Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Telesto]

Inspiring questions even when not running for they MC.  I personally 
still struggling  with concept of being a Member.
Except for they @libreoffice.org e-mail and a vote. Similar with the 
task of MC. Formally keeping the BoD in line.
They in theory can impeachment on or more board members. It this more 
checks and balances system.

It's not intended to be needed ever.

So they role is more in another area. Giving advise, feedback. Keeping 
in touch with members.










Op 4-9-2020 om 13:17 schreef Michael Meeks:

Hi Andreas,

On 03/09/2020 19:59, Andreas Mantke wrote:

b) TDF currently has 221 members and none of them asked any question to
the candidates!

That's something to think long and hard about. What does this mean to
the democratic culture of the foundation. It was created to get the
members / contributors a voice and a say.

Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions I came up with.
Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few minutes than
can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things I'd love to know
from each candidate:

What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.

* many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
   Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
   number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
   translation, documentation etc.

+ how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?

+ Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
  more marginal contributions for membership cf.
  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing

+ what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?

* If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
   you encouraged to apply for membership ?

* How many applications have you voted against ?

* Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
   between membership and non-membership that encourages
   a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
   achieve full membership ?

* When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
   code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
   decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
   MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
   should other MC members validate that ?

* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
   be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?

* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
+ I'm interested in where we have the situation that
  being too popular can stop you being able to
  engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
  Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
  in the last Board election.

Thanks for any answers =)

Michael.




--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Cor Nouws]

Hi Italo,

Italo Vignoli wrote on 10/09/2020 00:58:
> On 9/9/20 11:29 PM, Cor Nouws wrote:
> 
>> This is a very interesting point. 4k people in Weblate, so that would be
>> 350 persons or so on average for every language that LibreOffice supports?
> 
> Although I have a degree in humanities, I am still capable of handling
> basic operations: 4000 divided by 140 active language projects gives as
> a result 28.6, quite a smaller figure. Even if we consider only the 119
> available languages, the figure is 33.6.

Sure - stupid mistake of me. Thanks for helping me out here ;)
Still the number of people that seems to be involved is interesting.
Also because the policy is: focusing on getting translators to apply for
membership.

>>> I think that a solution to this issue is to reach out to native language
>>> communities, especially outside Europe, where the relationship with the
>>> core group is less strong.
> 
>> I think we have to recognize that the number of 4k people there is very
>> high. Even if say 10% would contribute (...) it is unrealistic to expect
>> that their membership will help with a balanced, strong governance of
>> the foundation.
> 
> According to the statutes, if they contribute they can become TDF
> members. Statutes do not mention at all the way their membership can
> help a balanced and strong governance of the foundation. And in any
> case, how each TDF member helps a balanced and strong governance falls
> under the personal judgement, and here each one may have a completely
> different point of view.

For me there is no (single) good way, nor a less good way, to help
LibreOffice. Also more trivial, non regular contributions are helping
LibreOffice.

>> Yet, having them on our side showing support, spreading the word, is
>> important. And the same applies in the area of e.g. marketing and
>> design. We do want to value the support also from people that help on a
>> booth or do a local presentation 2, 3 times a year and have them engaged.
>> Is it necessary to try to make them all member? Growing membership is
>> not a goal of the community.
> 
> My opinion is completely different here, and I think there are several
> other people who share my point of view. Actually, several people asked
> about ideas to grow the membership by involving more contributors.

I fully agree here. During the time I served in the MC, I've been doing
a lot to reach out to people that are involved somehow. Either direct,
or thinking about opportunities with the other MC members.
It is not 'just more members', rather more contributors, doing
non-trivial work regularly, that counts.

>> More important is that the board of
>> trustees is composed in a way, that this supports that people who
>> are doing the hard and essential work of development will also be
>> leading their own work. We cannot afford that the meritocracy
>> disappears; this is undesired.
> 
> Sorry, but I completely disagree here. Having a board of trustees based
> only on developers would be as bad as having a board of trustees without
> developers, and would kill meritocracy in both cases.

It is important to get everyone involved in one way or another; I think
I didn't want to suggest to have a developer-only centered membership :)
Also the work on the marketing-plan indicate we have a challenge in
finding the right balance, keeping the community healthy, or.. How do
you see that?

Thanks,
Cor

-- 
Cor Nouws, member Board of Directors
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint

GPD key ID: 0xB13480A6 - 591A 30A7 36A0 CE3C 3D28  A038 E49D 7365 B134 80A6
mobile  : +31 (0)6 25 20 7001
skype   : cornouws
blog: cor4office-nl.blogspot.com
jabber  : cor4off...@jabber.org


-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Florian Effenberger]

Hi,

Italo Vignoli wrote:


Yet, having them on our side showing support, spreading the word, is
important. And the same applies in the area of e.g. marketing and
design. We do want to value the support also from people that help on a
booth or do a local presentation 2, 3 times a year and have them engaged.
Is it necessary to try to make them all member? Growing membership is
not a goal of the community.


My opinion is completely different here, and I think there are several
other people who share my point of view. Actually, several people asked
about ideas to grow the membership by involving more contributors.


Someone who supports TDF's mission on a repeated basis, potentially even 
sacrificing their vacation or weekend to be present at a booth, talking 
about the things we do and ideals we share, at several occasions per 
year, fulfills quite some conditions for being a TDF member indeed.



More important is that the board of
trustees is composed in a way, that this supports that people who
are doing the hard and essential work of development will also be
leading their own work. We cannot afford that the meritocracy
disappears; this is undesired.


Sorry, but I completely disagree here. Having a board of trustees based
only on developers would be as bad as having a board of trustees without
developers, and would kill meritocracy in both cases.


The key message is that we all need each other. Without developers, 
there will be no software that can be tested by QA. Without QA, there 
will be no stable software available on our download servers. Without 
infra, there will be no download servers. Without marketing, nobody 
knows about our software available for download. Without administration, 
nobody pays for the servers where people can do all these things.


All contributors, paid or volunteers, have their share in what TDF does 
- no one is more or less important than others.


Florian

--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Marina Latini]

On 04.09.2020 13:17, Michael Meeks wrote:

Hello Michael, hello all,



Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions I came up with.
Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few minutes than
can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things I'd love to 
know

from each candidate:



let me try to share my point of view and feel free to ask more if my 
answers are not clear enough! :)



What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.


well, this one was easy!
We are using this public list for discussing with MC and/or BoD 
candidates even if the list name could sound "wrong" for discussing with 
MC candidates given that it's named "board-discuss" :)




* many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
  Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
  number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
  translation, documentation etc.



Let me try to think positive, I agree, the numbers are not huge but at 
least they were been quite stable (cf. we are not loosing too many 
members if compared over the years) during our 10 years lifetime.


Jokes apart, I agree, a really healthy project should increase the 
number of members deeply involved in the Foundation daily life.



+ how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?


This is definitely not an easy question, otherwise all the former and 
current MC

members would not have had the same problem to manage and solve. ;)

We could try to do some experiments thinking unconventional for finding 
where our new potential members are, evaluate what and where they could 
contribute and support them for starting to actively contribute to the 
Project.


In any case, before starting new projects, it's also important to 
finalise the MC dashboard for having good data that could make the MC in 
the position to better understand where our members are and where we 
could find more of them.


A data driven activity could be the first step from my point of view.
To make a (really simplified) comparison with the development of a 
product, before starting to implement the product's features it's 
required to analyse what the market is asking for, how and where the 
competitors are positioning themselves, draw a roadmap and after that 
start to develop the features following a business plan.


For the membership I think the flow could be similar. With the dashboard 
we should be able to understand better who are the actual contributors 
and in which sectors we are lacking of.
We should understand better why the existing contributors decided to 
invest their time in our Project, in which areas and try to make more 
attractive the existing contribution areas.


We should also ask to the existing contributors that are not members why 
they are not applying for a membership.


