Happy New Year Everyone!
January 1, 2010
For the first message of the new year, I wanted to take a moment to
reflect on the great 5.5 years we have been here and say thanks for
everyone for making SocalLinux.org such a great community. I feel that
we have a great and diverse group and I really appreciate everyone that
participates and the contributions of each and every person in our group.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to share some thoughts I have had
about the design of the group.
Since we started this group (originally called 909linux.org), we have
tried to focus as much as possible on creating and maintaining an
environment that is open, allows anyone to contribute and speak their
opinion, but along with that comes the need to do things such as control
the tone of the discussion at times so that members of the group are not
offended by any particular individual. It is a fine balancing act to
encourage everyone to speak their mind – but still ask everyone to be
respectful of others. I want to keep that approach in the future.
(Given the low number of conflicts we have, I think we have been
successful in this.)
When we started, we decided not to have a formalized structure, (where
members at the time did not want to have cycles of elections and people
being nominated as a president, etc.) so we have had a completely
informal and unstructured group this entire time. Since I am the
[genius/sucker: pick one] who registered the domain and maintains the
computing infrastructure for the mailing list (and our 1 web page!) I
want to bring this up and explain some of my thoughts, and also I think
it would be useful for me to get feedback about this organization.
While I don't mind being in the position of being the domain owner, I
want to make sure that the workings of the group are actually the
responsibility of the group.
I am going to be looking for a way that there is a “moderator group” (or
some title) that we have a number of people that are aware of and
publicly making decisions that are for the benefit of the group. While
I have never actually unsubscribed or banned any person from
participating (mailing list, irc channel, or in person), I have had to
enable some brief periods of moderation to the mailing list while
personal issues were resolved. I feel that this and other duties should
be the responsibility of a group of people, and that this group should
somehow be enabled or voted on by the members.
To start with, just having multiple people be the moderators of the
mailing list, and also having a way for the group members to maintain
the web site (a task which I completely FAIL at doing in case you have
noticed). This will go a long ways to achieving the goal of not having
myself be singularly responsible for this and ensure that things are
done for the benefit of everyone. These things are on my agenda for the
coming months and I will be making more announcements about this soon.
I am going to be enlisting everyone's feedback and working to establish
the following:
- an official charter which details the group structure
- a group of moderators
- an additional administrator to help me maintain the site (likely to
be easier to do once we install a proper web management system of some sort)
For now, I am asking everyone to take a moment and read what I have
proposed for a Charter.
The proposed charter is located at http://socallinux.org/charter
This will be something which is only a 'read and understand' option for
now. If conditions demand, then in the future we can make this be
something which has to be agreed upon before approval of signing-up to
the mailing list or other activities.
While I have started this Charter, I did so by following the example set
by many other successful Linux User Groups. Ultimately, I expect the
members of this group to add to this list with their own ideas because
this isn't just something I manage alone. We all need to share the
responsibility of keeping things running smoothly, so I am asking this
conversation in an open forum like this.
Please reply to this thread with comments and suggested additions. I
know the charter as it is currently written needs some help, but I need
your help in keeping the group self-moderated and running smoothly so I
strongly believe this is something we need to do. Specifically seeking
comments on Articles 6, 7, & 8, as I have not yet developed a policy on
how moderators and administrators are selected and how the voting
process might work.
Thanks again for making SocalLinux.org a great community, and thanks in
advance for taking the time to read this and the charter document idea
I've posted.
Looking forward to 2010!
Regards,
David
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