Re: What do you think of the foundation?
I dont think there is a problem in the community to be honest whilst some people do have strong opinions and there are indeed factions within gnome which can be very vocal, I dont think anyone can say gnome has truly poisonous and destructive people. Sure some poeple can come across as arrogant or aloof at times and they may also appear hostile to others but it rarely is a problem really - its part and parcel of any community Gnome is generally a happy place IMO and I dont think the board needs to act in this area yet jamie On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 10:45 -0600, Stormy Peters wrote: So I'm hearing Dave say we need more policing and Philip saying everything is ok. What do others think? Does the community think everything is ok? Or if not, do they want to self police or delegate taking action to the board? (Or both.) Philip, I agree that your blog is yours, but supposedly you write blog posts, emails, IRC chats to tell people something. So if you are offending them and responding angrily, are you communicating what you want to be saying to them? For example, if you think people are too politically correct, the way to persuade them of that is probably not to swear at them. I think you have the right to freedom of speech. I even think you have the right to say it any tone and with any words you want to. But if you want people to listen, you need to speak to them in a way *they* don't find offensive. And this is often really hard to do. I dread some conversation topics, like politics, because people are so emotionally involved they end up yelling at each other and neither side convinces the other of anything. Hopefully in the GNOME community we can stick to the topic and keep out offensive language or behaviors so that we can have productive conversations. Often that means making your behavior match a social norm, even if it's more politically correct than you'd normally be. For example, some of my SO's friends tend to swear a lot more than I'm used to. It doesn't offend me, but I don't do it. I've noticed that they don't swear when they talk directly to me. They're socially aware and they've adapted to my social norm. I suppose the question is what is our social norm? That's what Dave and Philip seem to be debating. Stormy On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.org wrote: On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 16:46 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: Philip Van Hoof wrote: snip aggressive rant As every opinion of me is looked as being aggressive, it's no longer possible for me to have this discussion in a constructive kind of way. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
john palmieri wrote: The board should not mire itself in conflict resolution like this, just like it does not make technical decitions. The boards role is to obtain and distribute resources and make sure those resources are used in efficent ways. That is enormous power as it is. Giving it a policing/judicial role would be a mistake. I could imagine some extremist contingent getting a majority and then anyone who got fed up with their retoric and let slip a fuck you to them on the list would suddenly find their account disabled. The door swings both ways there which is the problem with trying to control speach. I think the board has the responsibility to ensure conflict resolution takes place when disputes arise and are not naturally resolved; and act as a court of last resort in appeals to disputes that cannot be resolved by those directly involved or those delegated to review and resolve a situation. - Jim ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Jamie McCracken says: I dont think there is a problem in the community to be honest I think that the most serious problem facing the community right now is our budget. With the added expenses of having more employees, we really need to figure out how to be more frugal, find new sources of income, and also continue improving the services provided by the Foundation. This, I think, is a real challenge. Stormy has been doing a great job in improving fundraising already, but much more work needs to be done to grow. In addition, I think it would be good to discuss how the Foundation could better serve Foundation members. What things about the Foundation make it appealing to join. The Foundation should provide members, at a minimum, with opportunities to participate in the community and recognition for doing so. Hopefully recognition in a form that makes people proud to be Foundation members, and helps them in professional ways. Ensuring people who volunteer have good job titles, with clear responsibilities, and perhaps information about the good quality of their performance would perhaps be the sort of thing that could help people think that the Foundation is an important, and useful, organization to join. Personally, I think it would be good for the Foundation to get more involved with doing usability studies and improving the HIG. With GNOME 3.0 around the corner, we have a real opportunity and need here. It also seems a great way for the entire GNOME community to work together to ensure that GNOME stays simple with good usability. Something that the entire GNOME community does not want to lose in the migration to GNOME 3.0, I'm sure. Since the budget is an issue, finding ways for the Foundation to help with raising money, improving marketing, finding ways to increase the value the Foundation provides to AdBoard members who donate money to the Foundation, and providing incentives to help would also be useful to think about and discuss, I think. What other services and benefits could the Foundation provide to people to make the Foundation useful, productive, and appealing to join? So, even if we decide there are no problems in the community, I think there are a lot of opportunities to further improve things. In addition to doing some obviously important things such as improving transparency (thanks Stormy) and being better about being nice and holding hands. Brian ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Le dimanche 31 mai 2009, à 09:42 +0200, Dave Neary a écrit : So, I've detailed my vision, with two major changes: - include foundation members in the daily running of the foundation by having the majority of board business happen in the open on foundation-list, including having the working version of the accounts in a publicly accessible place, posting draft minutes straight after meetings, rather than going through the 2/3 day review period we've had in the past, posting agendas for meetings to foundation-list, and using foundation-list as the main board mailing list, only going to board-list for board-confidential issues. I could simply say yes. And that's a good goal I generally agree with. The truth is that it's always a bit more complex than that: for example, one major issue with working this way is that it highly increases the chances of making public something that shouldn't be public. (btw, I would think it's not just the responsability of the board to help make this happen: everybody can start discussing the topics here) FWIW, we tried to post agendas on foundation-list at some point (in 2006, according to a google search), and it didn't last. I can only find examples for April 2006 in the archives. It's quite some years ago, so I don't remember what happened, but I would guess it's the fact that agendas often gets created with a mail thread, with no final version of the agenda. - the foundation, through the board, should be empowered and committed to maintaining a friendly and productive working environment Sure. And the board is delegating this task to various people already. I've seen various cases in bugzilla where bugmasters stepped in to explain to someone that he was really going too far. For Planet GNOME, the editors are playing this role (although it hasn't been needed). On mailing lists, listadmins and old contributors are doing this. Etc. This would cover most cases. There are cases which won't fit anywhere else, and for those, the board can directly be contacted. But I'll always think that trying to first solve the issue in an unofficial way (ie, not the board decides that...) is better. Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Hi, john palmieri wrote: I'm of the same mind here. There are a number of people who I don't like to read on blogs and whatnot but I would rather us as a community figure out productive ways of dealing with it as opposed to lording our own views over those who don't have as much pull in the community. Red tape and draconian censorship measures is not the way to handle the issue. If our blogs and mailing lists are no longer exciting and informative then there is something more fundamentally wrong than who we give a voice to. Who talked about red tape and draconian censorship? I commend Philip for succeeding in framing this debate around the punishments rather than around the reasons why they might happen. Let me be as clear as possible: There are people in our community who are losing faith in the community's ability to have reasoned technical debate and design discussions because of vacuous 100 mail threads, and IRC being dominated by half a dozen people whose principal contribution to GNOME is to be on IRC all the time. Others are being driven away from the community for our tolerance of he who shouts loudest politics, flame wars and provocative and offensive blog posts. I believe that these people should have a group that they can turn to, argue their points, and ask for that group to do something about it. I believe that the task is the role of the foundation, and the board is well placed to assume that role now. When I say do something about it, that may be simply to point out to the people involved that they're not being productive. It may be to publicly shame people for antisocial behaviour. It may be to tell the complainer that they're making a big deal about nothing. But right now if you are being driven away from GNOME forums or from the GNOME project in general, you have no-where to turn. How is that red tape? How is it draconian censorship? Given that you and a colleague have had a run-in with the kind of anti-social behaviour I'm targeting here, I would have thought that you'd have more sympathy for the victims of the worst kinds of behaviour. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 13:43 +, Benjamin Otte wrote: I have a problem here. I am not sure I have a clear idea of what type of interaction is causing these issues. I don't know what triggered the discussion this time either, so this might be totally irrelevant: We do have a real problem with being offensive to women on irc. People don't respond to it because most people there don't care much about it. And the men there simply don't expect any women to be within hearing distance. Of course this is self-perpetuating. On the other hand, I don't think there's any conceivable way to manage behaviour in irc. It's a wild corner of the Internet. The people there are not even particularly representative of GNOME. I think the best we can do with irc is warn people whenever we suggest its use. Smaller, well-defined forums such as mailing lists and bugzilla are much easier to manage. -- murr...@murrayc.com www.murrayc.com www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 07:59:47AM +0200, Dave Neary wrote:
reasons why they might happen.
Ignoring the rest, I'll just share my thoughts on ability to discuss
things on mailing lists.
Let me be as clear as possible:
There are people in our community who are losing faith in the
community's ability to have reasoned technical debate and design
discussions because of vacuous 100 mail threads, and IRC being dominated
by half a dozen people whose principal contribution to GNOME is to be on
IRC all the time. Others are being driven away from the community for
our tolerance of he who shouts loudest politics, flame wars and
provocative and offensive blog posts.
I am not a developer, so my view is a bit different, anyway:
- just doing something (infrastructure) is *way* better than trying to
discuss it on d-d-l. No idea why, maybe because I explain it badly,
but I view discussing things on d-d-l as a waste of time. Especially
so if you start a topic and afterwards you're busy for a few days.
Suddenly a huge thread about something that was just misinterpreted.
- having doap files (mandatory due to a hook) is somewhat ironic to me
Please don't reply on this specific point though.
- people complaining about the speed of Bugzilla is again 'interesting'
Again, don't reply on this specific item.
- having a CodeOfConduct is nice to avoid some back and forth
'warnings'. Meaning: discussion should be focussed around the
behaviour, not whether the behaviour should've been acceptable or not,
the CoC defines what is acceptable. Further, the CoC is vague enough
that if someone doesn't abide by this, it should be easy to tell.