Something that I found really helpful at SUSE was the retrospective 
recently done by the openSUSE release team after the release of openSUSE 
Leap 15.2.
The retrospective was done opening a survey and asking to members, 
users, general public willing to spend time answering to the questions a 
set of questions about the new Leap 15.2, the experience while migrating 
from old versions, fresh installations etc.
The answers were collected, aggregated per topic and discussed in 
several sessions (3 or 4 in total), all public, and for each set of 
questions we collected what went well and wrong and we identified also a 
set of action items per each topic.
In some cases the action item was to say thanks to a particular valuable 
contributor or to a team achieving something really good.
In some cases the feedback were negative and we highlighted a way to 
improve the process for avoiding issues for the next Leap 15.3 release.


We should not be worried to say thanks a bit more often and, at the same 
time, accept criticisms and try to improve. I hope that involving a bit 
more the members in the general daily life of the Project could also 
make the membership more attractive than now.


Well, this is just an idea but the "general plan" should be shaped by 
the full MC and driven by the full group, not just by few individuals.




+ Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
  more marginal contributions for membership cf.
  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing



I wrote about "lowering the barriers" in my candidacy statement but what 
I meant was not to give the membership to everyone randomly submitting 
the application because they started one time LibreOffice on their PC. 
;)



+ what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?



I suppose you already got an answer to this but feel free to articulate 
and ask more if my answer doesn't satisfy you. :)



* If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
  you encouraged to apply for membership ?



Well, every TDF member should also advocate and share why someone should 

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[GPS di Gabriele Ponzo]

Il giorno ven 4 set 2020 alle ore 13:18 Michael Meeks <
michael.me...@collabora.com> ha scritto:

> * many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
>   Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
>   number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
>   translation, documentation etc.
>
> + how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?
>

As many have already pointed out, surely it would worth it to look for
current contributors not yet members and asking them to join.
Then it's really important to work with universities, colleges but also
with (technical?) high schools, from my POV, since I believe there is more
"space" there in terms of collaboration. And even if students could be too
young to join TDF they could still join our community and in the meanwhile
gain the experience and the commitment to become members later on.

A good point is indeed to achieve some (more) benefit in being a member,
because I've been asked too what would have been the pro, even after having
explained the current ones.

>
> + Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
>   more marginal contributions for membership cf.
>
> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing
>
> The statute is really clear on this, and we stick to it.
My POV is that its threshold is appropriate and doesn't need any tuning.

+ what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?
>

The goal is to have a proper representation of all the local communities
involved in the project.

>
> * If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
>   you encouraged to apply for membership ?
>

Some dozen telematically, but hundreds in person at every event, as I chase
people to explain the project and invite them to join :)
(I finished 500 flyers in a morning at FOSDEM, speaking over every single
one given).

>
> * How many applications have you voted against ?
>
Shouldn't be too hard to find it on Gerrit, but I don't see the relevance
of such metrics.
Every time the statute's requirements are not met, rejections apply, unless
very few particular cases we track carefully.

>
> * Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
>   between membership and non-membership that encourages
>   a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
>   achieve full membership ?
>

Let's say that I like them but I'm not an expert, so I'm curious to see if
they'll give the expected results.

>
> * When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
>   code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
>   decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
>   MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
>   should other MC members validate that ?
>

As my colleagues already wrote, in such cases we have to reach 'em out
and/or trust some witness.
At the end a certain grade of trust is always required, since even metrics
aren't foolproof.

>
> * To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
>   be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?
>

As written by others, GDPR is involved and reasonably since often personal
motivations are provided by members.
Discussions and decisions about the MC itself or its activity in general
with regards to the Foundation can be shared publicly.

>
> * How do you believe we can improve the existing election
>   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
> + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
>   being too popular can stop you being able to
>   engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
>   Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
>   in the last Board election.
>

I do agree that TDF should try to better regulate such cases by means of
bylaws.

>
> Thanks for any answers =)
>

Thank you for asking.
---
Gabriele Ponzo

>
> Michael.
>
> --
> michael.me...@collabora.com <><, GM Collabora Productivity
> Hangout: mejme...@gmail.com, Skype: mmeeks
> (M) +44 7795 666 147 - timezone usually UK / Europe
>
> --
> To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
> Problems?
> https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
> Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
> List archive:
> https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
> Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
>
>

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Italo Vignoli]

On 9/9/20 11:29 PM, Cor Nouws wrote:

> This is a very interesting point. 4k people in Weblate, so that would be
> 350 persons or so on average for every language that LibreOffice supports?

Although I have a degree in humanities, I am still capable of handling
basic operations: 4000 divided by 140 active language projects gives as
a result 28.6, quite a smaller figure. Even if we consider only the 119
available languages, the figure is 33.6.

>> I think that a solution to this issue is to reach out to native language
>> communities, especially outside Europe, where the relationship with the
>> core group is less strong.

> I think we have to recognize that the number of 4k people there is very
> high. Even if say 10% would contribute (...) it is unrealistic to expect
> that their membership will help with a balanced, strong governance of
> the foundation.

According to the statutes, if they contribute they can become TDF
members. Statutes do not mention at all the way their membership can
help a balanced and strong governance of the foundation. And in any
case, how each TDF member helps a balanced and strong governance falls
under the personal judgement, and here each one may have a completely
different point of view.

> Yet, having them on our side showing support, spreading the word, is
> important. And the same applies in the area of e.g. marketing and
> design. We do want to value the support also from people that help on a
> booth or do a local presentation 2, 3 times a year and have them engaged.
> Is it necessary to try to make them all member? Growing membership is
> not a goal of the community.

My opinion is completely different here, and I think there are several
other people who share my point of view. Actually, several people asked
about ideas to grow the membership by involving more contributors.

> More important is that the board of
> trustees is composed in a way, that this supports that people who
> are doing the hard and essential work of development will also be
> leading their own work. We cannot afford that the meritocracy
> disappears; this is undesired.

Sorry, but I completely disagree here. Having a board of trustees based
only on developers would be as bad as having a board of trustees without
developers, and would kill meritocracy in both cases.

-- 
Italo Vignoli - LibreOffice Marketing & PR
mobile/signal +39.348.5653829 - email it...@libreoffice.org
hangout/jabber italo.vign...@gmail.com - skype italovignoli
GPG Key ID - 0xAAB8D5C0
DB75 1534 3FD0 EA5F 56B5 FDA6 DE82 934C AAB8 D5C0

-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Cor Nouws]

Hi all,

Italo Vignoli wrote on 04/09/2020 16:44:
> On 9/4/20 4:26 PM, Michael Meeks wrote:
> 
>>  Sorry for that. The essence of the question is simple - if you
>> want to grow the membership there are at least these two approaches:
> 
>>  + encourage more people to contribute more to meet
>>the criteria
>> or
>>  + lower the criteria for membership
> 
> There is a third solution: convince more contributors to apply for
> membership, as many of them do not even know that it is possible to
> become TDF members by contributing to LibreOffice.
> 
> For instance, we have over 4K people registered on weblate, or 20 times
> as many TDF members. 

This is a very interesting point. 4k people in Weblate, so that would be
350 persons or so on average for every language that LibreOffice supports?

> Of course, many of them would not qualify as their
> contribution is marginal, but many would.

We could ask the MC their experience with reaching out, what is marginal
and not.
I know we reached out in the past, and thus attracted more members. And
reading the replies from MC members, that is still the case.
Also I remember that different people, had a different appreciation of
the work the did/do for LibreOffice.

But.. having more members is positive as this reflects support, and
since members are likely to help spreading the word about LibreOffice.
However then there regularly was - and I assume it is similar nowadays -
the situation that people feel they contribute so little, that they are
only weakly connected and membership is not reasonable.
And that makes sense. Because membership also comes with the power, and
thus responsibility, to help setting the goals in steering the community.
In the past I've been stating regularly that it is important that
developers have enough understanding of the needs of the people doing
e.g. QA and l10n.
But the same can happen the other way round. The recent discussion about
the marketing approach, with all related items, in the board and in the
full community, reveals that for many it is not natural to understand
the situation of commercial entities in the community. This comes with
the clear risk that one of the major pillars under LibreOffice's success
- professional developers - is seriously weakened. Details can be read
in the recent discussion.
And I don't want to blame anybody for that. It is only natural that many
people, at larger distance to the core group, have a different
understanding of the situation.

