Re: not being elected?
On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 12:41:05PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: Tasks I am quite sure I will do are: (...) - investigate the localization of -mentors@ and #-mentors. Language is often a barrier for new contributors. That sounds like a low-hanging fruit. Could you elaborate more since you seem to believe this is a low-hanging fruit? There are already resources in Debian by language. Some communities use it more than others. So far I haven't seen anybody being pushed away to ask a newbie development question in debian-devel-french@ or debian-devel-spanish@. I expect it to be similar in other languages mailing list. We have a few of them, see [1]. More list can be created if a group ask the listmasters and our policy to create IRC channels is totally non burocratic (As we have no policy). Mentoring works better when the mentor and the mentee are speaking in their natives languages, but ultimately to participate in Debian people need a minimal knowledge of written English... [1] http://lists.debian.org/devel.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130318110313.ga19...@pryan.ekaia.org
Re: not being elected?
Hi Moray, Le dimanche, 17 mars 2013 16.42:34, Moray Allan a écrit : Will not being elected de-motivate you? In many ways, not being elected would be a relief. I'd have more time to put into non-Debian parts of my life. However, if I am not elected, I would see that as a lack of agreement with my proposals, or at least a lack of interest in them, and I would be de-motivated from pushing those topics further against the apparent view of the project. Given that a) you nominated yourself and b) there are two other serious candidates¹, I must say I am quite surprised to read that you would see a non- election as a lack of agreement or interest in your proposals. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not voting between three distinct sets of proposals: as it's been apparent in other threads, there's quite a lot of overlap between the candidate platforms and their specific proposals. We are electing someone to stand in the DPL shoes: debating eachothers' proposals, views and stuff is obviously useful to decide, but at the end of the day, we can't all vote the three candidates equally. We're voting for concurrent persons, not concurrent proposals. So unless you end up being ranked below NOTA (which I certainly don't see happening for any of the three very good candidates), I wouldn't take not being ranked first as a dismissal of your ideas or proposals; and I'm surprised that you see it as such. Cheers, OdyX ¹ Which implies that you start with both a ⅓ chance of being elected and a ⅔ chance of not being elected. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: not being elected?
On 18/03/13 at 12:03 +0100, Ana Guerrero wrote: On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 12:41:05PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: Tasks I am quite sure I will do are: (...) - investigate the localization of -mentors@ and #-mentors. Language is often a barrier for new contributors. That sounds like a low-hanging fruit. Could you elaborate more since you seem to believe this is a low-hanging fruit? There are already resources in Debian by language. Some communities use it more than others. So far I haven't seen anybody being pushed away to ask a newbie development question in debian-devel-french@ or debian-devel-spanish@. At least for debian-devel-french@, I don't think that we advertise the possibility to ask questions there. I expect it to be similar in other languages mailing list. We have a few of them, see [1]. More list can be created if a group ask the listmasters and our policy to create IRC channels is totally non burocratic (As we have no policy). I'm not sure we need another list for that, given the low traffic (and spanish looks similar) Mentoring works better when the mentor and the mentee are speaking in their natives languages, but ultimately to participate in Debian people need a minimal knowledge of written English... Sure, but making one's first steps in Debian is also very difficult. So I think that every possible way to simplify that first step is a good thing. So, if I'm not elected, I will probably: - see if it's considered OK to direct french contributors to debian-devel-french@ (I guess it will be OK) - see if a few french contributors besides me would agree to answer questions on IRC, and create #-mentors-fr if that's the case (#-devel-fr is quite active, so it's better not to add more noise there) - advertise this (blog, packaging tutorial, etc.) - provide feedback to the project after a few weeks/months, so that others can possibly make the same move This sounds like a rather simple step to make, hence my low-hanging fruit qualifier. Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130318123028.ga26...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: not being elected?
