote:
On Tue, 17 Feb 2009, Mathieu Bridon (bochecha) wrote:
Couldn't it be a nice interactive map showing where our contributors are ?
Like say, what I'm trying to build here: http://fedorahosted.org/shomyu
Yes, yes it could! Good work! Is there anyone else helping you? Don't you eventually need to get data out of the FAS for this to really work?
Nope, I'm alone ATM (but would accept any help as I have very few time to hack on it, see the frequency of commits to the git repository :( )
For the FAS stuff, well, right now I'm trying to have shomyu actually work properly :)
Once it is suitable, if we want to use it the Fedora Infrastructure, then yes, it'll need to use the FAS bindings (guess why I developed it in python ? ;)
In the future, I'd love to see it integrated in our MyFedora project (for contributors to locate themselves), as well as in a public page for (people to consult).
But once again, it is in an early development stage, and help is very welcome :)
----------
Mathieu Bridon (bochecha)
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin
Am Dienstag 17 Februar 2009 18:49:40 schrieb Mathieu Bridon (bochecha):
Couldn't it be a nice interactive map showing where our contributors are ?
Like say, what I'm trying to build here: http://fedorahosted.org/shomyu
Rahul started a Frappr Map years ago - did not know if this is still maintained?
2009/2/17 Joerg Simon jsimon@fedoraproject.org:
Am Dienstag 17 Februar 2009 18:49:40 schrieb Mathieu Bridon (bochecha):
Couldn't it be a nice interactive map showing where our contributors are ?
Like say, what I'm trying to build here: http://fedorahosted.org/shomyu
Rahul started a Frappr Map years ago - did not know if this is still maintained?
Frappr is: 1. a non free (as in free speech) service 2. a service where _your_ data are not stored in _your_ infrastructure (guess how they can provide for free as in free beer ?) 3. using a non-free technology, flash (and it doesn't even work with the free flash players available in fedora)
Can we really even think about using it for promoting and developing free software ?
----------
Mathieu Bridon (bochecha)
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin
Am Mittwoch 18 Februar 2009 09:01:05 schrieb Mathieu Bridon (bochecha):
Rahul started a Frappr Map years ago - did not know if this is still maintained?
Frappr is:
- a non free (as in free speech) service
- a service where _your_ data are not stored in _your_ infrastructure
(guess how they can provide for free as in free beer ?) 3. using a non-free technology, flash (and it doesn't even work with the free flash players available in fedora)
Can we really even think about using it for promoting and developing free software ?
maybe that's the reason why it is dead ;)
cu Joerg
On Tue, 17 Feb 2009, Max Spevack wrote:
I think this is one useful action item, good for someone who enjoys policy and process.
I don't mean to make it sound like that is decided -- I was just offering my opinion.
I think that making the CountryList page more interactive is another, and that is good for someone who wants to work with the Fedora Account System, or who wants to bribe one of the Websites/Infrastructure/FAS guys to help them out.
This, I think we should definitely do. And if this existed, it would make it crucial that the results returned are for people who *want* to get emails from potential newbies.
===
The risk of alienating someone only exists if a person is "removed" from their role as an Ambassador without being asked first.
If a person is told "hey, you're an Ambassador, so if $FOO or $BAR happens, will you be eager to deal with it?" and the answer is "no" then it makes sense to say "well, then let's take you off the list of people who might be asked to do $FOO or $BAR until you want to be added back on to it."
--Max
ambassadors@lists.fedoraproject.org
-
inode0 -
Joerg Simon -
Mathieu Bridon -
Max Spevack -
susmit shannigrahi