> I think that a solution to this issue is to reach out to native language
> communities, especially outside Europe, where the relationship with the
> core group is less strong.

I think we have to recognize that the number of 4k people there is very
high. Even if say 10% would contribute (...) it is unrealistic to expect
that their membership will help with a balanced, strong governance of
the foundation.
Yet, having them on our side showing support, spreading the word, is
important. And the same applies in the area of e.g. marketing and
design. We do want to value the support also from people that help on a
booth or do a local presentation 2, 3 times a year and have them engaged.
Is it necessary to try to make them all member? Growing membership is
not a goal of the community. More important is that the board of
trustees is composed in a way, that this supports that people who are
doing the hard and essential work of development will also be leading
their own work. We cannot afford that the meritocracy disappears; this
is undesired.

Michael Meeks wrote on 04/09/2020 13:17:
> ...
>> * Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
>>   between membership and non-membership that encourages
>>   a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
>>   achieve full membership ?

Investigating in that direction possibly brings the best of two worlds
together.

Cheers,
Cor
-- 
Cor Nouws, member Board of Directors
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint

GPD key ID: 0xB13480A6 - 591A 30A7 36A0 CE3C 3D28  A038 E49D 7365 B134 80A6
mobile  : +31 (0)6 25 20 7001
skype   : cornouws
blog: cor4office-nl.blogspot.com
jabber  : cor4off...@jabber.org


-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Dennis Roczek]

Hi Telesto,

Am 05.09.2020 um 20:32 schrieb Telesto:
> 
> This would give membership some actual advantage, I think.
You provided really good ideas how to improve the rights of the members.
And to be honest: the system is getting improved, although very slowly.
For example last year we were voting for the location of the next
LibreOffice Conference 2020. In 2017 there was a discussion about the
mascot (sorry, yes again), if only members should be allowed to vote.
What I want to show: there are ongoing thoughts and actions how to
enhance the membership. It is not a club to have yet another plastic
card in your pocket (to get 10% discount).

And yes, the system is far from perfect but it is improving.

And yes, more transparency would be better, but really: see the SIS /
TDC stuff: the board is trying to change. But also understand: we
(neither the board of directors, nor the membership committee) is voted
in to a board as a new full time job. Board members (BoD+MC) do this
next to their normal job (doesn't matter if the job is connected to
LibreOffice at any kind) and private life.

Best regards,

Dennis Roczek



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Florian Effenberger]

Hi,

Dennis Roczek wrote:

Me, too! But GDPR is the atomic argument to stop the discussion here.


apart from that - we already heard that people are reluctant to become 
members, some are shy, thinking their contributons do not qualify.


Knowing their application will be discussed in public, with a potential 
"You don't qualitfy yet, please apply again later", also in public, will 
very likely keep people from applying at all in first place.


Transparency is important, but such a step will likely prevent growing 
our membership base - the exact opposite of what we want.


Florian

--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Dennis Roczek]

Hi Brett,

Am 06.09.2020 um 04:48 schrieb Brett Cornwall:
> On 2020-09-05 18:53, Dennis Roczek wrote:
>> Am 05.09.2020 um 18:07 schrieb Dennis Roczek:
 * To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
   be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?
>>> Most internal discussions are about improving the tools or about
>>> concrete applications. The discussion about applications should NOT be
>>> public. Discussions about how the tools should or could be improved
>>> (e.g. dashboard) can be opened without any problems.
>>
>> I missed to add a reason why the discussion about the application should
>> not be published: see our disaster with the mascot: if we make
>> everything in public the members of the MC might get spammed, pushed,
>> and bullied.
> 
> 
> The mascot incident is a great example of why public involvement
> matters! The lessons learned should not be "make everything more
> closed-door" but "What can we learn from disappointing our
> users/community?" Users were angry and hurt for a reason and brought
> very valid concerns to a very flawed event.
I guess we talking side by side.
Of course, the whole incident would have need more transparency. I was
talking about the bullying and spamming afterwards. To compare this now
to the MC: if the members of the MC vote in public, they can be
influenced by the crowd. Plus we are talking about sensible data: from
names, mail addresses and reasons why we renew (well or not) a
membership. And we have cases were we do need private data which should
not public.

There is contrast also Wikipedia which is public voting about potential
admins. It is called in the English Wikipedia as "Hell Week", because
some guys go back to the earliest edits of somebody searching for
something bad in your 10 years editing carree. It is really not a nice
system. The community raised the bar for new admins to something crazy
in the meantime!

> I have anecdata: A high-profile "rockstar" developer applied to be an
> Arch Linux TU last year [1] and we received colorful remarks from the
> peanut gallery. Contention and disappointment was voiced with our
> questions and handling, and the applicant ultimately withdrew but the
> discourse was not toxic. In fact, I'd say that the comments from the
> general public provoke reflection - even if I do not agree with them.
Luckily for Arch! I do know Wikipedia which is the other way round.

> I lean toward making applications public (GDPR concerns put aside).
Me, too! But GDPR is the atomic argument to stop the discussion here.

> From
> a pragmatic perspective, private list mails can easily be leaked the
> moment contention bubbles up. My Debian outsider perspective sees
> private lists as good for promoting their issue with political drama and
> causes sites like [2] to sprout up. I'm not qualified for much more than
> speculation; I'd love to hear the opinions of the more experienced. I'd
> be curious to know how other communities like Debian or Fedora manage
> applications and whether public/private have been helpful.

I'm happy if we (as a community) can improve the situation as much as
possible. OTOH I do not believe that we have any problem in the
membership process except that we should try to get more members into
the game.

I cannot remember that we had any problems in the past that somebody got
the membership although didn't meet the criteria (or the other way
round), nor that somebody were against any decision. Most users act with
their plain name, or well known account names. You will not find
anything which was not correct.

Please let us focus on the real problems and let us improve the projects
and community.

Best regards,

Dennis Roczek




signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Brett Cornwall]

On 2020-09-05 18:53, Dennis Roczek wrote:

Hi Michael,

I missed something. ;-)

Am 05.09.2020 um 18:07 schrieb Dennis Roczek:

* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
  be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?

Most internal discussions are about improving the tools or about
concrete applications. The discussion about applications should NOT be
public. Discussions about how the tools should or could be improved
(e.g. dashboard) can be opened without any problems.


I missed to add a reason why the discussion about the application should
not be published: see our disaster with the mascot: if we make
everything in public the members of the MC might get spammed, pushed,
and bullied.



The mascot incident is a great example of why public involvement 
matters! The lessons learned should not be "make everything more 
closed-door" but "What can we learn from disappointing our 
users/community?" Users were angry and hurt for a reason and brought 
very valid concerns to a very flawed event.


(Bullying is *not* acceptable and I vehemently denounce any acts of 
harassment from the controversy).




Even more fatal: some groups might get pushy to get their folks into the group. 
Moreover the GDPR sometimes prohibits every discussion public: as already said 
we do have corner cases with heath issues, corona-problems, being too young and 
other cases which do not should be public!



I have anecdata: A high-profile "rockstar" developer applied to be an 
Arch Linux TU last year [1] and we received colorful remarks from the 
peanut gallery. Contention and disappointment was voiced with our 
questions and handling, and the applicant ultimately withdrew but the 
discourse was not toxic. In fact, I'd say that the comments from the 
general public provoke reflection - even if I do not agree with them. 



I lean toward making applications public (GDPR concerns put aside). From 
a pragmatic perspective, private list mails can easily be leaked the 
moment contention bubbles up. My Debian outsider perspective sees 
private lists as good for promoting their issue with political drama and 
causes sites like [2] to sprout up. I'm not qualified for much more than 
speculation; I'd love to hear the opinions of the more experienced. I'd 
be curious to know how other communities like Debian or Fedora manage 
applications and whether public/private have been helpful.