- I like how the CoC is stated on mail.gnome.org ('expected to know and
follow').
- feels sometimes that discussion on d-d-l is about winning arguments
and focussing on minor things instead of finding the best solution /
outcome
- I respond way too often in bike shed topics...
- being on release-team is nice, you read back a thread and make a
decision about something preferably you didn't participate in, then
just try to see the real consensus (means ignoring some parts)
- end of thread calls sometimes help
I believe that these people should have a group that they can turn to,
argue their points, and ask for that group to do something about it. I
believe that the task is the role of the foundation, and the board is
well placed to assume that role now.
For someone to be listened to, they have to be respected IMO. I find it
interesting there is no effort in trying to make something productive
(within the thread). IMO you do(should) not need the board as a start to
change things.
When I say do something about it, that may be simply to point out to
the people involved that they're not being productive. It may be to
publicly shame people for antisocial behaviour. It may be to tell the
Antisocial seems really strong to me. Further, it doesn't feel like
people are not behaving according to the CoC (every message seems ok,
maybe just the amount of messages). Eventhough I do agree that
discussing things on d-d-l is useless.
Maybe CoC needs to have a 'keep a discussion productive and focussed on
an outcome' or something.
complainer that they're making a big deal about nothing. But right now
if you are being driven away from GNOME forums or from the GNOME project
in general, you have no-where to turn. How is that red tape? How is it
draconian censorship?
What is meant with GNOME forums? Things like IRC and mailing lists?
PS: Perhaps I overstated things a bit, etc.
--
Regards,
Olav
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Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 12:30 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote: On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 11:04 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: [snip] Just look at the replies from people: there's an almost unanimous agreement that our community is doing just fine. Why are you trying to fix anything? There is no problem. Is that so hard to accept? You keep saying that, yet the whole reason Dave started this particular thread is that people have complained to him that our community is NOT doing fine, and Stormy has replied in this thread to say she also has received complaints, as now I'm saying that I have too. I don't think any of us are saying the sky is falling and people are leaving in droves, but when several people (whom I respect) in our community say that they dread discussions on mailing lists and IRC because of the inevitable bike-shedding and pointless obscure argumentation, or even in some cases outright bullying, I would say that's a valid concern that needs to be addressed. Similarly when people from outside our direct community (eg. kernel hackers, non-core app developers) ask me if we've solved our 'dysfunctional community problem' I worry even more. However you seem to flat out deny that there is a problem so I'm not sure what I, or anyone else, can do to convince you that this is a real issue. Paul -- Intel Open Source Technology Centre http://oss.intel.com/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Dave Neary a écrit : I believe that these people should have a group that they can turn to, argue their points, and ask for that group to do something about it. Doing something about it, doesn't necessarily mean going the police route. Things are not that simple. Funnily, this is a trend we see in our society as a whole. Whenever something is perceived to malfunction, some people want to hit other people with big sticks. Straight. You don't even know if the punishment you are asking for won't fragment the community even more or will cause more damage in general. Things are not that simple. I am not saying everything is OK, or that we shouldn't try to come up with a better way to interact etc. There are some people who get on my nerves in the community, you know, like everyone else :) I don't go to #gnome-hackers anymore because it's too noisy, etc. But I don't think the brutal and primitive police route is better either. We are not mere dogs. We can think better. I hope. The solution ? honestly I don't know. There are some problem domains that are complicated to grasp. We ought to sit down a little bit and think thoroughly instead of taking premature shortcuts that will cost us more than actually doing nothing. It may be to publicly shame people for antisocial behaviour. This is IMO brutal, primitive, and I am not even sure it would solve the issue. How do you know if it won't backfire ? I mean, you can indirectly kill someone because you made him look bad publicly. Do you have studies proving that on the long run, taking such actions won't actually cost more to our community than doing nothing ? I (as an organization) would not take the risk to publicly shame people if I am not *sure* about the long term outcome of it. As a physical person though, it might be another business :) It may be to tell the complainer that they're making a big deal about nothing. But right now if you are being driven away from GNOME forums or from the GNOME project in general, you have no-where to turn. Well, I disagree. You can talk/write about it, for instance. That is an advantage we have, compared to real life where you are voiceless if you don't have access to big newspapers or TV channels. See, that's an area we can think about improving/empowering for instance. Proposing to hit people in the head each time a complainer has a problem is not necessarily what is going to save him. It'll maybe give him a serotonin shoot, but well, he can as well use some chemical substances for that. There are certainly cases where we do need the police. But please, let's not artificially make those cases too frequent. - -- Dodji Seketeli http://www.seketeli.org/dodji -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Remi - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkolFqYACgkQPejI7lrem2FC3QCfT1tVBEJi8AJvFjgEsv3aKSU7 R6IAnAzWmfgmv2Q2FVL0T7gmpQnHS66d =Gu0m -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Hi Dave, 2009/6/2 Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org: Hi, john palmieri wrote: I'm of the same mind here. There are a number of people who I don't like to read on blogs and whatnot but I would rather us as a community figure out productive ways of dealing with it as opposed to lording our own views over those who don't have as much pull in the community. Red tape and draconian censorship measures is not the way to handle the issue. If our blogs and mailing lists are no longer exciting and informative then there is something more fundamentally wrong than who we give a voice to. Who talked about red tape and draconian censorship? I commend Philip for succeeding in framing this debate around the punishments rather than around the reasons why they might happen. Let me be as clear as possible: There are people in our community who are losing faith in the community's ability to have reasoned technical debate and design discussions because of vacuous 100 mail threads, and IRC being dominated by half a dozen people whose principal contribution to GNOME is to be on IRC all the time. Others are being driven away from the community for our tolerance of he who shouts loudest politics, flame wars and provocative and offensive blog posts. I believe that these people should have a group that they can turn to, argue their points, and ask for that group to do something about it. I believe that the task is the role of the foundation, and the board is well placed to assume that role now. When I say do something about it, that may be simply to point out to the people involved that they're not being productive. It may be to publicly shame people for antisocial behaviour. It may be to tell the complainer that they're making a big deal about nothing. But right now if you are being driven away from GNOME forums or from the GNOME project in general, you have no-where to turn. How is that red tape? How is it draconian censorship? IMO, there's a big difference between counterproductive behavior and disrespectful behavior. People can be very counterproductive without being disrespectful (moving focus of discussion to irrelevant technical details, being against a proposal for personal reasons, etc). For example, I agree with Olav that d-d-l became too noisy and counterproductive too many times lately. And I guess some highly relevant contributors didn't participate on certain discussions simply because the discussion was too noisy (dozens of messages from people just giving random opinions) and lacking focus (someone picking on something irrelevant, etc). In general, people are not being disrespectful IMO. This kind of problem can be solved with stronger moderation and well-defined guidelines on mailing lists (which I guess depends on the type of discussion, dunno) which is just not happening on d-d-l for instance. IMO, disrespectful behavior includes being sarcastic or ironic, making personal accusations in public, making pejorative comments about a proposal instead of disagreeing with counter-arguments, etc. I see this kind of behavior sometimes on our mailing lists but they are exceptions, not the common behavior. Maybe what I'm trying to say is: I think we're being counterproductive too often, not necessarily disrespectful. And yes, this is a problem that needs a solution. My opinion is that we just need stronger and consistent moderation depending on the context. Some examples (a bit stretched for clarity) Example 1: - Person A proposes a new module for GNOME 3.2 on d-d-l - Person B replies with This module is crap, ridiculous - Release team members (who are responsible for organizing the module propositions) reply (in private?) to Person B with Please, try to keep discussion productive with actual arguments for/against the module. Example 2: - Person A proposes a new i18n guideline on gnome-i18n mailing list - Person B replies with You proposal is total shit - GNOME i18n coordinators (who are responsible for the team coordination) reply (in private?) to Person B with Please, try to keep discussion productive with actual arguments for/against the i18n proposal. Cheers! --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 1:59 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, john palmieri wrote: I'm of the same mind here. There are a number of people who I don't like to read on blogs and whatnot but I would rather us as a community figure out productive ways of dealing with it as opposed to lording our own views over those who don't have as much pull in the community. Red tape and draconian censorship measures is not the way to handle the issue. If our blogs and mailing lists are no longer exciting and informative then there is something more fundamentally wrong than who we give a voice to. Who talked about red tape and draconian censorship? Setting up a commission for evaluating speech is red tape and will lead to censorship. I would accept a self style group who goes out to evaluate the situation and recommend productive actions to take but if the group came back with your evaluation of the situation I would reject that as over compensation for the issue at hand. I commend Philip for succeeding in framing this debate around the punishments rather than around the reasons why they might happen. Again we come back to crime and punishment. If you read over my past posts on pgo when I felt people were out of line, I let them know but I didn't bring to bare some sort of higher power to do so. Proscribing anything more than the most basic code of conduct goes against our nature as a free flowing community. It may be trial by fire but the strong rise to the top and the bikeshedders eventually get bored and go away (anyone remember our two worst bikeshedders?) That is not to say that individuals should ignore others getting bullied, just that we don't need a commission to do so. I encourage prouctive, not destructive ideas for dealing with the issue. What thoes are, I'm not sure but I know it isn't a group of people policing our communication channels. I would think it would have something to do with rewarding those who work to move GNOME forward instead of concentrating on chastising those who hold it back. I can remember a few names who came off grating to me when they were new and inexperienced with the community (I was probubly one of them) but who's body of work in community had become invaluble over time. Let me be as clear as possible: There are people in our community who are losing faith in the community's ability to have reasoned technical debate and design discussions because of vacuous 100 mail threads, and IRC being dominated by half a dozen people whose principal contribution to GNOME is to be on IRC all the time. Others are being driven away from the community for our tolerance of he who shouts loudest politics, flame wars and provocative and offensive blog posts. And there are those who rise to the top because they can navigate such noise, and those who settle down and recognise being productive is better than being destructive. Again, I agree there is a problem, I just think your solution is a dangerous road. I believe that these people should have a group that they can turn to, argue their points, and ask for that group to do something about it. I believe that the task is the role of the foundation, and the board is well placed to assume that role now. The board should not mire itself in conflict resolution like this, just like it does not make technical decitions. The boards role is to obtain and distribute resources and make sure those resources are used in efficent ways. That is enormous power as it is. Giving it a policing/judicial role would be a mistake. I could imagine some extremist contingent getting a majority and then anyone who got fed up with their retoric and let slip a fuck you to them on the list would suddenly find their account disabled. The door swings both ways there which is the problem with trying to control speach. When I say do something about it, that may be simply to point out to the people involved that they're not being productive. It may be to publicly shame people for antisocial behaviour. It may be to tell the complainer that they're making a big deal about nothing. But right now if you are being driven away from GNOME forums or from the GNOME project in general, you have no-where to turn. How is that red tape? How is it draconian censorship? Red tape is the implementation of ridged formal processes to enforce some standard. When you talk about it in the terms of speach, censorship becomes the elephant in the room because you open the door to someone eventually having that power. How does the Kernel thrive when they probubly face the same issues we do? I think you are looking at the symptoms and not the root causes. Given that you and a colleague have had a run-in with the kind of anti-social behaviour I'm targeting here, I would have thought that you'd have more sympathy for the victims of the worst kinds of behaviour. To assume I don't have sympathy because of my stance points to
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 05:13:44PM -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: On 06/02/2009 05:56 AM, Olav Vitters wrote: - just doing something (infrastructure) is*way* better than trying to discuss it on d-d-l. No idea why, maybe because I explain it badly, but I view discussing things on d-d-l as a waste of time. Which is not quite surprising. You wouldn't get a better response if you Not surprising as d-d-l is useless, but not because of the topic. IMO things should be discussed beforehand to get consensus. go the main town market on a weekend and ask people what color you should paint your house. The trick to asking questions in any forum is to filter informative, insightful, and relevant responses from the noise and act accordingly. You *don't* need to make everyone happy or answer to everyone. If you mean that d-d-l is basically a town hall where everyone is shouting, yes I agree. However, the signal to noise ratio I see is loads of noise, almost no signal. Really, I am never going to try and discuss things anymore. It is pointless and makes me sad. Yes, perhaps in the avalanche of messages there are a few useful ones. Not worth the effort. Plus, there is no consensus (or not that I see). Better to just skip the whole consensus part and force things through. -- Regards, Olav ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 11:04 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: Dave's ten steps mean that as soon as you refuse to publicly apologize for insert something undefinable, his foundation board will kick you and your project out of GNOME. My ten steps were, as I pointed out, a list of measures which I feel te boad should have at its disposition, in cases where they are warranted. I also clearly said that to get beyond 4 or 5, you would need to be an aggravated and repeat offender - that is, you would need to be repeatedly and aggressively behaving in a manner which the board finds unacceptable. You publicly embarrassed an individual at item number two. And no, you can't make your item number two look any better by trying to escape it. What do you think will happen in reality once you do that? Flowers and sugar? Happiness and joy? Group laughter? Babies?! That would be quite naive to hope for, wouldn't it? The person will hate you, will hate the board and will start persuading other people to join him. And for many people he'll most likely succeed after such extremely childish board behaviour, too. Ten commandments or steps to kick somebody out don't change harsh but simple reality. You're trying to persuade a community that *IS* in fact experiencing its most friendly cultural period ever to convert itself into a culture of maximum behaviour control. Just look at the replies from people: there's an almost unanimous agreement that our community is doing just fine. Why are you trying to fix anything? There is no problem. Is that so hard to accept? Besides, you're trying to escape having to prove that the people you talked with meant it how you formulated it. Trying to escape this *equals* bla bla bla, Dave. I wont believe this until you prove it. As I already said: people who claim that as a group we are unethical, are being intellectually dishonest. You know it, I know it and they know it, too. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with GNOME as a group. Why trying to inject fundamental changes into our culture? I don't want people to be fearful of the board. The board is at this moment our cozy own friendly leadership. This is a great achievement of our community. Don't fundamentally change that. Just don't. The items underneath item number two: imagine an actual situation. His procedure will always end up at step ten. Every next step worsen the problem. With a certain type of person, perhaps - the type of person who refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing, even when an ombudsmanly body of his peers *repeatedly* asserts that he has. Maintainer of competing project X tries to get maintainer of project Y to become angry, succeeding he now sends some silly mail to the board and then, enacting Dave's ten steps, the board will ask for an apology. Yes, because the board is an automaton who will exercise no judgement at all on receipt of a complaint. No, but the board is also seated by people who might have an agenda. Ignoring that is naive. This most definitely is dangerous when combined with your ten steps to kick somebody out officially. Let's say, for argument's sake, that someone from the board contacts the maintainer of project Y asking him for his side of the story, and the board looks at both sides of the story, and decides that while there was some provocation by the maintainer of project X, the reaction from the maintainer of project Y was uncalled for, and should not be condoned. What do you think would happen at that stage? Sure, make it look like children playing in the garden. Doesn't help your argument. Really. We're grown up people. The situation will be forty to fifty times more complicated, recursive and multiple entire social -and team networks will be involved. Let me translate this to the point of view of a software developer: o. Many threads for spaghetti code that isn't compiled with -ggdb and with -02 on a mobile device with a CPU architecture that gdb doesn't yet support. Your ten steps wont even be applicable. But I'm pretty sure that due to pressure the board will nonetheless apply them. With big consequences. I imagine that the maintainer of project X and Y bothh get told to grow up a bit, and the maintainer of project Y gets an extra rebuke from the board for his language behaviour. If the maintainer of project Y protests, a short don't aggravate your situation, drop it, don't do it again would be what I would expect. Think of it as the ref having a word with a player after a tackle. You kicked him out STARTING the public embarrassment. Why did you even execute the seven other steps? That's even a waste of time. If someone sends hate mail to another member of the project (this is the impression I've got from your hypothetical example), then if they don't recognise that they've done anything wrong, surely the board and the project owes it to ourselves to say here's what happened, we will
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Hi, Philip Van Hoof wrote: You publicly embarrassed an individual at item number two. And no, you can't make your item number two look any better by trying to escape it. snip The person will hate you, will hate the board and will start persuading other people to join him. And for many people he'll most likely succeed after such extremely childish board behaviour, too. snip I don't want people to be fearful of the board. The board is at this moment our cozy own friendly leadership. This is a great achievement of our community. Don't fundamentally change that. Just don't. Here's the nut of the issue. I want the board to protect people from being shouted down by people who disagree with them. You want the board to not make waves among the shouters. You point to the majority of people posting in this thread disagreeing with me. A cynic would say that all these people so vehemently opposed to this are (a) scaring away all the people who agree with me and who have spoken to me about this, and (b) the first people who would likely be censured, because they exhibit the type of behaviour which others find offensive. To my mind, the person is embarrassing themselves by behaving in a way that is rude. This is irrelevant and not even always going to be the case. Not all fights happen publicly, for example. Indeed - the private mails are often worse, more insulting, and more damaging to the project. Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 13:06 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: snip Here's the nut of the issue. I want the board to protect people from being shouted down by people who disagree with them. You want the board to not make waves among the shouters. I think an ombudsman wouldn't be a bad idea. Which is why I'm not criticizing your steps 0, 1 and 2. You point to the majority of people posting in this thread disagreeing with me. A cynic would say that all these people so vehemently opposed to this are (a) scaring away all the people who agree with me and who have spoken to me about this, and (b) the first people who would likely be censured, because they exhibit the type of behaviour which others find offensive. To my mind, the person is embarrassing themselves by behaving in a way that is rude. This is irrelevant and not even always going to be the case. Not all fights happen publicly, for example. Indeed - the private mails are often worse, more insulting, and more damaging to the project. It's not really appropriate for a board to publicize private mails. But I don't think you are proposing this. -- My reply to/about Emmanuele Bassi's personal criticism: First of all, I think it's offtopic in this thread. People who aren't interested in this that safely ignore this part completely. I don't remember that I ever had a discussion with you, Emmanuele. Not at a conference nor online. We just never talked with each other. Maybe we have crossed a few words. Won't be much, because I have no memory of it. If you have a personal issue with me, you should talk with me in person. Not this way. I also don't understand how you make a conclusion about IRC tirades and then explain that you're ignoring me on IRC. How can you know? Looking at my logs I have not had a lot very long conversations in channels that you also join, lately. Only the technical ones in #xesam and #tracker are longer, to name just the public ones. Looking at my blog items, the majority are purely technical about the project I'm involved in lately (which is Tracker). My others blog posts had subjects about (in date order) European finance Euro bonds, about the fukin newz, about becoming an Astronomer, about my girlfriend being touched by his noodly appendage, about that I like Sally Shapiro's music, a dutch post about our state sponsored television channel's news reporting (shouldn't have appeared on the planet, as it wasn't in English), E-mail as a desktop service, about some dude talking about freedom of speech vs. religions trying to forbid criticizing their book (I only posted his youtube videos), ... Oh yes ... the post titled utilitarianism. But that one also received positive comments. For example Ian Hurst's. And that's it for this year. That's a half year of blog items. Maybe the utilitarianism one could be linked to your criticism. And if that one wasn't appropriate then planet.gnome's moderator should have skipped it. I have always said I wouldn't mind that. I kindly invite you, in case I'm incompatible with you, to indeed ignore me. Fully. I wont even feel bad about it, nor will I think you're wrong or something. Just ignore me. It's fine. Meanwhile you're also invited to contact me and discuss this. Would be the first time. Would also be more fair than how you are doing it now. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Stormy Peters stormy.peters at gmail.com writes: I too have found the GNOME community to be extremely welcoming. I got met at my first GUADEC in 2001 with You're a girl! from a very excited woman manning the registration desk.But I can't ignore the fact that people are leaving our community or being quiet, because they don't like the type of interaction that happens. Especially when I can see several interactions that don't meet our own agreed upon Standards of Conduct. I have a problem here. I am not sure I have a clear idea of what type of interaction is causing these issues. In fact, the only case where I can pinpoint the issues people had related to sacred parts of the human anatomy and led to our releases not having codenames anymore. Could you (or anyone) give me some examples about what people complained? I also have no idea what people in- and outside the GNOME community expect. Do they expect what I call an American business-style environment, where every image link that shows naked legs is annotated NSFW or is it ok to talk like I do with friends when meeting them in a pub? I feel that we are trying to police without understanding the issue. At least all the people that said something about it in this thread, said that they feel fine in the community. Noone sounded like he had any real clue about what the problem was. Myself, I'd prefer if the community was less well-behaved and emotionless. Emotions include excitement, commitment and identification, and GNOME certainly needs more of that. Cheers, Benjamin ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
I'm of the same mind here. There are a number of people who I don't like to read on blogs and whatnot but I would rather us as a community figure out productive ways of dealing with it as opposed to lording our own views over those who don't have as much pull in the community. Red tape and draconian censorship measures is not the way to handle the issue. If our blogs and mailing lists are no longer exciting and informative then there is something more fundamentally wrong than who we give a voice to. -- John On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 6:16 PM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: On 05/31/2009 07:17 PM, Olav Vitters wrote: You mean how someone should behave? What is socially acceptable somewhere is totally not acceptable elsewhere (eating with mouth open and making noises). Every time I'm in major airports, can't help but notice the HSBC 'Your Point of View' ads. Check a few of them out, they are truly brilliant: http://www.yourpointofview.com/page03.html Every time it makes me wonder, why can't all of us understand something that simple? Cheers, behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Philip, Sometimes people say inappropriate things in inappropriate tones on GNOME forums, irc, mailing lists, blogs, etc. Right now, the community just lets them. We don't enforce our Standards of Conduct. Dave was pointing out what we do have the power to do something about it. If we decide to enforce our own Standards of Conduct, I expect there would be discussion about what steps to take. I don't think you should ignore the fact that we have a problem by attacking a proposed solution. As far as I know is Luis among the very few people in our community who has had a legal training. Appointing judges is not something countries do without said lawyer having a lot of field experience. We (the GNOME community) already have a lot of responsibility. We decide what goes into GNOME products, what's on our website, who can make contributions, who's on Planet GNOME, who's a member of the Foundation, who can have a gnome.org email address, who's on the board, ... We can't get out of our responsibility by saying we don't have the training. Stormy On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:07 AM, Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.org wrote: On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 23:42 +0100, Lucas Rocha wrote: [CUT] I don't see the Board as community moderators. Really. I tend to agree that some communication channels (especially mailing lists) get a bit too noisy some times. This makes some highly active contributors to stay away from certain discussions because of that. But the moderation in those cases depends on the context. I agree with this very much. Especially the context part. If this problem happens in the i18n mailing list, the i18n coordinators should do the moderation. Precisely If it happens on desktop-devel-list, maybe the release team should moderate the discussion. Yep If things get *really* rough, then it's the case to take this to Board. But even in those cases, it's questionable what the Board is supposed (or even allowed) to do on *community* level. Exactly. I agree with you, Lucas. May I add to this: Dave's ten steps mean that as soon as you refuse to publicly apologize for insert something undefinable, his foundation board will kick you and your project out of GNOME. Saying this is NOT aggressive. It simply IS my opinion. Snipping this opinion away as snip, aggressive rant was disrespectful of Dave. The items underneath item number two: imagine an actual situation. His procedure will always end up at step ten. Every next step worsen the problem. Hypothetical case follows: Maintainer of competing project X tries to get maintainer of project Y to become angry, succeeding he now sends some silly mail to the board and then, enacting Dave's ten steps, the board will ask for an apology. Project Y's maintainer refuses that. This is *not* unlikely. Here is how now Dave's list starting number tree looks (and DO take Dave's list and compare. I'm not *just* making this up on the spot). - Publicly embarrass the person - Hope that after this public embarrassment he'll publicly apologizes - Ban the person from the forum, hoping he wont suddenly be even more pissed afterward. - Ban him from the foundation. Temporarily, but hey at this point everybody already knows what this means and what's next. - Make sure the person can't use his git account anymore. He can't even commit to his OWN project anymore now. - The dude still hasn't decided to go away with his project from GNOME by himself. Start the permanent actions. - To keep the other members smiling and make it all look a little bit official, do some silly administrative stuff like saying that previous actions have now all become permanent. - Equally silly as previous point now officially claim the expulsion of the person, and by consequence his project, from GNOME. You kicked him out STARTING the public embarrassment. Why did you even execute the seven other steps? That's even a waste of time. You know, Dave, I could have added 700 such items to your list. So what? None of the ones you added after number two make *any* sense whatsoever. They don't change the purpose. Which is crystal clear to kick people with whom more influential people disagree with, out. Furthermore HOW is the above situation unplausible? I can give you many X and Y project pairs in GNOME whom maintainers compete with each other and often have passionate disagreements. What guarantees me such people don't end up becoming elected? Have you looked at the current list of candidates? Have you looked at previous board members? Am I saying it's wrong that such maintainers end up becoming elected? Certainly not!! This reality means, though, that error from within isn't unlikely. Not at all. Ignoring that means that you are ignoring a most important aspect of humanity. We *are* a species that come *with* errors. Whether or not that is an error in biology is a question for Richard Dawkins that I wont
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Sun, 2009-05-31 at 07:33 -0600, Stormy Peters wrote: Sometimes people say inappropriate things in inappropriate tones on GNOME forums, irc, mailing lists, blogs, etc. Right now, the community just lets them. We don't enforce our Standards of Conduct. Dave was pointing out what we do have the power to do something about it. If we decide to enforce our own Standards of Conduct, I expect there would be discussion about what steps to take. I don't think you should ignore the fact that we have a problem by attacking a proposed solution. Do we really have such a huge problem that the process of punishing, kicking or simply reprimand bad behaving individuals needs to be institutionalized? I have always had the impression that the GNOME community is one of the calmest and most mature places around. And this despite the fact that there's no official cross this line and you'll go to jail-policy in place, which is a great testament to how open-minded and welcoming the project as a whole is. -- Ruben Vermeersch (rubenv) http://www.savanne.be/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Sun, 2009-05-31 at 07:47 -0600, Stormy Peters wrote: [CUT] But I think we are still arguing over whether or not we have a problem ... (and I really wish we were talking about Dave's original email - what would you like to see from the Foundation because I for one would really like to know what people would like to see from their Foundation membership and the Foundation in general.) I already voiced that perhaps we need a ombudsman (ombudswoman) who'll pick up the task of having a group discussion together with the two fighters. The rest of the board should not even be involved. The discussion shouldn't be made public (of course). For example on how they'll communicate about and with each other in future. Making a simple agreement between three human beings that it's better for everybody that we try to be respectful to everybody. The board shouldn't try do to more. And if it really wants do do anything afterward, then that would have to be an immediate removal. Possibly of both members. Not the whole nine yards of then commandments or steps to officially kick one person out. You can't make that look good by making ten official steps, so you shouldn't try. It's always going to be ugly, so better make it look even more ugly IF this is necessary. That way it wont happen often. As this action is ALWAYS highly disruptive for our community. Potentially flat out killing it. I'd like to stress that this has never been necessary. Neither will it ever be necessary. SO We are trying to fix a non-existing problem. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 10:05 AM, Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.org wrote: [...] We are trying to fix a non-existing problem. I dont know about the rest of you but for me this is a touchy emotional subject, its really painful, and we all did go through it before, it died with this Code of Conduct publication - really wish we could leave it there. To the mercy of the foundation; please dont institutionalize a code of conduct in GNOME. I understand Philip, he must feel threatened. because I feel threatened. No I have never went to a GNOME conference, but in the last years I did bleed out *alot* of code, just for GNOME, just for GTK+ and the platform, and I made this sacrifice along with a hand full of people like me, who did it because it rocked, and did not ask for a single reward for it, who were not paid to participate etc. I like to think that people like us, I know there are many, are a seriously defining aspect of GNOME. We need the right to be ourselves and what the hell, I think we even earned the right to some occasional rudeness where its due. Like it or not GNOME can be a high-stress work environment, it can be something like a warzone near release time, when things need to be done its not the time to be fragile and point fingers and Im gonna tell daddy on you, thats just shameful. Im convinced that were all bigger than that, so lets save face and not stoop to the lowest common denominator. Cheers, -Tristan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Dave Neary wrote: I have said that the foundation has a role to enable people to attend conferences. In the special case of GUADEC, we are very generous in that role. But I think we've been too generous - just because we are enabling someone to attend a conference doesn't mean we should pay 100% of their travel costs. Paying 80% of their travel costs is not a punishment, but it might indeed test their committment to attend the conference - if it's not worth covering 20% of the costs from their own pocket, how committed are they to travelling, really? Hi Dave! From a personal experience I wouldn't have been able to go to Vilanova unless I had been covered by the Foundation for the trip. I was terribly low on cash during that period, so I am grateful to the organization for helping me in this matter. I therefore feel good to pay back in terms of design for foundation related materials and through the Friends of GNOME Program. Do we have a bad record of people who we have sponsored for conferences that later have disappeared from the community? - Andreas ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On 31/05/2009, at 11:28 AM, Glynn Foster wrote: On 31/05/2009, at 6:53 AM, Philip Van Hoof wrote: [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Waugh#Criticism I'm rather stunned by this entry. I don't believe Jeff deserves this treatment, nor do I think it's a healthy thing to encourage (a quick browse through various other GNOME contributors shows that this seems to be an isolated case, fortunately). It's all very well to have personal issues with people [1], but this takes it a step too far. We as a community should be celebrating each member's achievements (particularly those who have been continuously supportive of the project) and not harming the chances of their employment from prospective employers. I've removed this section from the wikipedia entry. I'm not blaming Philip here - I know he wasn't responsible for the page's content. I think it's an important point to be made though, and as with the Code of Conduct it's important to be aware of how we portray ourselves to the external community. I agree with what's been said before, GNOME has a really great reputation of having some smart folks involved with strong positive and constructive input. Let's keep that going and play the issue not the people. Glynn ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 07:33:07AM -0600, Stormy Peters wrote: Sometimes people say inappropriate things in inappropriate tones on GNOME forums, irc, mailing lists, blogs, etc. Right now, the community just lets them. We don't enforce our Standards of Conduct. That is somewhat overstated: 1. I don't allow some types of behaviour on GNOME Bugzilla 2. Every once in a while I do the same on GNOME mailing lists 3. Not aware of a GNOME forum that is under direct control of GNOME 4. IRC is basically GimpNet, can only do things if you have ops in a channel. But it is still GimpNet, not GnomeNet. Anyway, the channels I'm in seem pretty much ok. The amount of unanswered questions in #gnome is IMO a bigger worry. Dave was pointing out what we do have the power to do something about it. If we decide to enforce our own Standards of Conduct, I expect there would be http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct already states it applies to GNOME Bugzilla and the mailing lists. discussion about what steps to take. I don't think you should ignore the fact that we have a problem by attacking a proposed solution. This is true. Sometimes someone does behave badly and you get the whole 'freedom of speech! my right!' etc going on. Also difficult if you should respond in the mailing list or not. Usually you get 5 people after that who disagree with you. BTW behaviour I don't like are things like some new person who is either really enthusiastic over some product he's working on (to the point of it basically being nothing more than spamming multiple mailing lists), aggressive behaviour on bugreports (demanding work to be done) and sometimes getting personal (mailing lists). But overall, it doesn't happen too often. Overall, I was more annoyed by people threatening legal action against me personally (as responses to sysadmin ticket). Those people weren't part of the GNOME community as I define/see it. As far as I know is Luis among the very few people in our community who has had a legal training. Appointing judges is not something countries do without said lawyer having a lot of field experience. IMO it is pretty easy to spot when someone crosses the line. But maybe the difference is that I'm ok with someone behaving badly. Everyone has a bad day/week/whatever. Thing is, if you don't like some behaviour, why not just respond nicely and say you didn't like it? Various times you do get an reaction saying it wasn't meant that way. No need to begin with reading up on whole procedures, CoC, etc. We (the GNOME community) already have a lot of responsibility. We decide what goes into GNOME products, what's on our website, who can make contributions, who's on Planet GNOME, who's a member of the Foundation, who can have a gnome.org email address, who's on the board, ... We can't get out of our responsibility by saying we don't have the training. I don't get your point here. You mean how someone should behave? What is socially acceptable somewhere is totally not acceptable elsewhere (eating with mouth open and making noises). Or to spot unacceptable behaviour? I'm ok with political posts etc on Planet GNOME. As long as the person posting it does understand that other people will feel different about it. and regarding Planet GNOME itself (IIRC it was brought up in this thread.. or maybe some other GNOME mailing lists.. anyway.. always a nice long topic, so here goes): discussing the useless posts on Planet GNOME is a reoccurring and nice thing to do at GUADEC. I dislike the advertisement/sales posts (sorry Miguel) and almost everything that has a date in the title (sorry Meeks). For others e.g. the Meeks posts are one of the few posts they read. Oh, and various people reading it seem to think it should only be strictly about GNOME. IMO that would be boring. Plus for that we have news.gnome.org. -- Regards, Olav ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
So my freedom of speech comment was not well written. I do think anyone has the right to say what they want, but if they want to be heard they have to think about their tone. (I was trying to explain why someone might want to moderate their tone even if they think it's ok.) I don't think everyone has the right to be published in any forum. I think the GNOME community can take away the right to publish on GNOME forums. So you can say anything you want on your blog but if it doesn't meet the GNOME standards of conduct, it can be removed from Planet GNOME. This is not anti-diversity - this is a way of encouraging a friendly, respectful place to discuss ideas and differences of opinion. It's up to the GNOME community to enforce the GNOME standards of conduct. I think the issue being discussed is whether there is an issue and who should enforce it. Stormy On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 8:40 AM, Alan Cox a...@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk wrote: On Sat, 30 May 2009 10:27:00 -0400 Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: On 05/30/2009 08:10 AM, Stormy Peters wrote: (And we have lost members of our community because we haven't enforced that Code of Conduct.) How accurate is that statement? I know of at least one example therefore it is accurate. Anyway it's a mistake IMHO to mix up freedom of speech (which even the US only means 'political speech' not rights to scream hatred) and what gets to all intents and purposes published and branded by the foundation. Any right I may have to have a loud rant about someone stops well short of a right to have it appear in the New York Times. Ditto planet.gnome.org, which is effectively a foundation site and should have a policy that makes Gnome actually look responsible and grown up. What happens on some other site (ranters.pants-off.org seems free) is another matter, but if its Gnome branded it ought to be handled responsibly. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
2009/5/30 Stormy Peters stormy.pet...@gmail.com: So my freedom of speech comment was not well written. I do think anyone has the right to say what they want, but if they want to be heard they have to think about their tone. (I was trying to explain why someone might want to moderate their tone even if they think it's ok.) I don't think everyone has the right to be published in any forum. I think the GNOME community can take away the right to publish on GNOME forums. So you can say anything you want on your blog but if it doesn't meet the GNOME standards of conduct, it can be removed from Planet GNOME. This is not anti-diversity - this is a way of encouraging a friendly, respectful place to discuss ideas and differences of opinion. It's up to the GNOME community to enforce the GNOME standards of conduct. I think the issue being discussed is whether there is an issue and who should enforce it. Im taking it that the majority of this discomfort is coming from the planet website as opposed to the official mailing lists or the mailing lists of important projects. If this is the case then can we stay on topic and discuss the problem we have with planet ? cause I see an obvious conflict/problem with the current scheme On the one hand planet is a blog site, which was not meant to be a technical blog - most of the content relates either to hacking, vacationing, philisophical rantings, jokes, personal journals and even cooking and poetry. - the point is when you write your blog, you are not writing an article and paying very strict attention, your just writing a blog entry. On the other hand, when speaking comfortably among friends, its always very easy to piss somebody off unintentionally, just because you didnt take extra care to take another person's opinions into account before speaking. When you are dealing with a richly multiethnic community, alot more opinions become unknowns in the equation so it all of a sudden become very easy for people to get offended. Finally, we have another dysfunction; the modern world doesnt seem to know about mailing lists, I guess they search for gnome developers on www.gnome.org or live.gnome.org... but the hackers are only officially reachable by mailing list. Is it possible that people are pre judging the whole community before even knocking on its front doors and subscribing to some lists ? Is there something we can do to better represent ourselves and better educate the public on how to communicate with us ? For example, it took me quite some time to write this email thankyou, thats because I feel accountable wearing a gnome hat, I already dont blog much... and I like to feel that there I can express what I feel and share with the community, not to feel all that accountable you know... Cheers all, -Tristan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Tristan Van Berkom t...