Hi All, Back from some vacation, I'd a bunch of mail to read here...
Rob, are you paid to sabotage the move of the forums? Sorry but I was very reluctant to engage here because of all the negative message you try to insinuate about the Volunteers of the forums and how they handle the forums. Like we were some dark power... forget about Dan Brown for a moment please. You've indeed been contacted some months ago by an admin of the forum, who presented you the forum and invited you to register and discuss with all the Volunteers (which you never done). There has been some small talks and your tone was at this time very fair and constructive. You even proposed that the moderators and admins could be made committers [automatically is my reading between the lines]. Then mail discussion ended waiting for things to start officially. And then Terry proceeded with the big work. But your tone on the mailing list was completely different afterward, very difficult to believe after the good impression you had made. You're really good at politics, I've to admit. But there are some open minds here (thanks especially to Christian and Dennis) so well, all is not lost perhaps. We are a group of users who believes in OOo. We like to help other users through forums (some like ML, we prefer forum, that's life). The question of the forum in the Oracle donation was not clear so we HAD to approach ASF to check what would be the future. As you (Rob) were the most "visible" on the web, you've been approached. All Volunteers are have not applied to the committer role because you never engaged with us directly on the forum. Most of the Volunteers don't care about how ASF works. They like to help other users and they just do that. The forum has been created because of the lack of administration of the initial forum (oooforum which is still a great place for code snippets). Nobody but the owner had any power to improve the forum (spam is still a plague over there it seems) and the owner is nowhere to be found. The forum has been settled by users and has given users the power to improve it through the Volunteer status (a kind of meritocracy if you want). It's amazing how you ask us to trust you but you can't trust a group of users just wanting to help... But you're 1 vote, that's all. I hope the list will get the picture. As for your proposal, here are my votes below, in your mail. If you want another committer, then take this mail as a request to be one. [Edit] Sent from the registered mail address. I would add: please remember that you're dealing with a mass end-user oriented project! Not something you were used to handle I think. The forums as long as the OOo ML are not sub-parts of the community, they are the community. And most of the users don't care about the governance of the project as long as the product is fine for them. Hagar OOo User Community EN co-admin & moderator NB: previously known as Hagar de l'Est Le dim. 04 sept. 2011 16:36:27 CEST, Rob Weir <[email protected]> a écrit :
1) The Terms of Use and other policy documents used by the Forum should be reviewed and approved by the PPMC, and for the former, also by Apache legal.
+1
2) We need to develop a privacy policy for the Forums, also to be reviewed by the PPMC and Apache legal
-1. Doesn't it come from the private forum issue? There is no issue. You've your private list, we have a private section. You want access to it? No problem. We handle governance issue in private? OK, we can change that. It was so just to avoid all the lengthy discussions with users who just take the forum as a customer service and can't help complaining.
3) Changes to Forum policies, TOU and privacy policy would require a proposal on ooo-dev, and discussion and consensus reached there. It is possible that preliminary public discussions could occur in other places first, such as on the Forums themselves. But the project's official discussions and decisions are made on ooo-dev. In other words, if it didn't happen on the project's main list (ooo-dev), it didn't happen.
+1.
4) We need the Forum website to conform to Apache branding requirements, including the podling-specific requirements
+1.
==Approval of Forum roles== My understanding is that forums have essentially three roles: a) Users b) Moderators, who delete, edit and move all posts, ban users, etc. c) Admins who can also create new forums and assign moderator rights 5) Users require no special treatment. They are like subscribers to a users list.
+1.
6) Being listed as an "admin" or "moderator" on a public-facing Apache website suggests endorsement by the project, and aside from any enhanced Forum capabilities enhances your ability to keep order on the Forums. In other words, it is the star that makes the sheriff, not the gun. But this endorsement, to be meaningful, should be made authentic. So Admins and Moderators should be approved by the PPMC. This kind of routine approval is given all the time for those who want to be list moderators. I see no reason why we cannot, initially at least, simply receive a list of current volunteers to ooo-private and approve them all.
-1. Same as Zoltan. Except if admins and moderators are PPMC themselves. They are the ones who monitor the forum, know the users by reading their posts and how they react.
7) Future grants of admin/moderator rights would require a proposal to ooo-dev seeking lazy consensus. Such a proposal could originate from a forum volunteer or could originate from anyone on ooo-dev. This is no different than someone asking to be a moderator for a mailing list.
-1. Same as above.
8) Any project committer, on request, will be made a forum admin or moderator. This is how it works with every other project resource -- mailing lists, source code, website, etc. Committers have rights to pretty much everything on the project. We trust our committers. We don't segregate the project into exclusive zones of ownership.
+1.
==Transparency== 9) We need all private forum discussions to be echoed to a log or mailing list where PPMC and Apache Members can view them. One way of doing this is to echo posts to ooo-private. Another way is to periodically commit logs to the PPMC's private directory. There may be other ways as well.
+1. There are already examples and solutions discussed in the forum (had you registered...)
10) The use of private forums must be used for only discussions of specific moderation cases. It must not be used for discussion of routine board operations.
+1. What if users complain about how the governance is made? Ask them to be a committer? As it would request him to do something, it's like to say sorry, you can see but you can't touch. Not sure it's worth showing the cake then. But well, let's try it if you want.
11) One admin or moderator from each of the 10 language-specific boards should be signed up on the ooo-dev list and ooo-users list. This could also be done by requiring that Forum Admins also be Committers, but that is not something we are starting with, though it could be an eventual goal.
+1.
12) We should also encourage existing committers to participate directly in answering questions on the support forum. It is valuable to see how ordinary users use the product and the difficulties they encounter. It puts our coding decisions in perspective. This is a two-way street. It is not just to encourage support volunteers to be more aware of other parts of the project, but also to make other parts of the project more involved with support, or at least more aware. We're all on the same project. Our actions and decisions impact each other.
+1. Will monitor this with great pleasure.
13) The PPMC should give serious consideration to forum admins/moderators who help with the above tasks, for approval as Committers and PPMC members. It is important that the PPMC always be looking out for merit that should be recognized. It does not matter that the forum volunteers did not previously participate in overall discussions of the project's direction. That was then, this is now. We will all benefit from having support volunteers as part of the decision making process, including the important decision of approving a release.
Politics.