[1] https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/aur-general/2019-February/034918.html
[2] https://debian.community/


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Gustavo Buzzatti Pacheco]

Hi Michael, members, community!

Sharing my answers, thanks for the questions!


On 04.09.2020 08:17, Michael Meeks wrote:

...

* many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
  Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
  number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
  translation, documentation etc.

+ how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?


Let me clarify what I think about "gain new contributors" and "expand 
the membership".


About "gain new contributors", my perspective is regional. Years ago, 
some Latin American members agreed we should do a step ahead to growing 
our local community. In that moment, we saw we had many difficulties in 
Brazil (including losing contributors), but many potential in the other 
Latin American countries. Jumping to now, after a great first Latin 
American Conference and also a great Conference in Spain (which was too 
important for us too), we can say that our regional community (nowadays 
we have said Ibero-American) is much better than before.


About "expand the membership", I think it's a natural result of the 
"gain new contributors". Get *more* members is important (new people, 
new ideas, new goals...) but, as I told in my candidacy statement, my 
main personal focus as a candidate will be continue to work with the 
mcm-script to provide better support to our members.






+ Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
  more marginal contributions for membership cf.
  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing

+ what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?


I don't have difference (core or marginal) in my personal approach, as 
we have a non-exhaustive list of types of contributions in  §10 b.) of 
the statutes. Of course the explicit types of contributions listed there 
are our main references to approve or deny a new member in the MC, but, 
in many cases, we should check applications in a wide perspective (for 
example, organizing an official conference, advocating for the project 
in a public/academic institution, managing a Facebook group with 
thousands of participants, etc).





* If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
  you encouraged to apply for membership ?


I'm going to answer in a wide perspective (as I'm currently a MC 
member). I already encouraged a lot of people to apply, from many 
different areas (counting successes and fails). No idea how many, but 
I'm glad to remember two nice cases: a translator who simply didn't know 
he could be a member and a documentation volunteer who had his 
application denied in the past because the language barrier.




* How many applications have you voted against ?

As in the previous question, also an uncountable amount since 2016.



* Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
  between membership and non-membership that encourages
  a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
  achieve full membership ?


I think some actions like our Open Badges awards are interesting to 
recognize contributions from non-members. But I believe they are more 
related with Marketing/Communication than with the process of 
membership. In other words, it's a recognition for the contributor and 
can be a tool for the MC, but I don't believe that it should be in the 
formal path to reach the membership.




* When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
  code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
  decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
  MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
  should other MC members validate that ?


Search for more information, asking for references to another members or 
asking directly to the person. Discuss until reach a consensus. Suggest 
he/she to reapply in future if contributions aren't clear.




* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
  be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?


I guess we could split it in small topics. I'm going to comment two 
here.


About applications, I think we are fine publishing our minutes with the 
current format (I mean renewed and new applications). I think we 
shouldn't publish additional information (MC member votes or comments in 
applications, for example) as they could be interpreted as personal 
information. There are also some issues related with the European GDPR. 
Unfortunately, K-J , who started to check it's implications in our 
process, isn't longer with us.


About other process, I think it's mandatory sharing contents and 
activities. I'm trying to do it with all aspects related with the 
mcm-script (as I presented in Almería) and other current MC members are 
doing the same with another topics.




* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
  system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
+ I'm interested in where we have the situation that
  being 

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Telesto]

Op 5-9-2020 om 18:07 schreef Dennis Roczek:

I talked to many different contributors and mostly they simply do not
know that there is something like a membership and also do not have any
interest in another mail address and ask what are their gains in getting
into the club.


Still not really a clue what they advantages are.
* Libreoffice.org e-mail
* Able to vote and get voted for.
- However currently not interested being active in MC
- Voting on people I don't really know. So can't really asses their quality
They formal task of MC not that spectacular and the informal tasks don't 
go about strategic decision either
So voting for MC which doesn't have big role (not saying irrelevant). 
Except MC members maybe move up to BoD


I wouldn't really mind if they sitting MC would recruit the new MC 
members themselves (co-option)

Maybe they know even better who are capable or not.

I don't get the feeling to having more influence by being a member or not.
They membership is more a TDF organizational/governmental requirement 
(so needed for TDF perspective) instead for they members being member.
TDF needs they members to have a group who can vote and be voted for. To 
prevent outsiders to get control over TDF (MC/BoD)
They only advantage for the members themselves is maybe a role at TDF. 
Or to show affiliation / association with TDF.


Might have hoped for some more strategical information (in a role of a 
members) . Some 'inside' information. Some exclusivity.
There is not even a roadmap for what to expect for next release. Say 
what project planning is; I mostly assume devs working towards something.
So some kind of planning. If it's simplification of code or new feature. 
Not that I want to pin people on deadlines or whatever. But to get some 
impression what's playing.
It's still a kind of black box.. Release plan filled after being 
finished.  Their is for example the jumbo sheet project; it's still at 
experimental (for good reason).  However no clue what the targeted time 
frame is;
Especially after it got announced in Release notes for 7.0. To silence 
they angry mob for now. Not that it's actually stable or usable. But no 
clue about what the idea currently is.


They "Marketing in Vendor Neutral FLOSS Projects" could have been 
discussed internally with members (before being posted online).
Or they whole discussion on marketing strategy (Personal Edition). If 
there is a place where they discussion should be, it's at member level.
I still prefer some secrecy. Not everything should be argued en public.. 
transparency is nice but not everything. Exclusivity is also a thing.


Still love a non-public forum like of thing for members only. [Please 
not as mailing list]. And would make it possible to communicate/ share 
thoughts a bit more freely/openly.
They board could post some (provocative) question/ insight. And members 
given the ability to react. Even a member could start a discussion.


It's the BoD who has the ultimate say. Consulting they MC. Both must 
make up their minds based upon the members input (and maybe weighting 
some other concerns like profit of eco-system partners)
They MC needs to be their to be consulted and to give advice to they 
BoD. With ultimately they impeachment card.


So Marketing plan shouldn't be posted on public mailing list, before 
they members are consulted. Only the 'accorded' version should go public 
(fiat from BoD/MC) after members got consulted.
They public response could still make it necessary to adjust. But there 
was an internal discussion in advance. Instead of they Personal Edition 
mess.
They members could also get some more details/regular updates on they 
research for say commercial route.


This would give membership some actual advantage, I think.

Telesto



--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Uwe Altmann]

Hi again :)

Am 05.09.20 um 18:32 schrieb Muhammet Kara:
> By the way, let me try to explain the problem/unfairness described above a 
> bit by example, for the ones who are not familiar with the issue:
> 
> A and B are working in the company X
> C and D are working in the company Y
> 
> They all run in the MC elections
> 
> A got the 1st position (becomes member)
> B got the 2nd position (becomes member)
> C got the 3rd position (becomes member)
> D got the 6th position (becomes deputy member)
> 
> Because of the affiliation restriction, both A and B having the same 
> affiliation, one of them (let's say B) steps down from MC position, and is 
> kicked out of the MC completely. But C and D, although they have the same 
> affiliation, stay at their positions. So B is, in a way, punished for getting 
> too many votes. See the unfairness?

So now I understand the problem. Seems to me rather a handling glitch ;-)
Is it right that a deputy member is - in all practical matters - seen as a 
member of the body but without a vote (attends meetings in an active role, 
shares all information etc.)? Then the CoI-Rule surely should apply for deputy 
members as well. This is imho the necessary solution because this affiliated 
deputy member ("D") could only step in if a member with the same affiliation 
("C") steps back; otherwise the CoI-Rule would prevent him/her to observe 
his/her duty.
Legal advice needed: Is a "deputy member" also a case of "member"? If "yes" 
then the case is ruled by the statute's CoI-Rule anyway. If in doubt or if not, 
then: 

There is § 12 (5) which reads "The details of the induction and expulsion from 
the Membership Committee shall be regulated by a community by-law from the 
Board of Directors." 
So these by-laws maybe could have ruled (or specified the handling of) such a 
case; so the BoD is free to change or add such rules. 
So maybe no need to tweak the statutes - at least for the MC. But imho we need 
a solution for this for the BoD also. So a "yes" would be appreciated :-)
-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Uwe Altmann

-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Uwe Altmann]

Hi 

Am 04.09.20 um 13:17 schrieb Michael Meeks:

>   ..
>   + Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
> more marginal contributions for membership cf.
> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing

As § 10 (3) of our statutes read "The details of the induction and exclusion 
from the Board of Trustees shall be regulated by a community by-law from the 
Board of Directors..."
So I see just a little influence of the MC on this. It's rather at the BoD to 
make things clear on this topic.

> * Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
>   between membership and non-membership that encourages
>   a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
>   achieve full membership ?

No. Purpose? You do contribute - then you qualify for application. I've see 
rather the opposite view: People contributing a lot but don't feel that this 
qualifies them to apply. And even if they knew that they qualify, they often 
ask "Why should I do so?"

> * When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
>   code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
>   decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
>   MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
>   should other MC members validate that ?

Interesting question. For example myself - no translated strings,
code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc. at least in the last few years. 
And there are even more persons fitting into that schedule (beside their work 
payed for by the TDF). 
Seems high time to discuss this community by-law.

> 
> * To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
>   be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?

Afaik the decisions are publicly available and send out per mail to all members 
every three month :-) - and this is btw more than the BoD does ;-) .
The metrics used by the MC - as far as metrics apply - should be also available 
for the public (btw: Aren't they?). For the rest: Perhaps we need better 
defined criteria (c.f. community by-law). Normally these "soft" engagements are 
in public and so per definition traceable for the public. 
Other way round: Threw out Mike Sch. just because his work can't be seen (by 
it's very nature) publicly? At least in a few cases some trust in the decisions 
of the mc seems unavoidable. Questions or public discussion should always be 
possible, but not get the standard procedure.

> * How do you believe we can improve the existing election
>   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?

To solve what problem? Wasn't this...

>   + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
> being too popular can stop you being able to
> engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
> Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
> in the last Board election.

...a clear matter of § 8 (4) of the statutes to avoid a CoI?

-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Uwe Altmann

-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Dennis Roczek]

Hi Michael,

I missed something. ;-)

Am 05.09.2020 um 18:07 schrieb Dennis Roczek:
>> * To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
>>   be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?
> Most internal discussions are about improving the tools or about
> concrete applications. The discussion about applications should NOT be
> public. Discussions about how the tools should or could be improved
> (e.g. dashboard) can be opened without any problems.

I missed to add a reason why the discussion about the application should
not be published: see our disaster with the mascot: if we make
everything in public the members of the MC might get spammed, pushed,
and bullied. Even more fatal: some groups might get pushy to get their
folks into the group. Moreover the GDPR sometimes prohibits every
discussion public: as already said we do have corner cases with heath
issues, corona-problems, being too young and other cases which do not
should be public!


Best,

Dennis

-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Muhammet Kara]

Hi Michael, Andreas, dear members of BoT,


On 9/4/20 2:17 PM, Michael Meeks wrote:

Hi Andreas,

On 03/09/2020 19:59, Andreas Mantke wrote:

b) TDF currently has 221 members and none of them asked any question to
the candidates!

That's something to think long and hard about. What does this mean to
the democratic culture of the foundation. It was created to get the
members / contributors a voice and a say.

Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions I came up with.
Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few minutes than
can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things I'd love to know
from each candidate:

What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.

* many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
   Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
   number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
   translation, documentation etc.

+ how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?

+ Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
  more marginal contributions for membership cf.
  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing



First of all. I don't think lowering the threshold for membership is a 
good idea. Bringing people who doesn't contribute to the project 
regularly, and who probably doesn't follow what's going on, into TDF 
membership wouldn't bring any value into the project/community, and 
might even be considered harmful, I think.


So I have two main ways in mind for expanding the membership base:

1- Finding the ones who are already contributing silently, but who are 
not aware of the importance of the membership, or who doesn't see 
themselves "worthy" for membership. (Yeah, I've seen such people. They 
usually don't think what they do is enough for membership. But their 
contributions are very valuable in fact.) I have already found & invited 
tens of contributors during my current term in the MC. Some regular code 
contributors and long-time translators are among them.


I keep an eye on various sources to spot those contributors, but I 
especially focus on the code contributors & translators because it is 
more efficient use of time for me (because of my experience/expertise in 
those areas) as a former translator and current developer.


2- Reaching out to people, especially the young ones, to bring fresh 
blood into the project/community, mostly through organizing & running 
events, and helping mentor/onboard/welcoming the newcomers to the project.


I think, of course without neglecting the general public, focusing on 
the universities & colleges is the most efficient way of gaining new 
contributors and increasing our project's chances of survival in the future.


For example, I have been applying/experimenting-with a cascaded/layered 
strategy about this lately: Reach out to as many as possible 
students/people via large-scale events like conference & presentations 
etc, to ansure exposure to FLOSS concepts and familiarity with 
LibreOffice & TDF. That is the first contact. Then through the 
connection you got, try to engage them in active contribution events 
like workshops & bug-hunting-sessions etc. And hope for the best. :)


One example of what is described above is the LibreOffice Developer 
Bootcamp (large scale, with weekly lessons & assignments), and the 
LibreOffice Development Workshop (small-scale) we run after that. We 
gained several active contributors from this series, including 
translators, and developers (2 of GSoC 2020 students of LibreOffice are 
from here). Now we -yes, started as I, but now it is we :)- are planning 
for the next run of this series.





+ what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?



1- Improved sense of belonging for the active contributors, and an 
increased chance for a longer contribution period.


2- A more vibrant/lively community with many active contributors, and 
hopefully some positive effect on the sustainability of the project. 
(Volunteer contributors may also become full-time/paid open source 
developers, so a double win for the community.)





* If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
   you encouraged to apply for membership ?



Tens of people. Probably less then 50.




* How many applications have you voted against ?



Can't tell. Maybe less than 10?

Based on my experience, the approval & rejection decisions have been 
mostly made unanimously in the MC. I guess that's because opinions and 
evidence are shared before the voting, so if there is strong evidence 
against (or lack of any evidence altogether) an application, it gets 
rejected, and if evidence is in favor of the application, then it gets 
approved. Of course, there are also edge cases, which are the most 
difficult ones. So, I expect the "voted-against" number to be similar 
(but not exactly the same) for all members of the current MC.





* Do you believe we should have a 

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Dennis Roczek]

Hello Michael,

Am 04.09.2020 um 13:17 schrieb Michael Meeks:

> * many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
>   Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
>   number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
>   translation, documentation etc.
> 
>   + how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?
> 
>   + Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
> more marginal contributions for membership cf.
> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing
> 
>   + what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?
contributors who are willing to help users in Ask, on mailing lists,
usenet and other forums and this over all languages.

We do also have other projects (e.g. ODFToolkit) who are mostly loosely
connected to the TDF.

I talked to many different contributors and mostly they simply do not
know that there is something like a membership and also do not have any
interest in another mail address and ask what are their gains in getting
into the club.

> * If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
>   you encouraged to apply for membership ?
I'm not sure. I asked many and I'm still trying to convince more
contributors although my success-rate should be improved. :-/

> * How many applications have you voted against ?
I guess this question is only for the existing membership committee.
I have no statistics, but in the end it is something between "one or two
hands". Some contributors for example were corner-cases since a few
years or some which we couldn't verify by all good faith.

> * Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
>   between membership and non-membership that encourages
>   a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
>   achieve full membership ?
We need badges! There needs more "gamification", although I do not like
the "hat hunt" for the next badge (hence one reason why I quite
Wikipedia). If our OpenBadget system is in place: yes, we should also
add a badge for being a member.

But the main "problem" is that many contributors are "only" subscribed
to some mailing lists and helping users won't see badges nor know
anything of membership. We have to - at least - inform these contributors.