@gnome.org wrote: Im taking it that the majority of this discomfort is coming from the planet website as opposed to the official mailing lists or the mailing lists of important projects. Well nobody is coming out and saying if it is planet or not. I personally didn't see anything on planet that would have pissed me off or I considered inappropriate. If someone wants to mail me an example off list I'll look. Now there are some that I have raised my eyebrows at mostly because they are topics that tend to have people have strongly held political opinions. Those one should stay away from. In general I don't see much political opinions which do tend to lead to great distress. There have been examples of personal attacks as well but those have been few and far between. On the one hand planet is a blog site, which was not meant to be a technical blog - most of the content relates either to hacking, vacationing, philisophical rantings, jokes, personal journals and even cooking and poetry. - the point is when you write your blog, you are not writing an article and paying very strict attention, your just writing a blog entry. I don't blog very often but I tend to write when an idea of who my audience is. When you decide you want your blog published on planet there is a certain amount of self censure you will need to do since you're now representing GNOME in some manner. We must and have to protect the brand. I suggest that when people are added that we have a link to the code of conduct and make them aware. If they can't abide by that then we should turn off their feed. I think that's perfectly fine. On the other hand, when speaking comfortably among friends, its always very easy to piss somebody off unintentionally, just because you didnt take extra care to take another person's opinions into account before speaking. Crap, I have to self censure even on facebook due to the wide variety of people I piss off with my opinions. I care about my brand too :) Even though it's probably spoiled already! When you are dealing with a richly multiethnic community, alot more opinions become unknowns in the equation so it all of a sudden become very easy for people to get offended. Right. But one can still disagree respectively. People who react to a potential blog post also have a duty to be respectful if the content was respectful. Is there something we can do to better represent ourselves and better educate the public on how to communicate with us ? No idea. Planet is the most passive way to know about our community. For example, it took me quite some time to write this email thankyou, thats because I feel accountable wearing a gnome hat, I already dont blog much... and I like to feel that there I can express what I feel and share with the community, not to feel all that accountable you know... Same here. I try write blog posts but then realize maybe I shouldn't write that. Especially since I'm quite flippant and so I have a more professional personality on mailing list and planet since not only am I representing GNOME, I'm on some level representing my employer, and my professional self online. On, IRC however I'm a completely different person. Unless someone here is logging... :) sri ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 17:45 -0400, Luis Villa wrote: That's exactly correct. Another term for it is 'volunteer'. :) You're certainly welcome to volunteer to improve it yourself, of course. It's far beneath her abilities, but can't you delegate the minutes-taking to our paid employee? -- murr...@murrayc.com www.murrayc.com www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 18:25 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: I think that the foundation should be more involved in conflict resolution and policing the tone of the community. I have talked to too many people who don't read pgo, or have turned off individual blogs, don't use IRC any more, or avoid certain mailing lists, because they are unhappy with the tone content of discussions posts. If it'is possible for one to create the perception that his behaviour is representative for the GNOME community, then the problem isn't that the board should have stepped in. The problem would be that this was possible. However, let me quote you the bottom of planet.gnome.org: Quote: - Planet GNOME is a window into the world, work and lives of GNOME - hackers and contributors. - - Blog entries aggregated on this page are owned by, and represent the - opinion of the author. I'd agree that the last paragraph should probably go to the top of the page, to make it more clear. And perhaps we should make it bold too. A person who, with this disclaimer kept in mind, insists on blaming the entire GNOME community for the behaviour of a single individual on the planet, is simply being intellectually dishonest. I refuse to allow people to minimize human culture to a situation where *they* try to enforce their ideology of P.C. purism simply by being intellectually dishonest. They'll have to try much much harder, for me. P.C.P.O.S. : http://lyricwiki.org/De_Heideroosjes:P.C.P.O.S. Quote: - Politically Correct Piece Of Shit. You kill fun in music, just get out - of the pit. If someone is behaving in a way which is negatively affecting a significant portion of the GNOME community, Then that significant portion of the GNOME community should be grown up enough to understand that the behaviour of an individual doesn't mean that you need to change your culture into a P.C.P.O.S. the board should be the place to go where you can complain, and have your complaint publicly recorded (in the minutes of a board meeting, for example) with anonymity, Your concept of how you see our community has a conflict: You want the board to have respect for anonymity with such complaints, but at the same time you write a bit later: The GNOME project is small enough intimate enough that we can talk freely, no? The project being intimate also means that there's almost zero anonymity. At least no guaranteed anonymity. It means that your proposal will create friction and could eventually disintegrate our already fragile community. I think these proposals will only widen the existing gaps, and could be dangerous for that matter. investigated and evaluated, and if necessary, have the guilty party censured and/or punished. We had to listen to euphemisms for a decade in world politics. You're going to kick people out, right? You didn't even say talk with them about their behaviour first. No, you want to censure them, and punish them. What do you think punishment like censoring means in practice? That everything will be fine afterward? It's identical to kicking them out. Which for example opens the doors for political agendas. And no I'm not a conspiracy theorists, but it's a crazy proposal. Currently, this social policing role has been completely ignored by the foundation and its leaders. Howso? I think that the foundation should be more frugal, and I expect the board to transmit the frugal values to the membership. [CUT] About the rest of your proposals I have no particular strong feelings. But hey, it's not the first time that your and mine ideology on how to act on people's behaviour clash. It's no surprise to me, and you have done similar proposals frequently. And I frequently disagreed with you. I want to voice my opinion that it's certainly not the case that every- body in this community thinks like you that we should start having more control over people's behaviours, if they want to be part of the group, by punishing them. I'd certainly like to see a more friendly community too. I believe you do that by having more team activities. Like the hackfests, the conferences: giving people infrastructure to communicate better, more often and faster. And on top of all, learn our members to Assume people mean well http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct Because that item is the most violated one of all the items on our Code Of Conduct. Thanks, and I hope you understand my concerns. For me, they are as real as your concerns about bad behaviour of individuals. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Philip Van Hoof wrote: snip aggressive rant If someone is behaving in a way which is negatively affecting a significant portion of the GNOME community, Then that significant portion of the GNOME community should be grown up enough to understand that the behaviour of an individual doesn't mean that you need to change your culture into a P.C.P.O.S. This is the kind of reaction I have a problem with - and the kind of reaction which makes me feel we need some kind of higher authority that can evaluate behaviour. You are the classical archetype of the person who says if you have a problem with me, it's your problem, not mine. While this might be true when you're in your own home, when you're in a public park it's not. When a person behaves in a way which is negatively affecting a significant portion of the GNOME community in a GNOME community forum (be it d-d-l, foundation-list, pgo or IRC) then normal people, once they're told that their behaviour is bothering others, stop. A small number of people consider being told they're bothering as provocation, and take it to a whole new level. the board should be the place to go where you can complain, and have your complaint publicly recorded (in the minutes of a board meeting, for example) with anonymity, Your concept of how you see our community has a conflict: You want the board to have respect for anonymity with such complaints, but at the same time you write a bit later: It's usual for people complaining about something to benefit from anonymity to begin with, to avoid any backlash against their complaint. Of course an accusee gets to defend himself see the exidence of ill behaviour, but I see no point in saying bolsh complained that pvanhoof was being an asshole in IRC last week, the board is investigating in the first instance. Much better IMHO to say the board has received a complaint about unacceptable behaviour on IRC on Thursday May 28th. We are investigating. investigated and evaluated, and if necessary, have the guilty party censured and/or punished. We had to listen to euphemisms for a decade in world politics. censure and punish are not euphemisms. You're going to kick people out, right? Since you ask, here are the list of measures which I would expect the board to have at their disposal for this kind of conflict resolution, from the least severe to most severe: 0. Decide that the accusee didn't do anything wrong, and talk to the accuser accusee to resolve the issue 1. Talk to the person in question and ask them to stop 2. Ask the person in question to apologise privately, and if it's not forthcoming, move up the severity scale 3. Publicly name the person, point to their behaviour, and say this is unacceptable behaviour to the board 4. Request a public apology for behaviour, and if it's not forthcoming, move up the severity scale 5. Temporary removal from forum where behaviour occurred (a posting ban for a mailing list, a ban from IRC, temporary removal from pgo) 6. Temporary suspension from the GNOME Foundation and all that goes with it 7. Temporary removal of gnome.org account 8. Permanent removal from where behaviour occurred 9. Permanent suspension from the GNOME Foundation and all that goes with it 10. Permanent removal of gnome.org account (synonymous with expulsion from the project). I imagine that someone would need to be both an aggravated and repeat offender to get anywhere past 4 or 5. And if they are, then the project needs to ask itself the question whether the person's presence is doing more harm than good. You didn't even say talk with them about their behaviour first. No, you want to censure them, and punish them. Talking to someone about their behaviour in an official capacity is a censure. What do you think punishment like censoring means in practice? That everything will be fine afterward? Censure not censor. But hey, it's not the first time that your and mine ideology on how to act on people's behaviour clash. It's no surprise to me, and you have done similar proposals frequently. And I frequently disagreed with you. In fact, to my knowledge, this is the first time I've publicly come out proposed a means for the community to self-regulate the norms we expect from people. We've had informal discussions on IRC, and to be honest it's discussions like those which have led me to think a lot about this issue. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 6:37 AM, Murray Cumming murr...@murrayc.com wrote: On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 17:45 -0400, Luis Villa wrote: That's exactly correct. Another term for it is 'volunteer'. :) You're certainly welcome to volunteer to improve it yourself, of course. It's far beneath her abilities, but can't you delegate the minutes-taking to our paid employee? I'm happy to take notes (and I have at a couple of the meetings), however one of my goals is to not break anything that's working. i.e. not to take over anything that was already working well. (That is the reason I'm not more involved with GUADEC. The GNOME community has been running GUADEC fabulously for years, and you didn't need to hire me to work on it.) That said, my job is to make sure things get done, and so I should have been more proactive about reminding the board to publish the minutes. (We do have minutes from all the meetings. After the meeting they are always sent around for review. They just weren't always published.) Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 16:46 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: Philip Van Hoof wrote: snip aggressive rant As every opinion of me is looked as being aggressive, it's no longer possible for me to have this discussion in a constructive kind of way. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
