I agree with the very simplest definition, and then you're a Mozillian, I don't think it is useful to have levels of Mozillian because there are reasons why some people *Can't* be more active than others and we shouldn't be excluding them because of that.
I think we all agree that you have to believe in at least part of the mission, take action to forward that mission and you have to choose to identify as a Mozillian. I don't think being a user counts as taking action, though being a user who helps others become users would count. We may need to identify other roles, like that group who can be trusted with "internal" communications, but I don't think this should be a level *of* Mozillian, but rather a level *within* Mozillians. Using the citizenship analogy, members of government aren't any more or less citizens of the country. We don't call them government citizens or elite citizens (we usually call them much worse ;) ) even though they do more to forward the progress of the country than a regular average civilian, and have more power to do so. On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 8:52 AM, Benjamin Smedberg <[email protected]>wrote: > On 11/27/2013 5:33 AM, Gervase Markham wrote: > >> On 21/11/13 18:02, [email protected] wrote: >> >>> The conversation has surfaced a need to be more inclusive with how >>> we're using 'Mozillian' to align with our goal of bringing in many >>> more community members. >>> >> I'm sure you are not suggesting simply redefining "Mozillian" so we can >> more quickly get to the arbitrary target of 1 million. So you must be >> arguing that widening the definition in itself means that people are >> more likely to get involved, that is, that people want the label >> "Mozillian" and are more likely to take a first step of involvement to >> get it. >> > I frankly think this whole discussion is a bad idea. But so is saying that > our goal is to have a million mozillians, without being more clear about > why we want a million mozillians and what we want these people to do. > > The mostly likely effects of defining what a Mozillian is are either 1) to > exclude people who don't fit the definition, or 2) to start including > people who didn't consider themself a Mozillian before, just by saying > "look you're now a mozillian". Neither of these seems to be a desirable > outcome. > > I'm also worried that we're having this discussion at the same time as > we're having discussions about mozilla.org email addresses and the > mozillians.org website and vouching. The three discussions are all > getting mixed up together in ways that are very troubling to me. > > For example, I am convinced that everyone who works on Mozilla projects, > whether or not they share our mission at all, should be in the project > phonebook (mozillians.org). We have plenty of partner employees who are > critical pieces of engineering and bringing Mozilla products to market who > may not self-identify as "a Mozillian" but are still part of our community. > We should make sure that we don't define away this sort of interaction. > > At the same time, saying to people "By the way, you didn't know it, but > you're actually a Mozillian" doesn't sound useful either. People get to be > part of a community by doing things with other people and gradually > identifying more and more with the group. Definitions aren't going to > actually change how people identify, but an over-broad definition seems > mainly like a trick to claim people who don't want to be claimed. > > About the goal: we're approaching it the wrong way. It seems like we're > saying we want a million people, so we need to define how we measure that > goal, and go get some people and find work for them. This is dangerously > backwards. If we want a million people, it's because we already know that > we've got a million people's worth of work to do. It's clear that we're > never going to get anywhere close to a million people writing code for all > of our current projects and products put together: Brook's law makes that > basically impossible, even if we had a million able volunteers. So we need > to start out deciding why we think we need a million Mozillians, what > projects could actually use more help and what kind of help they need, and > only then set the measurable goals for each project. Maybe that means > radically growing the webmaker movement, which can probably scale to that > size quite well. Maybe that means we need more projects, or we need to > redesign the participation opportunities in existing projects. But we > absolutely be starting out with by figuring out what we're trying to > accomplish, how many people we need to accomplish each thing, and then > figuring out whether that means 10 thousand mozillians or 10 million. > > I propose that we stop trying to define Mozillian, and return to the > project defining contribution pathways and commitment/responsibility > "levels" for each part of the project. > > --BDS > > > _______________________________________________ > governance mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance > _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