> * When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
>   code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
>   decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
>   MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
>   should other MC members validate that ?
That depends. I do not believe that we have any problems in accepting or
declining applications. We do have a problem to get contributors to the
application form! There might be some *seldom* corner-cases where we
have to believe or need some third-party answer as we are having
problems to verify the contributions.

Especially for the last case it is important to have as much as possible
diversity within the mc to know at least who to ask, which was not easy
in the past as Asian contributors were missing.

> * To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
>   be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?
Most internal discussions are about improving the tools or about
concrete applications. The discussion about applications should NOT be
public. Discussions about how the tools should or could be improved
(e.g. dashboard) can be opened without any problems.

> * How do you believe we can improve the existing election
>   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
I'm not really sure, if we do need any improvement. At least I do not
have any suggestion as I do not believe that we do have any problem
within the statues.

>   + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
> being too popular can stop you being able to
> engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
> Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
> in the last Board election.
As mentioned in some other response, we do have a problem with COI like
in the mentioned cases.I do have a problem with MC members stepping down
for getting voted to the BoD, but to answer your question: simply
getting more people running for the MC will statistical reduce the
possibility of getting into such problems. Luckily this year many
candidates run for MC and thus our members have a real choice!
@everybody: please use your tokens and vote!

>   Thanks for any answers =)
Thanks for your questions.

>   Michael.
Best regards,

Dennis Roczek



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Marc Paré]

Le 20-09-04 à 10 h 44, Italo Vignoli a écrit :
> There is a third solution: convince more contributors to apply for
> membership, as many of them do not even know that it is possible to
> become TDF members by contributing to LibreOffice.
>
> For instance, we have over 4K people registered on weblate, or 20 times
> as many TDF members. Of course, many of them would not qualify as their
> contribution is marginal, but many would.
>
> I think that a solution to this issue is to reach out to native language
> communities, especially outside Europe, where the relationship with the
> core group is less strong.
>
>
IMO, this should be the first solution that we should explore. I
completely agree with Italo that we should reach out to those whom we
see regularly on any of the project's volunteer teams and see if we
could not assist them in becoming members and, in so doing, build more
of a loyal family of members. Most people think a member has to put out
hours of work per week to become a member or maintain one's membership.
We should do more reaching out internally and promote internally.

Marc

-- 
Marc Paré
m...@marcpare.com
https://www.parEntreprise.com
parEntreprise.com Supports OpenDocument Formats (ODF)
parEntreprise.com Supports http://www.LibreOffice.org



--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[ahmad haris]

Hi Mike and Andreas,

I just joined the board-discuss couple days ago, so not much know about
previous topics (even it can read on archive)

Pada tanggal Jum, 4 Sep 2020 pukul 18.18 Michael Meeks <
michael.me...@collabora.com> menulis:

> Hi Andreas,
>
> On 03/09/2020 19:59, Andreas Mantke wrote:
> > b) TDF currently has 221 members and none of them asked any question to
> > the candidates!
> >
> > That's something to think long and hard about. What does this mean to
> > the democratic culture of the foundation. It was created to get the
> > members / contributors a voice and a say.
>
> Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions I came up
> with.
> Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few minutes than
> can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things I'd love to know
> from each candidate:
>
> What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.
>

Some people probably do not read this mailing list too much (like me,
sorry). The newer generation below me dislike mailing lists.



>
> * many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
>   Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
>   number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
>   translation, documentation etc.
>
> + how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?
>

In my experience, here what I do:
* active in community, if you can't active physically because of busy with
daily job, you can donate/support their activity, in Indonesian community,
we often have some challenge to community and there is a prize for the
winner. you can donate the prize if you feel busy and can't help much.
* give a good example and impression how we use libreoffice and how to
contribute in the easiest way to the community.
* have good manners to newcomers, sometimes arrogant also needed but still,
we must help newcomers.
* create a conference. I (with help of the community) often create open
source conferences. Of course we have held a libreoffice indonesia
conference before with more than 500 audience. This year's conference
failed because covid-19
* exhibition booth. be happy and set up booths in as many exhibitions as
possible. you will have a lot of questions and answers at that booth.
* create a workshop about libreoffice, it can be user (how to use)
workshop, translation, and QA.
* Gave a talk in university or any organization.

And we lack (never happen at least in Indonesia) about coding/UX workshops
for libreoffice.


> + Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
>   more marginal contributions for membership cf.
>
> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing


Please explain more about the term "marginal".


>
>
> + what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?
>
>
Anything, in my case, local community have:
* https://glosarium.libreoffice.id/ to help translation
* https://docs.libreoffice.id/ for record activity (it's like readme
actually)
* https://lumbung.libreoffice.id/ for saving slide, theme and template


> * If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
>   you encouraged to apply for membership ?
>

I can't remember it, but I do encourage several people who are active in
the community (from Indonesia and Malaysia).


>
> * How many applications have you voted against ?
>

Many, especially if I know the applicant. Mostly I know in person if they
are from SouthEast Asia.


>
> * Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
>   between membership and non-membership that encourages
>   a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
>   achieve full membership ?
>

I have no idea about this. But I often have questions from students "what
would be the benefit if we become a member?"


>
> * When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
>   code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
>   decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
>   MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
>   should other MC members validate that ?
>

In my case, I will validate if I know the person. If no, I ask another MC
to verify it. If still nobody knows, then one of MC will send them an email
asking more questions.


>
> * To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
>   be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?
>

It can be transparent if there's good tools. Some discussions are in MC
telegram groups. IMHO it doesnt need to be totally transparent, of course
there's reporting. But people can ask. Probably need to discuss more about
"the transparent thing"?


>
> * How do you believe we can improve the existing election
>   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
> + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
>   being too popular can stop you being able to
>   engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
>   Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
>   

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Franklin Weng]

Maybe, but you still don't answer my question.  In what rules forbid
Daniel to do this?

BTW, If I would reply Michael's question mail I would be negative too,
because I don't like his way to ask such questions, just like I don't
like the way you ask Daniel either.


F.


Simon Phipps 於 2020/9/4 下午10:12 寫道:
> Hi Franklin. 
>
> Daniel appeared to be responding negatively to Michael's question
> rather than asking any of his own. I see no reason why Board members
> need to argue between themselves on this thread when you've plenty of
> scope for that on your secret lists.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Simon
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 3:09 PM Franklin Weng  > wrote:
>
> Did you mean that Daniel has no rights to speak out his question? 
> If so, In what rules say only candidates can reply questions to MC
> candidates?
>
> If no, then why did you ask such a question?
>
> F
>
> Simon Phipps 於 2020/9/4 下午9:47 寫道:
>> I was not aware you were a candidate, Daniel. Did I miss your
>> nomination?
>>
>> S.
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 2:29 PM Daniel Armando Rodriguez
>> > > wrote:
>>
>> El 2020-09-04 08:17, Michael Meeks escribió:
>> > Hi Andreas,
>> >
>> > On 03/09/2020 19:59, Andreas Mantke wrote:
>> >> b) TDF currently has 221 members and none of them asked
>> any question
>> >> to
>> >> the candidates!
>> >>
>> >> That's something to think long and hard about. What does
>> this mean to
>> >> the democratic culture of the foundation. It was created
>> to get the
>> >> members / contributors a voice and a say.
>> >
>> >       Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions
>> I came up with.
>> > Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few
>> minutes than
>> > can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things
>> I'd love to
>> > know
>> > from each candidate:
>> >
>> >       What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.
>> >
>> > * many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
>> >   Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
>> >   number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
>> >   translation, documentation etc.
>> >
>> >       + how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?
>>
>> Don't need to be 'a lot'
>>
>> >       + Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
>> >         more marginal contributions for membership cf.
>> >       
>>  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing
>>
>> What's the 'more marginal contributions' meaning?
>>
>> >       + what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?
>> >
>> > * If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
>> >   you encouraged to apply for membership ?
>> >
>> > * How many applications have you voted against ?
>> >
>> > * Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
>> >   between membership and non-membership that encourages
>> >   a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
>> >   achieve full membership ?
>> >
>> > * When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated
>> strings,
>> >   code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
>> >   decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
>> >   MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
>> >   should other MC members validate that ?
>> >
>> > * To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
>> >   be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?
>>
>> Any relation to MC Open Letter?
>>
>> > * How do you believe we can improve the existing election
>> >   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
>> >       + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
>> >         being too popular can stop you being able to
>> >         engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
>> >         Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
>> >         in the last Board election.
>>
>> 'Too popular'? What about that tiny little issue callled
>> affiliation?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> DAR
>>
> -- 
> Franklin Weng
> 中華民國軟體自由協會常務理事
> 文件基金會（LibreOffice 法人代表）認證 LibreOffice 導入專家、訓練專家
> 文件基金會（LibreOffice 法人代表）董事會副主席、認證委員會委員
>
>
>
> -- 
> *Simon Phipps*  
> /Office:/ +1 (415) 683-7660 /or/ +44 (238) 098 7027
> /Signal/Mobile/:  +44 774 776 2816/
> /
>
-- 
Franklin Weng
中華民國軟體自由協會常務理事
文件基金會（LibreOffice 法人代表）認證 LibreOffice 導入專家、訓練專家
文件基金會（LibreOffice 