So I'm hearing Dave say we need more policing and Philip saying everything is ok. What do others think? Does the community think everything is ok? Or if not, do they want to self police or delegate taking action to the board? (Or both.) Philip, I agree that your blog is yours, but supposedly you write blog posts, emails, IRC chats to tell people something. So if you are offending them and responding angrily, are you communicating what you want to be saying to them? For example, if you think people are too politically correct, the way to persuade them of that is probably not to swear at them. I think you have the right to freedom of speech. I even think you have the right to say it any tone and with any words you want to. But if you want people to listen, you need to speak to them in a way *they* don't find offensive. And this is often really hard to do. I dread some conversation topics, like politics, because people are so emotionally involved they end up yelling at each other and neither side convinces the other of anything. Hopefully in the GNOME community we can stick to the topic and keep out offensive language or behaviors so that we can have productive conversations. Often that means making your behavior match a social norm, even if it's more politically correct than you'd normally be. For example, some of my SO's friends tend to swear a lot more than I'm used to. It doesn't offend me, but I don't do it. I've noticed that they don't swear when they talk directly to me. They're socially aware and they've adapted to my social norm. I suppose the question is what is our social norm? That's what Dave and Philip seem to be debating. Stormy On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.org wrote: On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 16:46 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: Philip Van Hoof wrote: snip aggressive rant As every opinion of me is looked as being aggressive, it's no longer possible for me to have this discussion in a constructive kind of way. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
2009/5/29 Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.org: On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 10:45 -0600, Stormy Peters wrote: So I'm hearing Dave say we need more policing and Philip saying everything is ok. What do others think? That's basically indeed what I'm saying: Let's just do normal. There's nothing fundamentally going wrong. Why are we trying to fix a bug that isn't a bug? Does the community think everything is ok? Or if not, do they want to self police or delegate taking action to the board? (Or both.) Philip, I agree that your blog is yours, but supposedly you write blog posts, emails, IRC chats to tell people something. About the blogs and the planet I propose to adopt what planet.maemo does: each and every blog post is elected for inclusion on the planet. But indeed, don't ask people to change their blogs. So if you are offending them and responding angrily, are you communicating what you want to be saying to them? For example, if you think people are too politically correct, the way to persuade them of that is probably not to swear at them. People who disagree sometimes become passionate. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with passionately defending one's opinion. Sure I agree that you should be careful if you want to persuade, too. The debate Dave and I have is whether there's a necessity of a higher authority that decides on what we can and can't say. That's quite excessive in my opinion. And potentially dangerous for our fragile community. There's a fundamental issue here, this is not about what individuals in the community can or can't say, is about when using GNOME's communication channels to say whatever people's feel like can be harming for the community and upset them to a point where some may even stop contributing (or stopping them from starting). People gets loads of audience on their blogs when they are aggregated on P.G.O., that gives you a lot of power. And a great power comes with great responsibility. -- Un saludo, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
2009/5/29 Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.org: The problem would be that this was possible. However, let me quote you the bottom of planet.gnome.org: Quote: - Planet GNOME is a window into the world, work and lives of GNOME - hackers and contributors. - - Blog entries aggregated on this page are owned by, and represent the - opinion of the author. I'd agree that the last paragraph should probably go to the top of the page, to make it more clear. And perhaps we should make it bold too. Is planet.gnome.org managed by the Foundation? I thought that site still was Jeff Waugh's baby. -- mvh Björn ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Note: this is a personal response. I may disclose information only available to the board, but in no way any line in this message represents board's opinion. On 05/28/2009 12:25 PM, Dave Neary wrote: So - this is perhaps not the best time to start this discussion, but then again maybe it's absolutely the best time. This is a call to foundation members who are happy, unhappy or disaffected to say what they think the foundation should be doing that it isn't, shouldn't be doing that it is, and generally what you've been unhappy happy with over the past number of years. I agree that an check for what foundation is and what we want it to be is long overdue. I don't think this is the best timing though. Do you expect the candidates to speak up and reply? Shut up? How does this relate to the upcoming election?! Me first! I think that the foundation should be more involved in conflict resolution and policing the tone of the community. Absolutely disagree. I think we are doing fine. Last thing we need is censorship. I have talked to too many people who don't read pgo, or have turned off individual blogs, don't use IRC any more, or avoid certain mailing lists, because they are unhappy with the tone content of discussions posts. Ask them each to write to the board so the board knows. I'm not a huge fan of making decisions based on there are many, I know, but I can't reveal their names, sorry. I think we're in a very different position now, compared to say, in 2000. I expect we are mostly mature professional people who respect each other and expect to be respected in return. I don't know which lists or channels or blogs you read, but those I check are fairly clean, and if there's some bad stuff is going on (which I've not seen in a while), well, I can always hit the Delete button. No Big Deal! Now if that affects the image of GNOME (project or foundation), that's a separate issue. But then it should be discussed separately. If someone is behaving in a way which is negatively affecting a significant portion of the GNOME community, the board should be the place to go where you can complain, and have your complaint publicly recorded (in the minutes of a board meeting, for example) with anonymity, investigated and evaluated, and if necessary, have the guilty party censured and/or punished. Currently, this social policing role has been completely ignored by the foundation and its leaders. It's not. But over the past year, we've got one or two such complaints. And we have not ignored them. I don't think I have to disclose the details. I don't see any benefits in making them public either. Or do you mean the punishment should include public embarrassment? What if the person complaining is found to be guilty? Seriously, what are we, 8yr olds?! I think that the foundation should be more frugal, and I expect the board to transmit the frugal values to the membership. I was a supporter of being much firmer in asking people to pay part of their travel when being funded by the foundation, or to seek other funding elsewhere (from conference organisers, for example). I don't think that being funded by the foundation should be a due or a reward, foundation funds are an enabler. You keep repeating this. And no matter how many times others do not agree with you, you keep bringing it up again. It's becoming annoying. Let me reply with my point of view on this now. You've said in various places that you think only core contributors should be sponsored, and you said you define core contributor as someone who will pay out of his pocket to go to the conference if not sponsored. You have this image that someone's contribution to GNOME is directly related to whether they can afford paying out of their pocket going to GUADEC. You're wrong. Maybe it is the case, if you live in Europe and are a self-employed contractor who finds lots of business by going to GUADEC. But your test fails in each and all of the following cases, which mind you, I might offer represents a large part of the community: - If you're a student with no income, you don't have 2000USD to spend. Period. - If you have a wife and a 250,000USD mortgate to pay, it's hard to justify a 2000USD trip. Period. - If you have a wife and two kids to raise, it's hard to justify a 2000USD trip. Period. - If you have to take time off work to go to GUADEC, it's hard to justify paying 2000USD also. Period. - If you work full-time on GNOME as your job, and contribute to it in a thousand other ways too, and neither your employer nor the foundation pays for you to go to GUADEC, it's hard to justify paying 2000USD. Period. - If you are studying part-time and have to skip three classes you are paying 400 each for, it's hard to justify paying 2000USD for the trip. In other instances, you suggested people paying a minimum 200euros of their trip. Your argument has been
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
In this case, how about bringing a foundation member in and have them do minutes? sri On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 5:37 AM, Murray Cumming murr...@murrayc.com wrote: On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 17:45 -0400, Luis Villa wrote: That's exactly correct. Another term for it is 'volunteer'. :) You're certainly welcome to volunteer to improve it yourself, of course. It's far beneath her abilities, but can't you delegate the minutes-taking to our paid employee? -- murr...@murrayc.com www.murrayc.com www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
2009/5/29 Stormy Peters stormy.pet...@gmail.com: So I'm hearing Dave say we need more policing and Philip saying everything is ok. What do others think? Well, if anyone wants some perspective, its not like we havent been through all this before: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2006-May/thread.html [...] I suppose the question is what is our social norm? That's what Dave and Philip seem to be debating. I think were discussing something a little more dangerous, I think were debating whether this community is ready to accept one single social norm as the one that defines them (and forcibly rejects others who are not represented by that norm), and even more touchy - we are discussing the possibility to assign a role to a person or a group, who will be ultimately responsible for defining that social norm. Personally, I am proud of what we have achieved so far as a culturally and ethnically diverse crowd of contributors - always getting further in putting our differences aside and resolving the issues which unite us (accepting others for their own social norm and moving on is a challenging thing, it humbles us and makes us stronger in the end). Unless we have some really disturbing evidence that leaving people to their own better judgment is not working, theres no reason to disturb the beautiful community and peace that we do have. Cheers, -Tristan PS: No I dont think this is a debate about planet.gnome.org, if that site misrepresents what it is, a collective blog site of gnome hackers - then that needs to be fixed - or its purpose redefined, but thats a separate issue. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
/me puts board hat on Sometimes a little nudge is all we need :). The story behind the minutes is that when Luis ran for board and was elected and named himself secretary, the rest of us were thinking hurray, we have a dedicated person taking notes and publishing them. But I think we all agree that we made better use of the limited time Luis had to spend on board duties while working towards graduation. And the rest of didn't pick it up. So for most meetings, someone took notes and sent them to the others for review. But no one went back to incorporate the comments and publicize them. For next term, Luis suggests not having a dedicated note-taker, but everyone working using gobby or other collaboration tools to take notes during meetings, and send it to public immediately after the meetings. Now that's a model that should work. Cheers, behdad On 05/29/2009 02:11 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: In this case, how about bringing a foundation member in and have them do minutes? sri On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 5:37 AM, Murray Cumming murr...@murrayc.com mailto:murr...@murrayc.com wrote: On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 17:45 -0400, Luis Villa wrote: That's exactly correct. Another term for it is 'volunteer'. :) You're certainly welcome to volunteer to improve it yourself, of course. It's far beneath her abilities, but can't you delegate the minutes-taking to our paid employee? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
What do you think of the foundation?
