Hi all, I am not a dev but a Gentoo-addicted user that would be interested in getting involved. So I have no more situation awareness than the website and this ML brought to me. But I have 2 cents I want to share peacefully.
First, I am wondering about the exact role of what is known to be: "The elected Gentoo Council decides on global issues and policies that affect multiple projects in Gentoo. It also serves as an appeal court for disciplinary decisions." Many questions come up. How much powerful it is ? Why the council get both a decisional role and a proctor one ? Why do the community of dev needs such a council ? Well, even if I don't have the answers, what I know is there is a need to explain, describe, and provide clear information about this to the whole world. Neither http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/index.xml nor http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0039.html provides enough information. Why it is a need ? Because lots of people want to know where they are. To keep on lack of communication, I would like to share one or two suggestions. The glep page http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0039.html lists some issues about the TLPs... and I come to that point: I don't know how the dev teams manage their projects, deal with planning, call for new blood and so on... since I just can have an external view, but it is possible to know why there is no public information about Gentoo and its packages/projects/needs/delays/status-of-whatever-that-needs-a-status ? Right, there is an Online Package Database.... good. But definitely insufficient. Can't we have a kind of https://savannah.gnu.org/ for Gentoo ? A web application providing information like status of packages, needs of dev, planned delivery dates, delays, links to bugs, plus info on projects, stand-alone tasks, with related decisions of the council and so on. What for ? just to have a better view of Gentoo as a whole. The users could better know what is going on, how previous issues turned out and many more info. The dev too, plus maybe extra info that are not public. Because when I see email on this ML like "package johndoe requires new dev", I think wtf this request is not shared on a public location. When I also read the meeting logs of the council, I am wondering about the fact that you need to be member of the council to have a clear global view of the situation. But I can't see why normal user and dev could not have it. So, what's about the council ? A band of proctors, moderating the ML ? Or a powerful and decisional group that leads Gentoo to the directions these 7 devs choose, due to the global overview that only them have ? Why not providing technical solutions to allow the whole dev community to make choices, open new projects, closing others, and providing these info to the users ? What could be the council in such a situation ? I think we need such a council to handle TLPs for example. The council could vote a list of TLPs, and take special care of them, putting high priority (e.g. to make sure that the 2007.0 release project doest not lack devs ), providing official news, and so on. Maybe a so big community of devs needs a secretary, some entity that embodies the executive power, like in most of the democratic regimes. But all the devs could be free to start project, join a dev team or an existing project the way they want... as long as they respect the CoC. For the TLPs, a minimum activity can be required, and the dev responsible for the package/project can take decision to bring solutions together, but not the proctors in their own since the project manager know the devs working in his team and all the related issues. It sounds sensible, isn't it? But I do not understand why 7 devs -even elected by the others- could make decisions on other projects and are described as the group in charge of the 'global issues and policies'. Gal' 2007/6/6, Wulf C. Krueger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
On Wednesday, June 6, 2007 05:29:47 PM Grant Goodyear wrote: [Proctor system] > a way to fix the current system, or should it be chucked entirely, as > has been suggested? Personally, I think we simply don't need the proctors. I'm sure they have the best intentions but I've never seen any clear guidelines for them. They use their best judgement what to handle and what not to but due to language barriers, cultural differences etc. it's difficult to judge. Furthermore, where do we need them? The Forums are moderated by an, IMHO, excellent team. IRC is more or less self-moderated. That basically leaves the mailinglists and among those, the only one that *might* arguably need supervision could be -dev. Do we really need moderation on the list? Or could we just literally moderate ourselves instead? Could we try and succeed to be just ignore some flames instead of adding oil to the fire? And even if we can't: We still have DevRel we can complain to. Yes, DevRel is for inter-developer conflicts but let's look back in the archives a bit - do we really need more than that? Most conflicts arise between active developers and, well, one active retired-dev. Do we really need an entire team for dealing with one former dev in case he goes too far? Or could we just agree to ignore him if he again behaves inappropriately (or what some of us *feel* might be inappropriate)? When I first read the CoC I had just read about the entire Ciaran-incident on the respective bugs, Forums, mailinglists, blogs and many other sources. CoC, while not bad in itself, seemed (and still seems) to me like a "Lex Ciaran" - a document with that what I had just read clearly in mind and targetted at preventing it. While preventing it is a good goal in itself, writing a CoC based on an actual case which has only recently occurred, usually leads to this result and damages the whatever good intentions were involved because other people will see the similarities as well. More than that, it puts a strain on those who are entrusted with enforcing the CoC because they will try, with the best motives, to prevent anything like that happening again. And they will do it, as the proctors stated themselves, pro-actively. The problem is, though: In an asynchronous communications medium, you simply cannot pro-actively do anything without bordering on what some like to call censorship. You can only *re*act in such a situation. Even *trying* to act pro-actively will lead to unrest as we've only very recently seen it. If we accept my hypothesis of asynchronous communication and the implications I described, we come to the conclusion that reaction is the most likely way not to open Pandora's Box. That leads back to DevRel. We have them to deal reactively with conflicts after a complaint by either party involved. I stated, that on the mailinglists, we mainly see inter-developer conflicts and those can be handled by DevRel. A small improvement to DevRel might be achieved, at least from what I've seen by reading lots and lots of DevRel bugs, by taking action on unfounded complaints, too. I'm speaking of trivial complaints, of course. If, after both sides were investigated properly, the complaining party is found to be exaggerating or too easily offended, disciplinary action should be taken against it. Of course, this should be done light-handedly but it should give the complaining party some time to learn from their mistake. Maybe this is what's already intended - it's just that I haven't found any examples. :) I apologise for the long mail but I wanted to state clearly and without too much emotions why I think we don't need the proctors and why we should thank them for attempting to bring some order to the chaos and give up on the concept as a whole. Best regards, Wulf
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