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Franklin Weng]

Did you mean that Daniel has no rights to speak out his question?  If
so, In what rules say only candidates can reply questions to MC candidates?

If no, then why did you ask such a question?

F

Simon Phipps 於 2020/9/4 下午9:47 寫道:
> I was not aware you were a candidate, Daniel. Did I miss your nomination?
>
> S.
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 2:29 PM Daniel Armando Rodriguez
>  > wrote:
>
> El 2020-09-04 08:17, Michael Meeks escribió:
> > Hi Andreas,
> >
> > On 03/09/2020 19:59, Andreas Mantke wrote:
> >> b) TDF currently has 221 members and none of them asked any
> question
> >> to
> >> the candidates!
> >>
> >> That's something to think long and hard about. What does this
> mean to
> >> the democratic culture of the foundation. It was created to get the
> >> members / contributors a voice and a say.
> >
> >       Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions I
> came up with.
> > Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few
> minutes than
> > can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things I'd
> love to
> > know
> > from each candidate:
> >
> >       What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.
> >
> > * many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
> >   Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
> >   number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
> >   translation, documentation etc.
> >
> >       + how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?
>
> Don't need to be 'a lot'
>
> >       + Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
> >         more marginal contributions for membership cf.
> >       
>  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing
>
> What's the 'more marginal contributions' meaning?
>
> >       + what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?
> >
> > * If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
> >   you encouraged to apply for membership ?
> >
> > * How many applications have you voted against ?
> >
> > * Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
> >   between membership and non-membership that encourages
> >   a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
> >   achieve full membership ?
> >
> > * When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
> >   code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
> >   decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
> >   MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
> >   should other MC members validate that ?
> >
> > * To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
> >   be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?
>
> Any relation to MC Open Letter?
>
> > * How do you believe we can improve the existing election
> >   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
> >       + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
> >         being too popular can stop you being able to
> >         engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
> >         Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
> >         in the last Board election.
>
> 'Too popular'? What about that tiny little issue callled affiliation?
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> DAR
>
-- 
Franklin Weng
中華民國軟體自由協會常務理事
文件基金會（LibreOffice 法人代表）認證 LibreOffice 導入專家、訓練專家
文件基金會（LibreOffice 法人代表）董事會副主席、認證委員會委員

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Thorsten Behrens]

Hi *,

to comment on one aspect here for the moment:

Italo Vignoli wrote:
> I think the question is legitimate if you take away the last portion:
> "assuming the statutes can be tweaked". I do not see how the statutes
> can be tweaked, but I think that they can be applied with some added
> flexibility ("flexible" is different from "tweaked").
> 
The statutes _can_ be modified, but the bar for that is relatively
high (for good reasons), plus the changes must not modify the original
intends and purposes:

- § 14 (1): The Board of Directors can make changes to the Articles of
  Association provided that the changes do not affect the foundation’s
  goals and do not substantially alter the original design of the
  foundation or facilitate the fulfillment of the foundation’s goals.

- and any change has to be ratified (in essence cross-checked to
  fulfil the above requirements) by the foundation authorities

All the best,

-- Thorsten


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Italo Vignoli]

On 9/4/20 4:26 PM, Michael Meeks wrote:

>   Sorry for that. The essence of the question is simple - if you
> want to grow the membership there are at least these two approaches:

>   + encourage more people to contribute more to meet
> the criteria
> or
>   + lower the criteria for membership

There is a third solution: convince more contributors to apply for
membership, as many of them do not even know that it is possible to
become TDF members by contributing to LibreOffice.

For instance, we have over 4K people registered on weblate, or 20 times
as many TDF members. Of course, many of them would not qualify as their
contribution is marginal, but many would.

I think that a solution to this issue is to reach out to native language
communities, especially outside Europe, where the relationship with the
core group is less strong.

>   I would hope that:

> "* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
>system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?"

>   Is a legitimate question for the MC candidates ?

I think the question is legitimate if you take away the last portion:
"assuming the statutes can be tweaked". I do not see how the statutes
can be tweaked, but I think that they can be applied with some added
flexibility ("flexible" is different from "tweaked").

-- 
Italo Vignoli - LibreOffice Marketing & PR
mobile/signal +39.348.5653829 - email it...@libreoffice.org
hangout/jabber italo.vign...@gmail.com - skype italovignoli
GPG Key ID - 0xAAB8D5C0
DB75 1534 3FD0 EA5F 56B5 FDA6 DE82 934C AAB8 D5C0

-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Michael Meeks]

Hi Daniel,

On 04/09/2020 14:29, Daniel Armando Rodriguez wrote:
>> * many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
>>   Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
>>   number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
>>   translation, documentation etc.
>>
>> + how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?
...
>> + Do you think we expand the membership by accepting
>>   more marginal contributions for membership cf.
>>  
>> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing
> 
> What's the 'more marginal contributions' meaning?

Ah - perhaps I should be more clear:

 + "Do you think we should expand the membership by
accepting much smaller contributions for membership"

Sorry for that. The essence of the question is simple - if you
want to grow the membership there are at least these two approaches:

+ encourage more people to contribute more to meet
  the criteria
or
+ lower the criteria for membership

Hence my question - in each case - I'd love more detail on people's
suggested approach.

>> * How do you believe we can improve the existing election
>>   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
>> + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
>>   being too popular can stop you being able to
>>   engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
>>   Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
>>   in the last Board election.
> 
> 'Too popular'? What about that tiny little issue called affiliation?

Sure, so do you have a question about that ? either way I'm curious
about MC member's views of an electoral system whereby (given the
current CoI rules) discouraging people from voting for you is a good
tactic to get elected ;-) and/or that if/as/when people are bumped by
these rules that it's not possible to appoint the next most popular
person in the ranking etc.

I would hope that:

"* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?"

Is a legitimate question for the MC candidates ?

ATB,

Michael.

-- 
michael.me...@collabora.com <><, GM Collabora Productivity
Hangout: mejme...@gmail.com, Skype: mmeeks
(M) +44 7795 666 147 - timezone usually UK / Europe

-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Simon Phipps]

Hi Franklin.

Daniel appeared to be responding negatively to Michael's question rather
than asking any of his own. I see no reason why Board members need to argue
between themselves on this thread when you've plenty of scope for that on
your secret lists.