Hi all, So - this is perhaps not the best time to start this discussion, but then again maybe it's absolutely the best time. This is a call to foundation members who are happy, unhappy or disaffected to say what they think the foundation should be doing that it isn't, shouldn't be doing that it is, and generally what you've been unhappy happy with over the past number of years. Me first! I think that the foundation should be more involved in conflict resolution and policing the tone of the community. I have talked to too many people who don't read pgo, or have turned off individual blogs, don't use IRC any more, or avoid certain mailing lists, because they are unhappy with the tone content of discussions posts. If someone is behaving in a way which is negatively affecting a significant portion of the GNOME community, the board should be the place to go where you can complain, and have your complaint publicly recorded (in the minutes of a board meeting, for example) with anonymity, investigated and evaluated, and if necessary, have the guilty party censured and/or punished. Currently, this social policing role has been completely ignored by the foundation and its leaders. I think that the foundation should be more frugal, and I expect the board to transmit the frugal values to the membership. I was a supporter of being much firmer in asking people to pay part of their travel when being funded by the foundation, or to seek other funding elsewhere (from conference organisers, for example). I don't think that being funded by the foundation should be a due or a reward, foundation funds are an enabler. I would like to see greater financial and administrative transparency. I don't see any reason why the foundation's gnucash file should be private, for example - and if there is, then at the very least there should be a quarterly financial update summarising everything that's happened in the last quarter. As a donor, I would like to know where my money is going, who's had travel funded, for what purpose, and so on. I want to know that we're planning to spend 15,000 on conference t-shirts so that I can say hold on, I know a t-shirt supplier who might be cheaper - let me get a quote. I want to see seven board members actively communicating, and I want to see the board be more reactive when a board member is inactive for long periods. There is no procedure for temporarily replacing an inactive board member, or if there is, it's never been activated. In all my boards, there were 1 or 2 board members who just stopped reading (or at least replying to) board email for periods of months. I recall one particular occasion where a board member, during a face to face meeting, revealed that he hadn't read any of a thread which had been ongoing for 6 weeks on the mailing list, and asked everyone to wait while he pulled his mail and caught up. This year, at least looking at the attendance lists of the available minutes, it appears that Jeff was regularly missing meetings from March on, and he was replaced in early December. What happened in between? How about the other board members - how do you feel about your performance this year? In short, I would like a board of which the community has the ear, working primarily to improve the social and financial condition of the project, and doing so in the most complete transparency possible. I would like not to have a board member who is so busy that they don't have time to blog, or ask for opinions here, or publish minutes meeting agendas in a timely fashion. I would like to see consultation happen in such an informal and regular fashion that we don't refer to questions from board members as Requests for Comments, which make it sound like you have to polish content for an hour and publish the document, going through board approval before you go public. I'd like to see the 7 most frequent posters here be the board members, on lots of topics, related to GUADEC, the Summit, hackfests, budget, marketing, Friends of GNOME (and I'd like to commend Stormy on the way she's been leading on this) and more. I don't want to pick on anyone here - times change, boards too, but what I feel is that the board (any board) currently doesn't really know what its role is. Boards take themselves seriously, try to present a united front, don't fight in public, and publish/announce/... - in short, broadcast to the membership what they're working on. I would like us to move more towards a mode where most of the announcements coming out of the foundation are coming from the membership rather than the board, and where the entire foundation shares in the difficulties that the board has borne on their shoulders for the past few years. The GNOME project is small enough intimate enough that we can talk freely, no? The KDE eV solution to this is to make the foundation members list members-only (private archives) - should we
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
OK, I'll bite. I was going to run for the board but I haven't been particularly active due to work and school combo. (although I must object that mailing list participation as indicator of how fit you are as a board member, talk is cheap) My comments inline: On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 9:25 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi all, So - this is perhaps not the best time to start this discussion, but then again maybe it's absolutely the best time. This is a call to foundation members who are happy, unhappy or disaffected to say what they think the foundation should be doing that it isn't, shouldn't be doing that it is, and generally what you've been unhappy happy with over the past number of years. It is always a good time to have a discussion as a sort of a health check on our community. So I appreciate you bringing this up. Me first! I think that the foundation should be more involved in conflict resolution and policing the tone of the community. I have talked to too many people who don't read pgo, or have turned off individual blogs, don't use IRC any more, or avoid certain mailing lists, because they are unhappy with the tone content of discussions posts. If someone is behaving in a way which is negatively affecting a significant portion of the GNOME community, the board should be the place to go where you can complain, and have your complaint publicly recorded (in the minutes of a board meeting, for example) with anonymity, investigated and evaluated, and if necessary, have the guilty party censured and/or punished. Currently, this social policing role has been completely ignored by the foundation and its leaders. What would you do then? I guess ultimately I don't know what happens to change the tone. In general, GNOME does a pretty good job of self policying and there are a lot of decent people who do attempt to change the tone in the mailing list if it does turn ugly. It's nothing compared to the old days when most of us were all a bunch of 20 somethings. :-) In the end I think it will cause more problems than it solves. It's not a board issue, but rather those of us who know better should simply step in and defuse the situation. You want people to be a statesman, but certainly I don't think it's something that should be discussed in board meetings or put in minutes. That just makes people cynical. I think that the foundation should be more frugal, and I expect the board to transmit the frugal values to the membership. I was a supporter of being much firmer in asking people to pay part of their travel when being funded by the foundation, or to seek other funding elsewhere (from conference organisers, for example). I don't think that being funded by the foundation should be a due or a reward, foundation funds are an enabler. In these hard times, we should do whatever we can to keep ourselves in the red. Being part of a conference committee I can well understand what it means on deciding on what is important to spend money on. Money should always be spent on either 1) getting important people who to conferences that can advance GNOME or the free desktop 2) spending money strategically that either provides a monetary return (friends of gnome) or creates greater market share. I would like to see greater financial and administrative transparency. I don't see any reason why the foundation's gnucash file should be private, for example - and if there is, then at the very least there should be a quarterly financial update summarising everything that's happened in the last quarter. As a donor, I would like to know where my money is going, who's had travel funded, for what purpose, and so on. I want to know that we're planning to spend 15,000 on conference t-shirts so that I can say hold on, I know a t-shirt supplier who might be cheaper - let me get a quote. That's assuming people are in that mind frame. :) Others could react by woohoo, I'm going to make sure I get one for my entire family they are making a lot! But transparency is always good. I'm all for that. I want to see seven board members actively communicating, and I want to see the board be more reactive when a board member is inactive for long periods. There is no procedure for temporarily replacing an inactive board member, or if there is, it's never been activated. This I agree with 100%. If you commit to the board then we expect that you will put in your time in and move the platform forward. It shouldn't be used as some kind of resume filler or a way to show self importance. One of the things that really annoys me about foundation/board stuff. I expect them to sheppard good projects so that they are a success. Sometimes I wonder what the hell people do... looking at the attendance lists of the available minutes, it appears that Jeff was regularly missing meetings from March on, and he was replaced in early December. What happened in between? How about the
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
I would like to see greater financial and administrative transparency. I ... I want to see seven board members actively communicating, and I want to ... front, don't fight in public, and publish/announce/... - in short, broadcast to the membership what they're working on. My only complaint with the board is that the handling of the minutes really has been amateurish. The minutes lurch out months after the meeting, with a sorry I've been busy usually attached. It's unprofessional. - Mike ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak m...@avtechpulse.com wrote: I would like to see greater financial and administrative transparency. I ... I want to see seven board members actively communicating, and I want to ... front, don't fight in public, and publish/announce/... - in short, broadcast to the membership what they're working on. My only complaint with the board is that the handling of the minutes really has been amateurish. The minutes lurch out months after the meeting, with a sorry I've been busy usually attached. It's unprofessional. That's exactly correct. Another term for it is 'volunteer'. :) You're certainly welcome to volunteer to improve it yourself, of course. This is not to say I'm proud of the level of service I've provided this year; I certainly would have liked to have been more responsive and timely, and deeply wish I could have done better. I certainly wouldn't be able to improve it next year, which is part of why I'm stepping away from the board overall. But I've been trying to keep a lot of other balls in the air, and I have received very little in the way of thanks for the work I *have* done, so I'm not going to lose too much sleep over this overall. I have a lot to say in this thread in general; I think Dave is right that it is more than high time we re-examined the structure of the Foundation and relationship of Foundation, board, and community, even if we might disagree on the particulars. But I'm swamped with a lot of other things right now so it might take several more days (or even a week) to get to them. If that isn't professional enough, I apologize in advance. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