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 01:30:28PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: At least for debian-devel-french@, I don't think that we advertise the possibility to ask questions there. Just start a discussion there, get a new wording and then ask listmasters to change it. Probably this update could benefit of having the list description in both English and French. I'm not sure we need another list for that, given the low traffic (and spanish looks similar) I meant new lists for other languages that don't have a list yet (when a group of people speaking that language ask for it, of course). Mentoring works better when the mentor and the mentee are speaking in their natives languages, but ultimately to participate in Debian people need a minimal knowledge of written English... Sure, but making one's first steps in Debian is also very difficult. So I think that every possible way to simplify that first step is a good thing. So, if I'm not elected, I will probably: - see if it's considered OK to direct french contributors to debian-devel-french@ (I guess it will be OK) - see if a few french contributors besides me would agree to answer questions on IRC, and create #-mentors-fr if that's the case (#-devel-fr is quite active, so it's better not to add more noise there) - advertise this (blog, packaging tutorial, etc.) - provide feedback to the project after a few weeks/months, so that others can possibly make the same move This sounds like a rather simple step to make, hence my low-hanging fruit qualifier. I see, it is not that easy. To sustain a mentoring community for a long time, it needs plenty of people around it. In Debian we currently struggle to keep our global community in English going running because the lack of mentors. That's why I exceptical about communities per language taking off. Some people pushed for a similar experiment to the one you describe some years ago in Spanish, they even added a round of talks: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianSpanish/Devel/IRCTalks But despite being a small group of people working a lot on it and the Spanish speaking community being big, it didn't last long. Ana -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130318130013.ga23...@pryan.ekaia.org
Re: not being elected?
On 18/03/13 at 14:00 +0100, Ana Guerrero wrote: On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 01:30:28PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: At least for debian-devel-french@, I don't think that we advertise the possibility to ask questions there. Just start a discussion there, get a new wording and then ask listmasters to change it. Probably this update could benefit of having the list description in both English and French. Yes, that was the idea. I'm not sure we need another list for that, given the low traffic (and spanish looks similar) I meant new lists for other languages that don't have a list yet (when a group of people speaking that language ask for it, of course). Mentoring works better when the mentor and the mentee are speaking in their natives languages, but ultimately to participate in Debian people need a minimal knowledge of written English... Sure, but making one's first steps in Debian is also very difficult. So I think that every possible way to simplify that first step is a good thing. So, if I'm not elected, I will probably: - see if it's considered OK to direct french contributors to debian-devel-french@ (I guess it will be OK) - see if a few french contributors besides me would agree to answer questions on IRC, and create #-mentors-fr if that's the case (#-devel-fr is quite active, so it's better not to add more noise there) - advertise this (blog, packaging tutorial, etc.) - provide feedback to the project after a few weeks/months, so that others can possibly make the same move This sounds like a rather simple step to make, hence my low-hanging fruit qualifier. I see, it is not that easy. To sustain a mentoring community for a long time, it needs plenty of people around it. In Debian we currently struggle to keep our global community in English going running because the lack of mentors. That's why I exceptical about communities per language taking off. I cannot guarantee that it will be successful. But we will never know if we don't try. Also, it's typically something that would be quite harmless to the project if it failed (if we reuse an existing mailing list, it's just about creating an IRC channel). Some people pushed for a similar experiment to the one you describe some years ago in Spanish, they even added a round of talks: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianSpanish/Devel/IRCTalks But despite being a small group of people working a lot on it and the Spanish speaking community being big, it didn't last long. [ after seeking clarification: it didn't last long because there were not enough people willing to do the mentoring ] So it means that there's actually some demand for this, which is great. Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130318145420.ga31...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: not being elected?
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 03:54:20PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: But despite being a small group of people working a lot on it and the Spanish speaking community being big, it didn't last long. [ after seeking clarification: it didn't last long because there were not enough people willing to do the mentoring ] So it means that there's actually some demand for this, which is great. Of course there are a lot of demand in mentoring. I do not think nobody has ever doubt that in previous emails! Some people have even tried doing different thinks in the past, like this: https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2010/10/msg5.html But mentoring and integrating new contributors requires a lot of time and efforts that you don't know if they will pay off or not. So yeah, go and try and I'm waiting you reach the same conclusions than me in some months :-) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130318151157.ga28...@pryan.ekaia.org
Re: not being elected?
Didier 'OdyX' Raboud o...@debian.org writes: As far as I'm concerned, I'm not voting between three distinct sets of proposals: as it's been apparent in other threads, there's quite a lot of overlap between the candidate platforms and their specific proposals. We are electing someone to stand in the DPL shoes: debating eachothers' proposals, views and stuff is obviously useful to decide, but at the end of the day, we can't all vote the three candidates equally. We're voting for concurrent persons, not concurrent proposals. So unless you end up being ranked below NOTA (which I certainly don't see happening for any of the three very good candidates), I wouldn't take not being ranked first as a dismissal of your ideas or proposals; and I'm surprised that you see it as such. +1 In an ideal world, I'd like to see the ideas of all three candidates put into practice. By and large they don't contradict each other, and they all sound pretty solid to me. We can only elect one person, and that's for a whole mix of qualifications that aren't just about their goals for the project. Please don't take selection of one person as lack of approval for the ideas of another. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87txo8a7r7@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: not being elected?
Hi, On 17/03/13 at 12:19 +0800, Paul Wise wrote: Candidates, What do you plan to work on if you are not elected? Will not being elected de-motivate you? Will you work on the things in your platform even if you are not elected? Most of the things mentioned there are not DPL specific tasks. A DPL election is a quite strange process. We vote for people as well as platforms and ideas, and it's difficult to translate success or failure in the election to success or failure in other particular area. Of course, not being elected will be de-motivating. I ran because I thought I would be a good DPL, and I'm not convinced yet that the other candidates would be better than me (but YMMV :p). Most of the things I mentioned in my platform do not require DPL powers, but would be much harder to do if I was not elected. For example, I should not be expected to push for fostering innovation inside Debian. Also, a large part of what I planned to do was to coordinate so that good ideas are implemented. I believe that it's the DPL's role to ensure that this coordination happens. Tasks I am quite sure I will do are: - continue to improve and extend UDD, and explore how it can contribute to improving our processes (including, but not limited to, team-maintenance and our sponsorship processes). - investigate the localization of -mentors@ and #-mentors. Language is often a barrier for new contributors. That sounds like a low-hanging fruit. Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130317114105.gb11...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: not being elected?
On 2013-03-17 07:19, Paul Wise wrote: What do you plan to work on if you are not elected? If I am not elected, then by default almost all my Debian time would continue to be taken up by DebConf work. However, after setting out my my ideas about Debian teams more clearly for my platform, I wonder if even in that case I should set an example by retiring from heavy DebConf work before I suffer burn-out, or should at least take a break from it. While I might gain then more time for other Debian topics, my overall time allocation to Debian would be likely to reduce, unless I agreed to take up another specific Debian role immediately. (This is a specific case of some of the issues I mention in my Delegations and teams section.) Will not being elected de-motivate you? In many ways, not being elected would be a relief. I'd have more time to put into non-Debian parts of my life. However, if I am not elected, I would see that as a lack of agreement with my proposals, or at least a lack of interest in them, and I would be de-motivated from pushing those topics further against the apparent view of the project. Will you work on the things in your platform even if you are not elected? Most of the things mentioned there are not DPL specific tasks. I think most of my core ideas would be very difficult for me to advance if I am not elected, because they are coordination-level tasks for which I would have no mandate, and because they specifically relate to the DPL's powers. A few examples from my platform: - Agreeing additional topics, in particular communication plans and turnover plans, as required part of delegation documents and for other teams - Pushing more topics out from the DPL to delegates, and towards more public communications - Ensuring that good speakers are authorised/have recognised roles to represent Debian, and doing it myself as required - Making sure that official communications can happen with company representatives and governmental organisations where appropriate - Encouraging more Debian local groups and agreeing a framework for this - Starting more active and transparent budget planning for Debian before money is spent, more active fundraising to allow the plans, and avoiding having major spending happen merely by DPL edict - Moving/merging some DebConf teams to become general Debian ones, with approriate delegates as required. If I am not elected, I would lack both the DPL's constitutional powers and the greater influence that comes from being elected. If I tried to push the list of items in my platform without being elected, I think it would look like I was trying to set up some kind of parallel government for Debian, and people would quite fairly be very resistant to me pushing these things without a mandate, or indeed view them as already having been voted down. -- Moray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/27036b9dc38dd3f79ba9b6937aa45...@www.morayallan.com