Best regards,

Simon

On Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 3:09 PM Franklin Weng  wrote:

> Did you mean that Daniel has no rights to speak out his question?  If so,
> In what rules say only candidates can reply questions to MC candidates?
>
> If no, then why did you ask such a question?
>
> F
> Simon Phipps 於 2020/9/4 下午9:47 寫道:
>
> I was not aware you were a candidate, Daniel. Did I miss your nomination?
>
> S.
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 2:29 PM Daniel Armando Rodriguez <
> drodrig...@documentfoundation.org> wrote:
>
>> El 2020-09-04 08:17, Michael Meeks escribió:
>> > Hi Andreas,
>> >
>> > On 03/09/2020 19:59, Andreas Mantke wrote:
>> >> b) TDF currently has 221 members and none of them asked any question
>> >> to
>> >> the candidates!
>> >>
>> >> That's something to think long and hard about. What does this mean to
>> >> the democratic culture of the foundation. It was created to get the
>> >> members / contributors a voice and a say.
>> >
>> >   Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions I came up
>> with.
>> > Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few minutes than
>> > can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things I'd love to
>> > know
>> > from each candidate:
>> >
>> >   What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.
>> >
>> > * many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
>> >   Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
>> >   number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
>> >   translation, documentation etc.
>> >
>> >   + how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?
>>
>> Don't need to be 'a lot'
>>
>> >   + Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
>> > more marginal contributions for membership cf.
>> >
>> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing
>>
>> What's the 'more marginal contributions' meaning?
>>
>> >   + what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?
>> >
>> > * If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
>> >   you encouraged to apply for membership ?
>> >
>> > * How many applications have you voted against ?
>> >
>> > * Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
>> >   between membership and non-membership that encourages
>> >   a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
>> >   achieve full membership ?
>> >
>> > * When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
>> >   code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
>> >   decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
>> >   MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
>> >   should other MC members validate that ?
>> >
>> > * To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
>> >   be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?
>>
>> Any relation to MC Open Letter?
>>
>> > * How do you believe we can improve the existing election
>> >   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
>> >   + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
>> > being too popular can stop you being able to
>> > engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
>> > Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
>> > in the last Board election.
>>
>> 'Too popular'? What about that tiny little issue callled affiliation?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> DAR
>>
>> --
> Franklin Weng
> 中華民國軟體自由協會常務理事
> 文件基金會（LibreOffice 法人代表）認證 LibreOffice 導入專家、訓練專家
> 文件基金會（LibreOffice 法人代表）董事會副主席、認證委員會委員
>
>

-- 
*Simon Phipps*
*Office:* +1 (415) 683-7660 *or* +44 (238) 098 7027
*Signal/Mobile*:  +44 774 776 2816

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Daniel Armando Rodriguez]

First of all, it is a public list.
On the other hand, not being a candidate disqualifies me from asking 
questions?


El 2020-09-04 10:47, Simon Phipps escribió:

I was not aware you were a candidate, Daniel. Did I miss your 
nomination?


S.

On Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 2:29 PM Daniel Armando Rodriguez 
 wrote:



El 2020-09-04 08:17, Michael Meeks escribió:

Hi Andreas,

On 03/09/2020 19:59, Andreas Mantke wrote:

b) TDF currently has 221 members and none of them asked any question
to
the candidates!

That's something to think long and hard about. What does this mean 
to

the democratic culture of the foundation. It was created to get the
members / contributors a voice and a say.


Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions I came up with.
Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few minutes 
than

can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things I'd love to
know
from each candidate:

What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.

* many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
translation, documentation etc.

+ how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?


Don't need to be 'a lot'


+ Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
more marginal contributions for membership cf.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing


What's the 'more marginal contributions' meaning?


+ what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?

* If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
you encouraged to apply for membership ?

* How many applications have you voted against ?

* Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
between membership and non-membership that encourages
a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
achieve full membership ?

* When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
should other MC members validate that ?

* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?


Any relation to MC Open Letter?


* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
+ I'm interested in where we have the situation that
being too popular can stop you being able to
engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
in the last Board election.


'Too popular'? What about that tiny little issue callled affiliation?

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Simon Phipps]

I was not aware you were a candidate, Daniel. Did I miss your nomination?

S.

On Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 2:29 PM Daniel Armando Rodriguez <
drodrig...@documentfoundation.org> wrote:

> El 2020-09-04 08:17, Michael Meeks escribió:
> > Hi Andreas,
> >
> > On 03/09/2020 19:59, Andreas Mantke wrote:
> >> b) TDF currently has 221 members and none of them asked any question
> >> to
> >> the candidates!
> >>
> >> That's something to think long and hard about. What does this mean to
> >> the democratic culture of the foundation. It was created to get the
> >> members / contributors a voice and a say.
> >
> >   Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions I came up
> with.
> > Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few minutes than
> > can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things I'd love to
> > know
> > from each candidate:
> >
> >   What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.
> >
> > * many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
> >   Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
> >   number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
> >   translation, documentation etc.
> >
> >   + how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?
>
> Don't need to be 'a lot'
>
> >   + Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
> > more marginal contributions for membership cf.
> >
> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing
>
> What's the 'more marginal contributions' meaning?
>
> >   + what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?
> >
> > * If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
> >   you encouraged to apply for membership ?
> >
> > * How many applications have you voted against ?
> >
> > * Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
> >   between membership and non-membership that encourages
> >   a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
> >   achieve full membership ?
> >
> > * When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
> >   code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
> >   decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
> >   MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
> >   should other MC members validate that ?
> >
> > * To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
> >   be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?
>
> Any relation to MC Open Letter?
>
> > * How do you believe we can improve the existing election
> >   system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
> >   + I'm interested in where we have the situation that
> > being too popular can stop you being able to
> > engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
> > Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
> > in the last Board election.
>
> 'Too popular'? What about that tiny little issue callled affiliation?
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> DAR
>
>

Re: [board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Daniel Armando Rodriguez]

El 2020-09-04 08:17, Michael Meeks escribió:

Hi Andreas,

On 03/09/2020 19:59, Andreas Mantke wrote:
b) TDF currently has 221 members and none of them asked any question 
to

the candidates!

That's something to think long and hard about. What does this mean to
the democratic culture of the foundation. It was created to get the
members / contributors a voice and a say.


Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions I came up with.
Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few minutes than
can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things I'd love to 
know

from each candidate:

What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.

* many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
  Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
  number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
  translation, documentation etc.

+ how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?


Don't need to be 'a lot'


+ Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
  more marginal contributions for membership cf.
  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing


What's the 'more marginal contributions' meaning?


+ what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?

* If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
  you encouraged to apply for membership ?

* How many applications have you voted against ?

* Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
  between membership and non-membership that encourages
  a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
  achieve full membership ?

* When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
  code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
  decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
  MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
  should other MC members validate that ?

* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
  be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?


Any relation to MC Open Letter?


* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
  system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
+ I'm interested in where we have the situation that
  being too popular can stop you being able to
  engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
  Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
  in the last Board election.


'Too popular'? What about that tiny little issue callled affiliation?





--
DAR

--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy

[board-discuss] MCC questions ..

[Michael Meeks]

Hi Andreas,

On 03/09/2020 19:59, Andreas Mantke wrote:
> b) TDF currently has 221 members and none of them asked any question to
> the candidates!
> 
> That's something to think long and hard about. What does this mean to
> the democratic culture of the foundation. It was created to get the
> members / contributors a voice and a say.

Fair enough =) good point - here are a few questions I came up with.
Please note - it is trivial to ask more questions in a few minutes than
can be answered in a lifetime - but here are a few things I'd love to know
from each candidate:

What is the right list for that ? board-discuss I hope.

* many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
  Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
  number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
  translation, documentation etc.

+ how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?

+ Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
  more marginal contributions for membership cf.
  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing

+ what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?

* If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
  you encouraged to apply for membership ?

* How many applications have you voted against ?

* Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
  between membership and non-membership that encourages
  a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
  achieve full membership ?

* When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
  code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
  decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
  MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
  should other MC members validate that ?

* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
  be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?

* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
  system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
+ I'm interested in where we have the situation that
  being too popular can stop you being able to
  engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
  Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
  in the last Board election.

Thanks for any answers =)

Michael.

-- 
michael.me...@collabora.com <><, GM Collabora Productivity
Hangout: mejme...@gmail.com, Skype: mmeeks
(M) +44 7795 666 147 - timezone usually UK / Europe

-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy