Hello,
I do not have at hand the letter that is received by people asking to be a member but with no or nearly no contribution, and so refused.
I think this letter is much too rude, and that it's a waste of good will not to make some sort of follow up. There are not so many :-)
I can try to do so.
I propose to have a letter of this sort (very incomplete, please read and comment)
https://en.opensuse.org/User:Jdd/letter_to_people_asking_to_be_a_member_2015
do we have a forum/mailing list that we could ask such people to subscribe? "opensuse@" seems to me much to intimidating :-)
thanks jdd
jdd - 9:57 29.05.15 wrote:
Hello,
I do not have at hand the letter that is received by people asking to be a member but with no or nearly no contribution, and so refused.
I think this letter is much too rude, and that it's a waste of good will not to make some sort of follow up. There are not so many :-)
I would prefer/suggest to start with pointing out what is wrong/rude in current letter.
I can try to do so.
I propose to have a letter of this sort (very incomplete, please read and comment)
https://en.opensuse.org/User:Jdd/letter_to_people_asking_to_be_a_member_2015
do we have a forum/mailing list that we could ask such people to subscribe? "opensuse@" seems to me much to intimidating :-)
I would advice against pointing to one particular person as this person would become single critical point in the whole process. I think opensuse or opensuse-project seems like a good place to start.
Michal Hrusecky - 22:31 29.05.15 wrote:
jdd - 9:57 29.05.15 wrote:
Hello,
I do not have at hand the letter that is received by people asking to be a member but with no or nearly no contribution, and so refused.
I think this letter is much too rude, and that it's a waste of good will not to make some sort of follow up. There are not so many :-)
I would prefer/suggest to start with pointing out what is wrong/rude in current letter.
So I dug up the letter, we can discuss it and see where are places for improvements:
Hi <username>,
everybody is welcome to participate and get involved in the openSUSE project and we grant membership for those that have shown a continued and substantial contribution to the openSUSE project. Membership officials have rejected your application since that does not apply to you. We just found too little contribution and encourage you to get more involved with openSUSE and then apply again for membership.
As a person new to openSUSE you might check the "How to Participate" which gives a variety of possibilities, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate to start contributing. Or you join our bi-weekly project meeting to see what' going on, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Meetings
If you disagree with the decision, please send an email to membership-officials@opensuse.org
You can start contributing to openSUSE right away, you do not need to become a recognized openSUSE member,
Best Regards, Membership officials
I can try to do so.
I propose to have a letter of this sort (very incomplete, please read and comment)
https://en.opensuse.org/User:Jdd/letter_to_people_asking_to_be_a_member_2015
do we have a forum/mailing list that we could ask such people to subscribe? "opensuse@" seems to me much to intimidating :-)
I would advice against pointing to one particular person as this person would become single critical point in the whole process. I think opensuse or opensuse-project seems like a good place to start.
Le 29/05/2015 22:53, Michal Hrusecky a écrit :
Michal Hrusecky - 22:31 29.05.15 wrote:
So I dug up the letter, we can discuss it and see where are places for improvements:
good, I couldn't find it (and didn't keep a copy for myself).
I find the text very impersonal and unfriendly. As I understand it, most of the people asking to be a member simply do not understand what this mean for us, but are willing to contribute in some form. We have to make as most as we can to keep them around.
Hi <username>,
everybody is welcome to participate and get involved in the openSUSE project and we grant membership for those that have shown a continued and substantial contribution to the openSUSE project.
strictly speaking, this is right, but "everybody" is nobody!
it remember me the "we will call you later" you may receive when you ask for a job
don't forget people coming there have at least done a first step: registering to connect, I think we have to thanks them for that.
what I propose myself may not be the best wording (I'm not english native), but shows the goal. give the reader the will to read ahead :-)
"We want to thank you for asking to be an openSUSE member. This means that you are already an openSUSE user and already enjoying the quality of openSUSE.
By asking to be a member, you have already made your first step in this direction :-). "
Membership officials have rejected your application since that does not apply to you. We just found too little contribution and encourage you to get more involved with openSUSE and then apply again for membership.
As a person new to openSUSE you might check the "How to Participate" which gives a variety of possibilities,
we have to provide a *very simple* task we are nearly sure the user can do to begin the process, the simpler I could imagine was:
"What you can do now, if you haven't already, is to fill your wiki page (http://www.opensuse.org/) on the English wiki (the common language here can't be anything other than English!)"
worth long time reading
to start contributing. Or
you join our bi-weekly project meeting to see what' going on, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Meetings
whow... most people do not have a meeting in they vicinity, even once a year!
If you disagree with the decision, please send an email to membership-officials@opensuse.org
You can start contributing to openSUSE right away, you do not need to become a recognized openSUSE member,
I think we should have a personalized following; Our language (as openSUSE, not the english, even if being in english do not make things easier) may have to be explained.
How many people do ask again right now?
what would be a real help is an interface very similar to the one used to accept or deny the membership (with several links to way to make evidence of activity), with something to write down who did the survey and what was the result, and kept after the membership, because it's first/major importance to verify we do not lose member for simple lack of communication
I know it's work, so why I proposed to begin
thanks jdd
jdd wrote:
to start contributing. Or
you join our bi-weekly project meeting to see what' going on, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Meetings
whow... most people do not have a meeting in they vicinity, even once a year!
It's an IRC meeting, not in person.
Le 01/06/2015 17:01, Per Jessen a écrit :
jdd wrote:
to start contributing. Or
you join our bi-weekly project meeting to see what' going on, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Meetings
whow... most people do not have a meeting in they vicinity, even once a year!
It's an IRC meeting, not in person.
I wonder if it's not worst, and the link sent go to th meeeting page, not IRC (at least not on the frist lines)
jdd
jdd wrote:
Le 01/06/2015 17:01, Per Jessen a écrit :
jdd wrote:
to start contributing. Or
you join our bi-weekly project meeting to see what' going on, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Meetings
whow... most people do not have a meeting in they vicinity, even once a year!
It's an IRC meeting, not in person.
I wonder if it's not worst, and the link sent go to th meeeting page, not IRC (at least not on the frist lines)
Yeah. I'm also not sure if joining the project meeting is really going to show anyone "what's going on".
Le 01/06/2015 17:15, Per Jessen a écrit :
Yeah. I'm also not sure if joining the project meeting is really going to show anyone "what's going on".
my position is that it's very important not to discourage a people that already did the first step of registering to connect (necessary to be candidate), there are not so many.
In my Linux User group (local), I have my personal phone number on the web site. I get 2/3 calls a year, but most of these people come to meetings after that. Any kind of seemingly personal contact build stronger links than robot answer :-)
jdd
Michal Hrusecky wrote:
Membership officials have rejected your application since that does not apply to you. We just found too little contribution and encourage you to get more involved with openSUSE and then apply again for membership.
This does sound a little harsh.
How about this instead:
After having reviewed your application for membership, we regret to have to say that we don't think your contributions are currently sufficient to warrant openSUSE membership. We suggest you get more involved with the project and the communities, then we would welcome your renewed application at a later time.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
On 2015-06-01 16:59, Per Jessen wrote:
Michal Hrusecky wrote:
Membership officials have rejected your application since that does not apply to you. We just found too little contribution and encourage you to get more involved with openSUSE and then apply again for membership.
This does sound a little harsh.
How about this instead:
After having reviewed your application for membership, we regret to have to say that we don't think your contributions are currently sufficient to warrant openSUSE membership. We suggest you get more involved with the project and the communities, then we would welcome your renewed application at a later time.
Much better.
- -- Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" (Minas Tirith))
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 05/29/2015 04:53 PM, Michal Hrusecky wrote:
Michal Hrusecky - 22:31 29.05.15 wrote:
jdd - 9:57 29.05.15 wrote:
Hello,
I do not have at hand the letter that is received by people asking to be a member but with no or nearly no contribution, and so refused.
I think this letter is much too rude, and that it's a waste of good will not to make some sort of follow up. There are not so many :-)
I would prefer/suggest to start with pointing out what is wrong/rude in current letter.
So I dug up the letter, we can discuss it and see where are places for improvements:
Hi <username>,
everybody is welcome to participate and get involved in the openSUSE project and we grant membership for those that have shown a continued and substantial contribution to the openSUSE project. Membership officials have rejected your application since that does not apply to you. We just found too little contribution and encourage you to get more involved with openSUSE and then apply again for membership.
As a person new to openSUSE you might check the "How to Participate" which gives a variety of possibilities, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate to start contributing. Or you join our bi-weekly project meeting to see what' going on, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Meetings
If you disagree with the decision, please send an email to membership-officials@opensuse.org
You can start contributing to openSUSE right away, you do not need to become a recognized openSUSE member,
Best Regards, Membership officials
Lots of room for improvement, my suggestion
"""" Hi <username>,
Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time. However, this does not preclude you from applying again in the future after you have had a chance to be more involved with the openSUSE projec t.
If you need additional information about how to get involved the following might be a good starting point http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate.
We are looking forward to seeing additional contributions from you and hope that after some time of continued substantial contributions you will re-apply to become an openSUSE member.
If you feel your contributions meet the definition for membership and we were just not able to find your contributions please e-mail us at membership-officials at opensuse dot org
Regards, Memebrship team """"
Later, Robert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 3:06 PM, Robert Schweikert rjschwei@suse.com wrote:
Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time.
===
I'd insert a sentence in the middle:
Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued.
As you may know openSUSE members have voting privileges for who the board members are as well as occasionally participating in other survey and direction setting activities. Thus being an openSUSE member designates our members as people not only using openSUSE but also given the privilege of participating in guiding the future of openSUSE.
After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time.
Greg
On Monday 2015-06-01 21:21, Greg Freemyer wrote:
"Thus being an openSUSE member designates our members as people not only using openSUSE but also given the privilege of participating in guiding the future of openSUSE."
Which is not quite true, either. - That is to say I am of the opinion that my involvement _is_ having an effect on openSUSE, even without registration.
On Monday 01 June 2015 15:06:54 Robert Schweikert wrote:
"Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time. However, this does not preclude you from applying again in the future after you have had a chance to be more involved with the openSUSE projec t."
Where is it defined what a "contribution level to warrant us to accept your application" is? It would be much better, if people would have a concrete idea of what they would have to actually do to become members.
That said, the whole idea of judging people's contributions feels unwelcoming to me. I think it is a structural flaw of the openSUSE membership that you can't join by doing things, but you have to pass a committee. This is not how you encourage people to become part of a community. I would be very much in favor of just eliminating the need for discussing wording of rejection letters by not rejecting people who want to be part of the community.
On 02.06.2015 13:30, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Monday 01 June 2015 15:06:54 Robert Schweikert wrote:
"Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time. However, this does not preclude you from applying again in the future after you have had a chance to be more involved with the openSUSE projec t."
Where is it defined what a "contribution level to warrant us to accept your application" is? It would be much better, if people would have a concrete idea of what they would have to actually do to become members.
No, please do not start thinking about a definition now ;-)
Rather the other way around: Do we _really_ have a problem with too many (even inactive) members? I guess not. So why decline _at_all_? Is it that we need to protect our nice club here? Yes, we can drop out obvious cheaters (I am sure the board is able to judge that) but all (how many?) the others? If they're interested, just let them in. Somebody who does not contribute today, can do tomorrow!
That said, the whole idea of judging people's contributions feels unwelcoming to me. I think it is a structural flaw of the openSUSE membership that you can't join by doing things, but you have to pass a committee. This is not how you encourage people to become part of a community. I would be very much in favor of just eliminating the need for discussing wording of rejection letters by not rejecting people who want to be part of the community.
Exactly. Rather discuss a letter such as "We have seen you being active so much in openSUSE recently, how about you become an openSUSE member to help us making the right decisions?". Or just do some work :o)
Thanks,
klaas
Hey,
On 02.06.2015 13:56, Klaas Freitag wrote:
On 02.06.2015 13:30, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Monday 01 June 2015 15:06:54 Robert Schweikert wrote:
"Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time. However, this does not preclude you from applying again in the future after you have had a chance to be more involved with the openSUSE projec t."
Where is it defined what a "contribution level to warrant us to accept your application" is? It would be much better, if people would have a concrete idea of what they would have to actually do to become members.
No, please do not start thinking about a definition now ;-)
Rather the other way around: Do we _really_ have a problem with too many (even inactive) members? I guess not.
All elections we held have a pretty weak voter turnout. Weak enough that it's debatable that the outcome represents the voters body opinion. Apart from that everything is fine ;-)
So why decline _at_all_? Is it that we need to protect our nice club here?
Yes we do need to protect our nice club to some degree. We need to make sure that the direction we're going and the decisions we're taking are made by people who will suffer the consequences of them.
Somebody who does not contribute today, can do tomorrow!
And can apply the day after tomorrow...
Rather discuss a letter such as "We have seen you being active so much in openSUSE recently, how about you become an openSUSE member to help us making the right decisions?". Or just do some work :o)
Would also be an option but how is that more welcoming and more practical?
Henne
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On 06/02/2015 08:24 AM, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 02.06.2015 13:56, Klaas Freitag wrote:
On 02.06.2015 13:30, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Monday 01 June 2015 15:06:54 Robert Schweikert wrote:
"Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time. However, this does not preclude you from applying again in the future after you have had a chance to be more involved with the openSUSE projec t."
Where is it defined what a "contribution level to warrant us to accept your application" is? It would be much better, if people would have a concrete idea of what they would have to actually do to become members.
No, please do not start thinking about a definition now ;-)
Rather the other way around: Do we _really_ have a problem with too many (even inactive) members? I guess not.
All elections we held have a pretty weak voter turnout. Weak enough that it's debatable that the outcome represents the voters body opinion. Apart from that everything is fine ;-)
As Henne points out, the board election is probably the component where the inactivity is the most glaring. For members there are some "perks", one of which is to be able to vote for and the other is to be elected to the openSUSE Board. So if we have 500 members (numbers are made up because I was too lazy to look them up ;) ) and 125 vote during board elections what does that say about the other 375?
- - Are they no longer active? - - Are they active contributors but do not care about the board and thus our project governance? - - .....
One can probably have a very long list of questions about this state. This happens to be the state we are in, and thus to answer the question. Yes, inactive members are an issue.
The same problem manifests itself for oSC. If we have 500 members and we cannot motivate at least 1/2 of the membership to get their butts off the couch and show up at oSC what does that mean? Maybe it means that the membership number is inflated and of the 500 that are "members" only 100 or so really care and of those 100 we get 50 showing up at oSC. Then we have 50% of members who care show up and that's not a bad number. Problem is we do not know.
It goes back to the discussion we had a couple of years ago, and I still have the same opinion. Those that are active in the project should determine the direction and should have more input than those who were active in the past but are no longer active. This does not imply that the contributions of those that are no longer active should be ignored, give credit where credit is due, but as far as the current status the distinction between active and inactive members is quite important.
So why decline _at_all_? Is it that we need to protect our nice club here?
Yes we do need to protect our nice club to some degree. We need to make sure that the direction we're going and the decisions we're taking are made by people who will suffer the consequences of them.
I'd say "protection" is not quite the way to think about it as there is nothing really to protect. However, it is about the direction of the project and the governance model, and maybe that requires "protection" ;) .
At some point it was decided that an elected board would guide the governance of the project. This decision has consequences, as in limit the number of people that can be elected and that can vote to a certain pool. To establish this pool of people a membership model is a reasonable choice. From this, one can reasonably conclude that some kind of "proof that I care" entry gate to the membership is a reasonable approach. For many organizations "proof that I care" comes from people's (member's) wallets, i.e. you pay and your in. For openSUSE, "proof that I care" means "sustained and substantial contributions". I would claim that the latter is a much better indicator of "proof that I care" than the former. However, the later is much more difficult to keep current. In the "pay for proof" model it is easy, when a member doesn't pay the dues on time they are out as the member "obviously" no longer cares, the wallet as sitting a bit too tight ;) . The problem with the "contribution model as proof" chosen by openSUSE is that because people have to make personal investment, i.e. give something that is much more valuable than money, it is much harder for people to let go. Therefore, the topic of inactivity and possibly "loosing" membership is much more sensitive than in the "pay for membership" model.
**** Excursion **** As people we over value our contributions/investments. Think about the value people place on a bicycle they bought pre-assembled vs. the bicycle that came in a box with "some assembly required" instructions. Even if both bikes cost the same and they look the same, the person that assembled their bike will place a much higher value on that bike than the person that "just" bought it. **** End Excursion ****
Anyway, the chosen model of membership does not appear to be a deterrent to people joining the community and contributing to the project, IMHO.
Later, Robert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 2015-06-02 15:12, Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/02/2015 08:24 AM, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
All elections we held have a pretty weak voter turnout. Weak enough that it's debatable that the outcome represents the voters body opinion. Apart from that everything is fine ;-)
As Henne points out, the board election is probably the component where the inactivity is the most glaring. For members there are some "perks", one of which is to be able to vote for and the other is to be elected to the openSUSE Board. So if we have 500 members (numbers are made up because I was too lazy to look them up ;) ) and 125 vote during board elections what does that say about the other 375?
- Are they no longer active? - Are they active contributors but do
not care about the board and thus our project governance?
I can tell you my case: I simply do not know the candidates. Few of the names are familiar to me.
This time I was reading their pages, which is a long process for me, when election timed out and I finally couldn't vote.
The same problem manifests itself for oSC. If we have 500 members and we cannot motivate at least 1/2 of the membership to get their butts off the couch and show up at oSC what does that mean?
Again, I can tell you my case: it is quite far from my place of residence, and travel is expensive. I can't afford it.
- -- Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)
Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/02/2015 08:24 AM, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
All elections we held have a pretty weak voter turnout. Weak enough that it's debatable that the outcome represents the voters body opinion. Apart from that everything is fine ;-)
As Henne points out, the board election is probably the component where the inactivity is the most glaring. For members there are some "perks", one of which is to be able to vote for and the other is to be elected to the openSUSE Board. So if we have 500 members (numbers are made up because I was too lazy to look them up ;) ) and 125 vote during board elections what does that say about the other 375?
- Are they no longer active?
- Are they active contributors but do not care about the board and
thus our project governance?
Probably the latter. We certainly can't assume "not voting" = "not active".
One can probably have a very long list of questions about this state. This happens to be the state we are in, and thus to answer the question. Yes, inactive members are an issue.
I was wondering about the meaning of "inactive" when jdd first started the thread last week. Do we have a way of determining who or how many are "inactive"?
The same problem manifests itself for oSC. If we have 500 members and we cannot motivate at least 1/2 of the membership to get their butts off the couch and show up at oSC what does that mean? Maybe it means that the membership number is inflated and of the 500 that are "members" only 100 or so really care
Maybe it just means that attending oSC is a low priority for many. I know it is for me.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 06/02/2015 10:17 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/02/2015 08:24 AM, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
All elections we held have a pretty weak voter turnout. Weak enough that it's debatable that the outcome represents the voters body opinion. Apart from that everything is fine ;-)
As Henne points out, the board election is probably the component where the inactivity is the most glaring. For members there are some "perks", one of which is to be able to vote for and the other is to be elected to the openSUSE Board. So if we have 500 members (numbers are made up because I was too lazy to look them up ;) ) and 125 vote during board elections what does that say about the other 375?
- Are they no longer active? - - Are they active contributors
but do not care about the board and thus our project governance?
Probably the latter. We certainly can't assume "not voting" = "not active".
One can probably have a very long list of questions about this state. This happens to be the state we are in, and thus to answer the question. Yes, inactive members are an issue.
I was wondering about the meaning of "inactive" when jdd first started the thread last week. Do we have a way of determining who or how many are "inactive"?
Not at the moment.
Later, Robert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
Le 03/06/2015 14:54, Robert Schweikert a écrit :
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 06/02/2015 10:17 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
I was wondering about the meaning of "inactive" when jdd first started the thread last week. Do we have a way of determining who or how many are "inactive"?
Not at the moment.
it's an other thread. I wont let this unanswered, but not here, thanks jdd
Do we track who votes during these sessions. I think one way to determine if people care is if they cast a vote. This is the methodology used around the globe in democratic votes. If I don't care about an election, I do not take the time to register or vote. In order to keep a more accurate current count, we could implement a re-registration process.
On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 09:12 -0400, Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/02/2015 08:24 AM, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 02.06.2015 13:56, Klaas Freitag wrote:
On 02.06.2015 13:30, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Monday 01 June 2015 15:06:54 Robert Schweikert wrote:
"Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time. However, this does not preclude you from applying again in the future after you have had a chance to be more involved with the openSUSE projec t."
Where is it defined what a "contribution level to warrant us to accept your application" is? It would be much better, if people would have a concrete idea of what they would have to actually do to become members.
No, please do not start thinking about a definition now ;-)
Rather the other way around: Do we _really_ have a problem with too many (even inactive) members? I guess not.
All elections we held have a pretty weak voter turnout. Weak enough that it's debatable that the outcome represents the voters body opinion. Apart from that everything is fine ;-)
As Henne points out, the board election is probably the component where the inactivity is the most glaring. For members there are some "perks", one of which is to be able to vote for and the other is to be elected to the openSUSE Board. So if we have 500 members (numbers are made up because I was too lazy to look them up ;) ) and 125 vote during board elections what does that say about the other 375?
- Are they no longer active?
- Are they active contributors but do not care about the board and
thus our project governance?
- .....
One can probably have a very long list of questions about this state. This happens to be the state we are in, and thus to answer the question. Yes, inactive members are an issue.
The same problem manifests itself for oSC. If we have 500 members and we cannot motivate at least 1/2 of the membership to get their butts off the couch and show up at oSC what does that mean? Maybe it means that the membership number is inflated and of the 500 that are "members" only 100 or so really care and of those 100 we get 50 showing up at oSC. Then we have 50% of members who care show up and that's not a bad number. Problem is we do not know.
It goes back to the discussion we had a couple of years ago, and I still have the same opinion. Those that are active in the project should determine the direction and should have more input than those who were active in the past but are no longer active. This does not imply that the contributions of those that are no longer active should be ignored, give credit where credit is due, but as far as the current status the distinction between active and inactive members is quite important.
So why decline _at_all_? Is it that we need to protect our nice club here?
Yes we do need to protect our nice club to some degree. We need to make sure that the direction we're going and the decisions we're taking are made by people who will suffer the consequences of them.
I'd say "protection" is not quite the way to think about it as there is nothing really to protect. However, it is about the direction of the project and the governance model, and maybe that requires "protection" ;) .
At some point it was decided that an elected board would guide the governance of the project. This decision has consequences, as in limit the number of people that can be elected and that can vote to a certain pool. To establish this pool of people a membership model is a reasonable choice. From this, one can reasonably conclude that some kind of "proof that I care" entry gate to the membership is a reasonable approach. For many organizations "proof that I care" comes from people's (member's) wallets, i.e. you pay and your in. For openSUSE, "proof that I care" means "sustained and substantial contributions". I would claim that the latter is a much better indicator of "proof that I care" than the former. However, the later is much more difficult to keep current. In the "pay for proof" model it is easy, when a member doesn't pay the dues on time they are out as the member "obviously" no longer cares, the wallet as sitting a bit too tight ;) . The problem with the "contribution model as proof" chosen by openSUSE is that because people have to make personal investment, i.e. give something that is much more valuable than money, it is much harder for people to let go. Therefore, the topic of inactivity and possibly "loosing" membership is much more sensitive than in the "pay for membership" model.
**** Excursion **** As people we over value our contributions/investments. Think about the value people place on a bicycle they bought pre-assembled vs. the bicycle that came in a box with "some assembly required" instructions. Even if both bikes cost the same and they look the same, the person that assembled their bike will place a much higher value on that bike than the person that "just" bought it. **** End Excursion ****
Anyway, the chosen model of membership does not appear to be a deterrent to people joining the community and contributing to the project, IMHO.
Later, Robert
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
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On 2015-06-02 17:51, Joel Gordon wrote:
Do we track who votes during these sessions. I think one way to determine if people care is if they cast a vote. This is the methodology used around the globe in democratic votes.
No, it is not. The only valid measurement in democracy is statistical: you can not register who votes or not, because choosing whether to vote is also a vote decision that deserves secrecy, same as the actual vote (notice result counts for blank votes, etc).
There is a registry used to ensure that people only vote once. But making use of that information for something else is akin to using information about who voted whom.
- -- Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" (Minas Tirith))
On Tuesday 02 of June 2015 09:12:28 Robert Schweikert wrote:
As Henne points out, the board election is probably the component where the inactivity is the most glaring. ... The same problem manifests itself for oSC. If we have 500 members and we cannot motivate at least 1/2 of the membership to get their butts off the couch and show up at oSC what does that mean? Maybe it means that the membership number is inflated and of the 500 that are "members" only 100 or so really care and of those 100 we get 50 showing up at oSC. Then we have 50% of members who care show up and that's not a bad number. Problem is we do not know.
I don't think it's the same problem. When it comes to elections, you can surely talk about taking one's butt off the couch (figuratively, of course, as to vote, one doesn't actually need to take it off) but visiting a conference is something completely different. The travel and accomodation expenses might seem negligible to you but not everyone feels the same way (and it's (by far) not only matter of perception).
In the end, everyone has to decide whether their presence at the conference is worth the price. And I find nothing surprising or disturbing in it if many (or even most) of them - including active members of the community - decide that their answer is negative.
Michal Kubeček
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On 06/03/2015 01:42 AM, Michal Kubecek wrote:
On Tuesday 02 of June 2015 09:12:28 Robert Schweikert wrote:
As Henne points out, the board election is probably the component where the inactivity is the most glaring. ... The same problem manifests itself for oSC. If we have 500 members and we cannot motivate at least 1/2 of the membership to get their butts off the couch and show up at oSC what does that mean? Maybe it means that the membership number is inflated and of the 500 that are "members" only 100 or so really care and of those 100 we get 50 showing up at oSC. Then we have 50% of members who care show up and that's not a bad number. Problem is we do not know.
I don't think it's the same problem. When it comes to elections, you can surely talk about taking one's butt off the couch (figuratively, of course, as to vote, one doesn't actually need to take it off) but visiting a conference is something completely different. The travel and accomodation expenses might seem negligible to you but not everyone feels the same way (and it's (by far) not only matter of perception).
Yes, travel expenses need to be taken into consideration. However, the TSP is there to help. While I do not have the hard numbers handy, my gut feel tells me that we do not get overwhelmed by TSP applications and in the end we have money left over.
In the end, everyone has to decide whether their presence at the conference is worth the price. And I find nothing surprising or disturbing in it if many (or even most) of them - including active members of the community - decide that their answer is negative.
Fair enough, that of course raises the question if we should continue with oSC. Considering that it is a lot of effort for volunteers to pull the conference together. If members and contributors cannot be bothered to show up to our own conference then maybe we should not undertake the endeavour past oSC16.
Later, Robert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
Le 03/06/2015 14:51, Robert Schweikert a écrit :
Yes, travel expenses need to be taken into consideration. However, the TSP is there to help. While I do not have the hard numbers handy, my gut feel tells me that we do not get overwhelmed by TSP applications and in the end we have money left over.
good to know. But may be the system should be improved. This is an other tread evantually
Fair enough, that of course raises the question if we should continue with oSC. Considering that it is a lot of effort for volunteers to pull the conference together. If members and contributors cannot be bothered to show up to our own conference then maybe we should not undertake the endeavour past oSC16.
I think this as pretty rude.
We could first ask us why people do not come (enough), and what could be improved to make them come.
For example, having an OSC moving from location to location each year should mean that we try to be more near of the users. Good. But what do we do to make local users come? I see little in the OSC programm to make them comfortable.
Could we, for example, do an install party? I learned by accident than a powerfull server could locally serve installs, why don't use it?
this also is not for this thread
please do come back to the subject: How can we make the *refused* people not abandoned to themselves too fast? We need them, may be not as members, but as basic contributors.
There is no need to conclude fast, We can let this discussion for some time (as I see more and more contributors with interesting content, thanks)
jdd
jdd wrote:
Fair enough, that of course raises the question if we should continue with oSC. Considering that it is a lot of effort for volunteers to pull the conference together. If members and contributors cannot be bothered to show up to our own conference then maybe we should not undertake the endeavour past oSC16.
I think this as pretty rude.
I have to agree - maybe Robert was feeling a bit frustrated. I"m sure he didn't mean to say "If members and contributors cannot be bothered to show up to our own conference".
We could first ask us why people do not come (enough), and what could be improved to make them come.
Yep.
For example, having an OSC moving from location to location each year should mean that we try to be more near of the users. Good. But what do we do to make local users come? I see little in the OSC programm to make them comfortable.
Could we, for example, do an install party? I learned by accident than a powerfull server could locally serve installs, why don't use it?
That might be more of a topic for a user group meeting, not the openSUSE conference (for members and contributors).
please do come back to the subject: How can we make the *refused* people not abandoned to themselves too fast? We need them, may be not as members, but as basic contributors.
I think Cornelius Schumacher is right - just open memberhip to everyone on the assumption they will contribute sooner or later.
Hey,
On 06/03/2015 03:34 PM, Per Jessen wrote:
jdd wrote:
Fair enough, that of course raises the question if we should continue with oSC. Considering that it is a lot of effort for volunteers to pull the conference together. If members and contributors cannot be bothered to show up to our own conference then maybe we should not undertake the endeavour past oSC16.
I think this as pretty rude.
I have to agree - maybe Robert was feeling a bit frustrated. I"m sure he didn't mean to say "If members and contributors cannot be bothered to show up to our own conference".
We could first ask us why people do not come (enough), and what could be improved to make them come.
Yep.
@henne: Do we still have the attendance list from oSC? Maybe we could start to transfer it into OSEM and then send a survey to the attended people and also to the people which registered and not attended! Don't know if this is too late now but maybe a first attemp for an oSC "quality assurance"?
* Robert Schweikert rjschwei@suse.com [06-03-15 08:54]:
On 06/03/2015 01:42 AM, Michal Kubecek wrote:
[...]
In the end, everyone has to decide whether their presence at the conference is worth the price. And I find nothing surprising or disturbing in it if many (or even most) of them - including active members of the community - decide that their answer is negative.
Fair enough, that of course raises the question if we should continue with oSC. Considering that it is a lot of effort for volunteers to pull the conference together. If members and contributors cannot be bothered to show up to our own conference then maybe we should not undertake the endeavour past oSC16.
While certainly deserving consideration, this is quite a leap. Traveling thousands of miles/kilometers to attend a conference of most any nature must be quite down the ladder for anyone whose employement is not dependent upon or who has excess funds, even with subsidized travel. Family, home and community have to remain a greater concern.
Continuation of oSC should be weighed on the interest it generates rather than the number of members and contributers who "can be bothered" to attend.
Am 03.06.2015 um 14:51 schrieb Robert Schweikert:
Yes, travel expenses need to be taken into consideration. However, the TSP is there to help. While I do not have the hard numbers handy, my gut feel tells me that we do not get overwhelmed by TSP applications and in the end we have money left over.
I'm in the comfortable position that my boss would pay for the Conference, but for me, Time on Weekends is valuable. Last openSUSE Conferences I attended were * Nürnberg * Prague Prague is even nearer than Nürnberg (a 2h train ride) for me.
I could not be bothered to go to Dubrovnik, Athens or The Hague, because it is just too much hassle. Somehow the date just never fits for me so that I could throw in an additional week of holiday with my family (which would be horribly bored at the conference).
And for example this year it would have meant leaving work early on Thursday, flying to The Hague, 4 Days of conference, coming back home Monday evening very late just so that I can go back to work on tuesday morning. I'm too old for that :-)
I personally like the professional conferences much better that start on Tuesday and end on Thursday or Friday -- I am off work for a week and back home at the weekend :-) Yes, I know, for most contributors this is not an option, and not everyone is in the lucky position I am. It is just *one* explanation why many people might not attend the conferences.
Fair enough, that of course raises the question if we should continue with oSC. Considering that it is a lot of effort for volunteers to pull the conference together.
I was actually thinking about this, too, and I most likely would have gone to The Hague, but we had a family event on May 1st and that decided the issue for me.
Best regards,
Stefan
Le 04/06/2015 22:42, Stefan Seyfried a écrit :
I personally like the professional conferences much better that start on Tuesday and end on Thursday or Friday -- I am off work for a week and back home at the weekend :-)
are many people like you? I'm retired, so the day is of little interest, but if lot of people are like you it could be possible to alternate one year on week end, the other on week days?
jdd
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On 06/04/2015 04:42 PM, Stefan Seyfried wrote:
Am 03.06.2015 um 14:51 schrieb Robert Schweikert:
Yes, travel expenses need to be taken into consideration. However, the TSP is there to help. While I do not have the hard numbers handy, my gut feel tells me that we do not get overwhelmed by TSP applications and in the end we have money left over.
I'm in the comfortable position that my boss would pay for the Conference, but for me, Time on Weekends is valuable. Last openSUSE Conferences I attended were * Nürnberg * Prague Prague is even nearer than Nürnberg (a 2h train ride) for me.
I could not be bothered to go to Dubrovnik, Athens or The Hague, because it is just too much hassle. Somehow the date just never fits for me so that I could throw in an additional week of holiday with my family (which would be horribly bored at the conference).
And for example this year it would have meant leaving work early on Thursday, flying to The Hague, 4 Days of conference, coming back home Monday evening very late just so that I can go back to work on tuesday morning. I'm too old for that :-)
I personally like the professional conferences much better that start on Tuesday and end on Thursday or Friday -- I am off work for a week and back home at the weekend :-) Yes, I know, for most contributors this is not an option, and not everyone is in the lucky position I am. It is just *one* explanation why many people might not attend the conferences.
Fair enough, that of course raises the question if we should continue with oSC. Considering that it is a lot of effort for volunteers to pull the conference together.
I was actually thinking about this, too, and I most likely would have gone to The Hague, but we had a family event on May 1st and that decided the issue for me.
Well my gut feel is that many are in the same boat. As the project has gotten older so have we, that's just the way it is. Priorities change, that's just a fact of life.
Basic question remains and has really been moved to a new thread "oSC looking past 2016"
So for oSC discussion please respond in that thread.
Later, RObert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
On Wednesday, June 03, 2015 08:51:50 AM Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/03/2015 01:42 AM, Michal Kubecek wrote:
On Tuesday 02 of June 2015 09:12:28 Robert Schweikert wrote:
As Henne points out, the board election is probably the component where the inactivity is the most glaring. ... The same problem manifests itself for oSC. If we have 500 members and we cannot motivate at least 1/2 of the membership to get their butts off the couch and show up at oSC what does that mean? Maybe it means that the membership number is inflated and of the 500 that are "members" only 100 or so really care and of those 100 we get 50 showing up at oSC. Then we have 50% of members who care show up and that's not a bad number. Problem is we do not know.
I don't think it's the same problem. When it comes to elections, you can surely talk about taking one's butt off the couch (figuratively, of course, as to vote, one doesn't actually need to take it off) but visiting a conference is something completely different. The travel and accomodation expenses might seem negligible to you but not everyone feels the same way (and it's (by far) not only matter of perception).
Yes, travel expenses need to be taken into consideration. However, the TSP is there to help. While I do not have the hard numbers handy, my gut feel tells me that we do not get overwhelmed by TSP applications and in the end we have money left over.
In the end, everyone has to decide whether their presence at the conference is worth the price. And I find nothing surprising or disturbing in it if many (or even most) of them - including active
members of the community - decide that their answer is negative.
Fair enough, that of course raises the question if we should continue with oSC. Considering that it is a lot of effort for volunteers to pull the conference together. If members and contributors cannot be bothered to show up to our own conference then maybe we should not undertake the endeavour past oSC16.
Later, Robert
TSP is actually a great program, that i used to attend oSC14, but due to the way it works, it wasn't useful to me to attend this year, even though I was approved.
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:24:43 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Yes we do need to protect our nice club to some degree. We need to make sure that the direction we're going and the decisions we're taking are made by people who will suffer the consequences of them.
Technical decisions are taken by those who do the work, that's the old and proven open source mantra. No club needed for that.
Some other decisions are taken by those who own the assets which the community needs, be it the trademark, the infrastructure, or the paid time of contributors. The club which is taking most of these decisions is SUSE.
In some cases it still is good to have a well-defined group representing the community as a whole, that's where the membership comes in. But as this is not so much about taking decisions but more about representation there is not much to protect unless you want to stay exclusive, which I suppose we don't want to be.
On 2 June 2015 at 12:30, Cornelius Schumacher cschum@suse.de wrote:
On Monday 01 June 2015 15:06:54 Robert Schweikert wrote:
"Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time. However, this does not preclude you from applying again in the future after you have had a chance to be more involved with the openSUSE projec t."
Where is it defined what a "contribution level to warrant us to accept your application" is? It would be much better, if people would have a concrete idea of what they would have to actually do to become members.
It would be, but in order to be able to encompass the full range of potential contributions, including technical, community, support and everything else, we are left with the definition decided a very long time ago "Sustained and Substantial", which is obviously somewhat subjective.
That said, the whole idea of judging people's contributions feels unwelcoming to me. I think it is a structural flaw of the openSUSE membership that you can't join by doing things, but you have to pass a committee.
The purpose of the Membership commitee is not to *judge* peoples contributions, but to *validate* the claimed contributions in the application for Membership The most common reason for the template email we're discussing being sent out is because in many, many, many (way too many cases) people are applying to be a Member with either NO contributions in their application (despite the instructions on https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Members) or, also sadly very common, are applications promising to contribute if they become members, which is totally the wrong way around
Contribute first, then you become a Member
This is not how you encourage people to become part of a community. I would be very much in favor of just eliminating the need for discussing wording of rejection letters by not rejecting people who want to be part of the community.
Anyone can be part of the community, anyone can contribute, without any committee, or anyone else giving anyone any permission to do so. 'Membership' in the openSUSE sense is about having proven a long term commitment to the openSUSE project, which makes you eligible to vote in major decisions by the Project, and have an openSUSE email address.. that's all.
Hey,
nice to see this get together of the openSUSE Elders Council ;-)
On 02.06.2015 13:30, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Monday 01 June 2015 15:06:54 Robert Schweikert wrote:
"Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time. However, this does not preclude you from applying again in the future after you have had a chance to be more involved with the openSUSE projec t."
Where is it defined what a "contribution level to warrant us to accept your application" is?
Nowhere, its a group of people voting on if your individual contributions are "continued and substantial". And how would you define that? There are a gazillion ways to contribute and after you're finished defining them there are a gazillion and sixteen ways :-)
It would be much better, if people would have a concrete idea of what they would have to actually do to become members.
Continued and substantial contribution sums that up pretty nicely. The documentation also mentions Portal:How_to_participate...
That said, the whole idea of judging people's contributions feels unwelcoming to me. I think it is a structural flaw of the openSUSE membership that you can't join by doing things, but you have to pass a committee. This is not how you encourage people to become part of a community. I would be very much in favor of just eliminating the need for discussing wording of rejection letters by not rejecting people who want to be part of the community.
So you want people who never have done anything "continued and substantial" to our project to join the body that elects our board? I'm pretty sure that this isn't a good idea :-)
Please don't confuse being part of the openSUSE project with being a "openSUSE Member".
Henne
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
So you want people who never have done anything "continued and substantial" to our project to join the body that elects our board? I'm pretty sure that this isn't a good idea :-)
I want people who want to contribute feel welcome, even if they haven't done anything yet. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea.
I want the board to be elected by people who express that they want to be part of the community. I want it to be a representation of the people who feel part of the community. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea as well.
I want to operate from a point of view that people mean well when they want to join openSUSE and optimize for getting new contributors on board, not for protecting against potential abuse. I'm pretty sure that this also is a good idea for an open community like openSUSE is.
Please don't confuse being part of the openSUSE project with being a "openSUSE Member".
There is confusion. As Richard said, too many people are applying as members under wrong assumptions. The fact that we need rejection mails, membership committees validating contributions, Wiki pages with red warnings, etc. shows that there is an issue with becoming part of openSUSE.
The big problem is that we will never hear from those people who didn't even try to become part because they were discouraged by how we handle this. We lose these people without even knowing about them.
So to live up to our expectations as open community, to remove a barrier in becoming a contributor, to encourage people to join us, we could get rid of the validation and rejection step and just let everybody become a member who wants to.
This way the board would be the representative of all self-proclaimed members of the openSUSE community, which I think is exactly what it should be.
The work would still be done by those who are active. The decisions would still be taken by those who do the work. We still would have protection mechanisms like the veto power of the chairman of the board or the guiding principles.
But we would have a more open, more welcoming, more inclusive community. That's what I would really like to see.
Le 03/06/2015 15:04, Cornelius Schumacher a écrit :
So to live up to our expectations as open community, to remove a barrier in becoming a contributor, to encourage people to join us, we could get rid of the validation and rejection step and just let everybody become a member who wants to.
This way the board would be the representative of all self-proclaimed members of the openSUSE community, which I think is exactly what it should be.
The work would still be done by those who are active. The decisions would still be taken by those who do the work. We still would have protection mechanisms like the veto power of the chairman of the board or the guiding principles.
But we would have a more open, more welcoming, more inclusive community. That's what I would really like to see.
We could imagine lot of mechanisms to ensure this, apart the letter.
For example we could imagine a 6 month delay between the moment the membership is accepted and the moment a people can vote (to prevent mass subscription only for the vote). We could also revive the membership involvement verification that is already written in the rules.
We could say:
"thanks asking to be an openSUSE member, we are proud to welcome you to the openSUSE membership. As you may know, membership mean contributions of any sort (link to page), and is revised each year (as said in ... page).
Do not hesitate to ask if you don't know how to contribute, we have tasks of all sorts, easy and difficult, for every kind of knowledge.
Your first step now could be to subscribe to (opensuse mailing list or forum and present yourself :-)"
jdd
Le 03/06/2015 15:25, jdd a écrit :
We could imagine lot of mechanisms to ensure this, apart the letter.
we could also let the demand stay and send the letter before giving the answer... there is provision for this in the interface
jdd
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On 06/03/2015 09:04 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
So you want people who never have done anything "continued and substantial" to our project to join the body that elects our board? I'm pretty sure that this isn't a good idea :-)
I want people who want to contribute feel welcome, even if they haven't done anything yet. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea.
I want the board to be elected by people who express that they want to be part of the community. I want it to be a representation of the people who feel part of the community. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea as well.
I want to operate from a point of view that people mean well when they want to join openSUSE and optimize for getting new contributors on board, not for protecting against potential abuse. I'm pretty sure that this also is a good idea for an open community like openSUSE is.
Please don't confuse being part of the openSUSE project with being a "openSUSE Member".
There is confusion. As Richard said, too many people are applying as members under wrong assumptions. The fact that we need rejection mails, membership committees validating contributions, Wiki pages with red warnings, etc. shows that there is an issue with becoming part of openSUSE.
The big problem is that we will never hear from those people who didn't even try to become part because they were discouraged by how we handle this. We lose these people without even knowing about them.
So to live up to our expectations as open community, to remove a barrier in becoming a contributor, to encourage people to join us, we could get rid of the validation and rejection step and just let everybody become a member who wants to.
This way the board would be the representative of all self-proclaimed members of the openSUSE community, which I think is exactly what it should be.
The work would still be done by those who are active. The decisions would still be taken by those who do the work. We still would have protection mechanisms like the veto power of the chairman of the board or the guiding principles.
But we would have a more open, more welcoming, more inclusive community. That's what I would really like to see.
Then why bother having membership at all?
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run. Yes, this is a bit of an extreme statement, but is the logical consequence of not expecting people to actually contribute to the project to be a member.
The other option is to figure out how to collect money and have a "pay for" membership model, i.e. pay and you get to vote or run for the board. Of course this will draw complaints from those that do not have the financial means and are members today because of their contributions .
If there is confusion about membership and being part of the community then lets fix that issue. Rather than abandoning the whole model and re-orchestrating the governance model. In order to move forward we have to eventually stop squabbling about the fundamentals and leave them alone. If there are issue with certain things lets fix the issues rather than questioning the whole concept that has been chosen over and over again.
Later, Robert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
Robert Schweikert wrote:
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On 06/03/2015 09:04 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
So you want people who never have done anything "continued and substantial" to our project to join the body that elects our board? I'm pretty sure that this isn't a good idea :-)
I want people who want to contribute feel welcome, even if they haven't done anything yet. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea.
I want the board to be elected by people who express that they want to be part of the community. I want it to be a representation of the people who feel part of the community. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea as well.
I want to operate from a point of view that people mean well when they want to join openSUSE and optimize for getting new contributors on board, not for protecting against potential abuse. I'm pretty sure that this also is a good idea for an open community like openSUSE is.
Please don't confuse being part of the openSUSE project with being a "openSUSE Member".
There is confusion. As Richard said, too many people are applying as members under wrong assumptions. The fact that we need rejection mails, membership committees validating contributions, Wiki pages with red warnings, etc. shows that there is an issue with becoming part of openSUSE.
The big problem is that we will never hear from those people who didn't even try to become part because they were discouraged by how we handle this. We lose these people without even knowing about them.
So to live up to our expectations as open community, to remove a barrier in becoming a contributor, to encourage people to join us, we could get rid of the validation and rejection step and just let everybody become a member who wants to.
This way the board would be the representative of all self-proclaimed members of the openSUSE community, which I think is exactly what it should be.
The work would still be done by those who are active. The decisions would still be taken by those who do the work. We still would have protection mechanisms like the veto power of the chairman of the board or the guiding principles.
But we would have a more open, more welcoming, more inclusive community. That's what I would really like to see.
Then why bother having membership at all?
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run. Yes, this is a bit of an extreme statement, but is the logical consequence of not expecting people to actually contribute to the project to be a member.
Ah, but that's not what Cornelius said - we should and we do expect members to contribute, but it doesn't have to be an absolute criteria for becoming a member, just as it isn't a criteria for remaining a member.
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On 06/03/2015 09:51 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Robert Schweikert wrote:
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On 06/03/2015 09:04 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
So you want people who never have done anything "continued and substantial" to our project to join the body that elects our board? I'm pretty sure that this isn't a good idea :-)
I want people who want to contribute feel welcome, even if they haven't done anything yet. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea.
I want the board to be elected by people who express that they want to be part of the community. I want it to be a representation of the people who feel part of the community. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea as well.
I want to operate from a point of view that people mean well when they want to join openSUSE and optimize for getting new contributors on board, not for protecting against potential abuse. I'm pretty sure that this also is a good idea for an open community like openSUSE is.
Please don't confuse being part of the openSUSE project with being a "openSUSE Member".
There is confusion. As Richard said, too many people are applying as members under wrong assumptions. The fact that we need rejection mails, membership committees validating contributions, Wiki pages with red warnings, etc. shows that there is an issue with becoming part of openSUSE.
The big problem is that we will never hear from those people who didn't even try to become part because they were discouraged by how we handle this. We lose these people without even knowing about them.
So to live up to our expectations as open community, to remove a barrier in becoming a contributor, to encourage people to join us, we could get rid of the validation and rejection step and just let everybody become a member who wants to.
This way the board would be the representative of all self-proclaimed members of the openSUSE community, which I think is exactly what it should be.
The work would still be done by those who are active. The decisions would still be taken by those who do the work. We still would have protection mechanisms like the veto power of the chairman of the board or the guiding principles.
But we would have a more open, more welcoming, more inclusive community. That's what I would really like to see.
Then why bother having membership at all?
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run. Yes, this is a bit of an extreme statement, but is the logical consequence of not expecting people to actually contribute to the project to be a member.
Ah, but that's not what Cornelius said - we should and we do expect members to contribute, but it doesn't have to be an absolute criteria for becoming a member, just as it isn't a criteria for remaining a member.
Well my personal opinion is that the same criteria that are applied to become a member should be required to sustain membership. But I am just repeating myself.
Second, I believe everyone has good intentions. But we all know that despite the best intentions things happen that derail our plans. Thus, I am not in favour of a model that opens membership to people who plan to contribute in the future.
Later, RObert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
On 03.06.2015 15:32, Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/03/2015 09:04 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
So you want people who never have done anything "continued and substantial" to our project to join the body that elects our board? I'm pretty sure that this isn't a good idea :-)
I want people who want to contribute feel welcome, even if they haven't done anything yet. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea.
I want the board to be elected by people who express that they want to be part of the community. I want it to be a representation of the people who feel part of the community. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea as well.
I want to operate from a point of view that people mean well when they want to join openSUSE and optimize for getting new contributors on board, not for protecting against potential abuse. I'm pretty sure that this also is a good idea for an open community like openSUSE is.
Please don't confuse being part of the openSUSE project with being a "openSUSE Member".
There is confusion. As Richard said, too many people are applying as members under wrong assumptions. The fact that we need rejection mails, membership committees validating contributions, Wiki pages with red warnings, etc. shows that there is an issue with becoming part of openSUSE.
The big problem is that we will never hear from those people who didn't even try to become part because they were discouraged by how we handle this. We lose these people without even knowing about them.
So to live up to our expectations as open community, to remove a barrier in becoming a contributor, to encourage people to join us, we could get rid of the validation and rejection step and just let everybody become a member who wants to.
This way the board would be the representative of all self-proclaimed members of the openSUSE community, which I think is exactly what it should be.
The work would still be done by those who are active. The decisions would still be taken by those who do the work. We still would have protection mechanisms like the veto power of the chairman of the board or the guiding principles.
But we would have a more open, more welcoming, more inclusive community. That's what I would really like to see.
Then why bother having membership at all?
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run.
But the general population on the internet is not at all interested in openSUSE. If it was, yes, why not let them vote? Filling out the application means "I am interested in openSUSE and wanna work on and with it" - and that makes the difference...
We are not in the danger that Fedora or Ubuntu will swarm over us and vote their buddy into the board. We are rather in the danger of having very few being interested in openSUSE any more, and thus we should follow Cornelius' wise advice IMO, to simplify and open up.
Klaas
The other option is to figure out how to collect money and have a "pay for" membership model, i.e. pay and you get to vote or run for the board. Of course this will draw complaints from those that do not have the financial means and are members today because of their contributions .
If there is confusion about membership and being part of the community then lets fix that issue. Rather than abandoning the whole model and re-orchestrating the governance model. In order to move forward we have to eventually stop squabbling about the fundamentals and leave them alone. If there are issue with certain things lets fix the issues rather than questioning the whole concept that has been chosen over and over again.
Later, Robert
Moin
On 03.06.2015 16:00, Klaas Freitag wrote:
On 03.06.2015 15:32, Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/03/2015 09:04 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run.
But the general population on the internet is not at all interested in openSUSE. If it was, yes, why not let them vote? Filling out the application means "I am interested in openSUSE and wanna work on and with it" - and that makes the difference...
We are not in the danger that Fedora or Ubuntu will swarm over us and vote their buddy into the board. We are rather in the danger of having very few being interested in openSUSE any more
How is making membership free making more people contributing to openSUSE? This isn't an either/or thing. When you are making membership 'free' you are still in danger of having very few being interested in openSUSE anymore _AND_ you're in danger that the FIFA will swarm over us and vote their buddy into the board. The first risk makes the second risk even higher. You gain nothing, except twice as much risk.
We can simply make our membership process more welcoming, friendly, open and inclusive _AND_ have the same 'risk' level as today.
Henne
On 06/03/2015 07:40 AM, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Moin
On 03.06.2015 16:00, Klaas Freitag wrote:
On 03.06.2015 15:32, Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/03/2015 09:04 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run.
But the general population on the internet is not at all interested in openSUSE. If it was, yes, why not let them vote? Filling out the application means "I am interested in openSUSE and wanna work on and with it" - and that makes the difference...
We are not in the danger that Fedora or Ubuntu will swarm over us and vote their buddy into the board. We are rather in the danger of having very few being interested in openSUSE any more
How is making membership free making more people contributing to openSUSE? This isn't an either/or thing. When you are making membership 'free' you are still in danger of having very few being interested in openSUSE anymore _AND_ you're in danger that the FIFA will swarm over us and vote their buddy into the board. The first risk makes the second risk even higher. You gain nothing, except twice as much risk.
We can simply make our membership process more welcoming, friendly, open and inclusive _AND_ have the same 'risk' level as today.
Henne
There is the only thing I will say about this. I will neither defend nor debate beyond this post. The history speaks for itself.
openSUSE is already autocratic. This wasn't a bad thing when the code quality was high and ecosystem was rich and alive. The autocracy kept it that way. It no longer is and has been declining for some time.
The origin of Linux itself is defined by an equally autocratic project. Had it not been so insular Linus might have put his efforts into that. The doors were closed to him so he went on to put his energy into creating this new thing.
The lesson of history is plain. Learn from it or not.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 06/03/2015 10:00 AM, Klaas Freitag wrote:
On 03.06.2015 15:32, Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/03/2015 09:04 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
So you want people who never have done anything "continued and substantial" to our project to join the body that elects our board? I'm pretty sure that this isn't a good idea :-)
I want people who want to contribute feel welcome, even if they haven't done anything yet. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea.
I want the board to be elected by people who express that they want to be part of the community. I want it to be a representation of the people who feel part of the community. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea as well.
I want to operate from a point of view that people mean well when they want to join openSUSE and optimize for getting new contributors on board, not for protecting against potential abuse. I'm pretty sure that this also is a good idea for an open community like openSUSE is.
Please don't confuse being part of the openSUSE project with being a "openSUSE Member".
There is confusion. As Richard said, too many people are applying as members under wrong assumptions. The fact that we need rejection mails, membership committees validating contributions, Wiki pages with red warnings, etc. shows that there is an issue with becoming part of openSUSE.
The big problem is that we will never hear from those people who didn't even try to become part because they were discouraged by how we handle this. We lose these people without even knowing about them.
So to live up to our expectations as open community, to remove a barrier in becoming a contributor, to encourage people to join us, we could get rid of the validation and rejection step and just let everybody become a member who wants to.
This way the board would be the representative of all self-proclaimed members of the openSUSE community, which I think is exactly what it should be.
The work would still be done by those who are active. The decisions would still be taken by those who do the work. We still would have protection mechanisms like the veto power of the chairman of the board or the guiding principles.
But we would have a more open, more welcoming, more inclusive community. That's what I would really like to see.
Then why bother having membership at all?
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run.
But the general population on the internet is not at all interested in openSUSE. If it was, yes, why not let them vote? Filling out the application means "I am interested in openSUSE and wanna work on and with it" - and that makes the difference...
We are not in the danger that Fedora or Ubuntu will swarm over us and vote their buddy into the board. We are rather in the danger of having very few being interested in openSUSE any more, and thus we should follow Cornelius' wise advice IMO, to simplify and open up.
The debate is really misplaced. It has become so simple to contribute to openSUSE that I proclaim the endless possibilities to contribute are over whelming and scare people off.
A "non-member" contributor has just as many possibilities to contribute and help out as the "member" contributor. The term "member" is a more or less logical consequence of our governance model of the project with an elected board. Somehow the pool of people that vote needs to be defined. A "anyone who is interested" on election day model is probably not the best approach. Those interested on election day will not be involved in the project long enough to notice the effects of their decision.
Again, if the messaging is the problem, which is what jdd originally started out with, lets fix the messaging, lets fix the member page, lets fix the membership such that we have members that actually still contribute on a more or less regular basis. Those that are members but no longer contribute should be recognized for their past contributions, but should not necessarily continue to be able to vote or have @opensuse.org e-mail addresses. Lets fix the confusion about what being a member means. If people really think one has to be a member to contribute lets get that addressed and set the record straight .
Later, Robert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
Le 03/06/2015 19:07, Robert Schweikert a écrit :
A "non-member" contributor has just as many possibilities to contribute and help out as the "member" contributor.
right, may be this have to be made more clear
Again, if the messaging is the problem, which is what jdd originally started out with, lets fix the messaging, lets fix the member page, lets fix the membership such that we have members that actually still contribute on a more or less regular basis. Those that are members but no longer contribute should be recognized for their past contributions, but should not necessarily continue to be able to vote
it's the official rule but AFAIK nobody yet do care of this (it's partly what I began to do in the other thread)
I'm pretty pleased by the way this discussion runs, we are discussing the core of the problem. There no need to change all, but neither need to keep all...
jdd
On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Robert Schweikert rjschwei@suse.com wrote:
On 06/03/2015 10:00 AM, Klaas Freitag wrote:
On 03.06.2015 15:32, Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/03/2015 09:04 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
So you want people who never have done anything "continued and substantial" to our project to join the body that elects our board? I'm pretty sure that this isn't a good idea :-)
I want people who want to contribute feel welcome, even if they haven't done anything yet. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea.
I want the board to be elected by people who express that they want to be part of the community. I want it to be a representation of the people who feel part of the community. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea as well.
I want to operate from a point of view that people mean well when they want to join openSUSE and optimize for getting new contributors on board, not for protecting against potential abuse. I'm pretty sure that this also is a good idea for an open community like openSUSE is.
Please don't confuse being part of the openSUSE project with being a "openSUSE Member".
There is confusion. As Richard said, too many people are applying as members under wrong assumptions. The fact that we need rejection mails, membership committees validating contributions, Wiki pages with red warnings, etc. shows that there is an issue with becoming part of openSUSE.
The big problem is that we will never hear from those people who didn't even try to become part because they were discouraged by how we handle this. We lose these people without even knowing about them.
So to live up to our expectations as open community, to remove a barrier in becoming a contributor, to encourage people to join us, we could get rid of the validation and rejection step and just let everybody become a member who wants to.
This way the board would be the representative of all self-proclaimed members of the openSUSE community, which I think is exactly what it should be.
The work would still be done by those who are active. The decisions would still be taken by those who do the work. We still would have protection mechanisms like the veto power of the chairman of the board or the guiding principles.
But we would have a more open, more welcoming, more inclusive community. That's what I would really like to see.
Then why bother having membership at all?
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run.
But the general population on the internet is not at all interested in openSUSE. If it was, yes, why not let them vote? Filling out the application means "I am interested in openSUSE and wanna work on and with it" - and that makes the difference...
We are not in the danger that Fedora or Ubuntu will swarm over us and vote their buddy into the board. We are rather in the danger of having very few being interested in openSUSE any more, and thus we should follow Cornelius' wise advice IMO, to simplify and open up.
The debate is really misplaced. It has become so simple to contribute to openSUSE that I proclaim the endless possibilities to contribute are over whelming and scare people off.
A "non-member" contributor has just as many possibilities to contribute and help out as the "member" contributor. The term "member" is a more or less logical consequence of our governance model of the project with an elected board. Somehow the pool of people that vote needs to be defined. A "anyone who is interested" on election day model is probably not the best approach. Those interested on election day will not be involved in the project long enough to notice the effects of their decision.
Again, if the messaging is the problem, which is what jdd originally started out with, lets fix the messaging, lets fix the member page, lets fix the membership such that we have members that actually still contribute on a more or less regular basis. Those that are members but no longer contribute should be recognized for their past contributions, but should not necessarily continue to be able to vote or have @opensuse.org e-mail addresses. Lets fix the confusion about what being a member means. If people really think one has to be a member to contribute lets get that addressed and set the record straight .
Later, Robert
So far, I haven't seen anyone participating in this discussion recognize the root cause of the need for the discussion or the letter: there has been an overloading of the meaning of the English word 'member'.
Those that apply have one understanding of the meaning of 'member' and those that reject that application have another.
Perhaps, if you better labeled the status gained by the granting of certain privileges, people would wait until they felt qualified. Maybe, 'openSUSE elector' could be used for that which must be requested?
So far, I haven't seen anyone participating in this discussion recognize the root cause of the need for the discussion or the letter: there has been an overloading of the meaning of the English word 'member'.
Those that apply have one understanding of the meaning of 'member' and those that reject that application have another.
Perhaps, if you better labeled the status gained by the granting of certain privileges, people would wait until they felt qualified. Maybe, 'openSUSE elector' could be used for that which must be requested?
Or even something as simple as “openSUSE Member” and “openSUSE Voting Member” which would have the privileges attached to it. I know that we might be “splitting hairs” for many, but it is a possibility at least to have a “membership” level for anyone to feel a part of the community while still keeping decision-making held within the contributors.
Sincerely, Bob Martens
On Jun 3, 2015, at 5:40 PM, PatrickD Garvey patrickdgarveyt@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Robert Schweikert rjschwei@suse.com wrote:
On 06/03/2015 10:00 AM, Klaas Freitag wrote:
On 03.06.2015 15:32, Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/03/2015 09:04 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
So you want people who never have done anything "continued and substantial" to our project to join the body that elects our board? I'm pretty sure that this isn't a good idea :-)
I want people who want to contribute feel welcome, even if they haven't done anything yet. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea.
I want the board to be elected by people who express that they want to be part of the community. I want it to be a representation of the people who feel part of the community. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea as well.
I want to operate from a point of view that people mean well when they want to join openSUSE and optimize for getting new contributors on board, not for protecting against potential abuse. I'm pretty sure that this also is a good idea for an open community like openSUSE is.
Please don't confuse being part of the openSUSE project with being a "openSUSE Member".
There is confusion. As Richard said, too many people are applying as members under wrong assumptions. The fact that we need rejection mails, membership committees validating contributions, Wiki pages with red warnings, etc. shows that there is an issue with becoming part of openSUSE.
The big problem is that we will never hear from those people who didn't even try to become part because they were discouraged by how we handle this. We lose these people without even knowing about them.
So to live up to our expectations as open community, to remove a barrier in becoming a contributor, to encourage people to join us, we could get rid of the validation and rejection step and just let everybody become a member who wants to.
This way the board would be the representative of all self-proclaimed members of the openSUSE community, which I think is exactly what it should be.
The work would still be done by those who are active. The decisions would still be taken by those who do the work. We still would have protection mechanisms like the veto power of the chairman of the board or the guiding principles.
But we would have a more open, more welcoming, more inclusive community. That's what I would really like to see.
Then why bother having membership at all?
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run.
But the general population on the internet is not at all interested in openSUSE. If it was, yes, why not let them vote? Filling out the application means "I am interested in openSUSE and wanna work on and with it" - and that makes the difference...
We are not in the danger that Fedora or Ubuntu will swarm over us and vote their buddy into the board. We are rather in the danger of having very few being interested in openSUSE any more, and thus we should follow Cornelius' wise advice IMO, to simplify and open up.
The debate is really misplaced. It has become so simple to contribute to openSUSE that I proclaim the endless possibilities to contribute are over whelming and scare people off.
A "non-member" contributor has just as many possibilities to contribute and help out as the "member" contributor. The term "member" is a more or less logical consequence of our governance model of the project with an elected board. Somehow the pool of people that vote needs to be defined. A "anyone who is interested" on election day model is probably not the best approach. Those interested on election day will not be involved in the project long enough to notice the effects of their decision.
Again, if the messaging is the problem, which is what jdd originally started out with, lets fix the messaging, lets fix the member page, lets fix the membership such that we have members that actually still contribute on a more or less regular basis. Those that are members but no longer contribute should be recognized for their past contributions, but should not necessarily continue to be able to vote or have @opensuse.org e-mail addresses. Lets fix the confusion about what being a member means. If people really think one has to be a member to contribute lets get that addressed and set the record straight .
Later, Robert
So far, I haven't seen anyone participating in this discussion recognize the root cause of the need for the discussion or the letter: there has been an overloading of the meaning of the English word 'member'.
Those that apply have one understanding of the meaning of 'member' and those that reject that application have another.
Perhaps, if you better labeled the status gained by the granting of certain privileges, people would wait until they felt qualified. Maybe, 'openSUSE elector' could be used for that which must be requested? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
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On 06/03/2015 10:02 PM, Robert Martens wrote:
So far, I haven't seen anyone participating in this discussion recognize the root cause of the need for the discussion or the letter: there has been an overloading of the meaning of the English word 'member'.
Those that apply have one understanding of the meaning of 'member' and those that reject that application have another.
Perhaps, if you better labeled the status gained by the granting of certain privileges, people would wait until they felt qualified. Maybe, 'openSUSE elector' could be used for that which must be requested?
Or even something as simple as “openSUSE Member” and “openSUSE Voting Member” which would have the privileges attached to it. I know that we might be “splitting hairs” for many, but it is a possibility at least to have a “membership” level for anyone to feel a part of the community while still keeping decision-making held within the contributors.
Sincerely, Bob Martens
On Jun 3, 2015, at 5:40 PM, PatrickD Garvey patrickdgarveyt@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Robert Schweikert rjschwei@suse.com wrote:
On 06/03/2015 10:00 AM, Klaas Freitag wrote:
On 03.06.2015 15:32, Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/03/2015 09:04 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote: > > So you want people who never have done anything > "continued and substantial" to our project to join the > body that elects our board? I'm pretty sure that this > isn't a good idea :-)
I want people who want to contribute feel welcome, even if they haven't done anything yet. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea.
I want the board to be elected by people who express that they want to be part of the community. I want it to be a representation of the people who feel part of the community. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea as well.
I want to operate from a point of view that people mean well when they want to join openSUSE and optimize for getting new contributors on board, not for protecting against potential abuse. I'm pretty sure that this also is a good idea for an open community like openSUSE is.
> Please don't confuse being part of the openSUSE project > with being a "openSUSE Member".
There is confusion. As Richard said, too many people are applying as members under wrong assumptions. The fact that we need rejection mails, membership committees validating contributions, Wiki pages with red warnings, etc. shows that there is an issue with becoming part of openSUSE.
The big problem is that we will never hear from those people who didn't even try to become part because they were discouraged by how we handle this. We lose these people without even knowing about them.
So to live up to our expectations as open community, to remove a barrier in becoming a contributor, to encourage people to join us, we could get rid of the validation and rejection step and just let everybody become a member who wants to.
This way the board would be the representative of all self-proclaimed members of the openSUSE community, which I think is exactly what it should be.
The work would still be done by those who are active. The decisions would still be taken by those who do the work. We still would have protection mechanisms like the veto power of the chairman of the board or the guiding principles.
But we would have a more open, more welcoming, more inclusive community. That's what I would really like to see.
Then why bother having membership at all?
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run.
But the general population on the internet is not at all interested in openSUSE. If it was, yes, why not let them vote? Filling out the application means "I am interested in openSUSE and wanna work on and with it" - and that makes the difference...
We are not in the danger that Fedora or Ubuntu will swarm over us and vote their buddy into the board. We are rather in the danger of having very few being interested in openSUSE any more, and thus we should follow Cornelius' wise advice IMO, to simplify and open up.
The debate is really misplaced. It has become so simple to contribute to openSUSE that I proclaim the endless possibilities to contribute are over whelming and scare people off.
A "non-member" contributor has just as many possibilities to contribute and help out as the "member" contributor. The term "member" is a more or less logical consequence of our governance model of the project with an elected board. Somehow the pool of people that vote needs to be defined. A "anyone who is interested" on election day model is probably not the best approach. Those interested on election day will not be involved in the project long enough to notice the effects of their decision.
Again, if the messaging is the problem, which is what jdd originally started out with, lets fix the messaging, lets fix the member page, lets fix the membership such that we have members that actually still contribute on a more or less regular basis. Those that are members but no longer contribute should be recognized for their past contributions, but should not necessarily continue to be able to vote or have @opensuse.org e-mail addresses. Lets fix the confusion about what being a member means. If people really think one has to be a member to contribute lets get that addressed and set the record straight .
Later, Robert
So far, I haven't seen anyone participating in this discussion recognize the root cause of the need for the discussion or the letter: there has been an overloading of the meaning of the English word 'member'.
Those that apply have one understanding of the meaning of 'member' and those that reject that application have another.
Perhaps, if you better labeled the status gained by the granting of certain privileges, people would wait until they felt qualified. Maybe, 'openSUSE elector' could be used for that which must be requested?
Lets make the assumption that the issue lies with the overloading of "member" as in:
Member of the openSUSE community: A person that contributes to the project but does not vote, have an @opensuse.org e-mail etc. (no form required)
openSUSE Member: A person that has provided sustained substantial contributions to the project and has applied for and received membership "blessing/status/INSERT_OTHER_NOT_QUITE_APPROPRIATE_WORD_HERE". Has voting rights and @opensuse.org e-mail....
Now lets rename the two and see where we end up
Member of the openSUSE community: A person that contributes to the project but does not vote, have an @opensuse.org e-mail etc. (no form required)
openSUSE Voting Member: A person that has provided sustained substantial contributions to the project and has applied for and received membership "blessing/status/INSERT_OTHER_NOT_QUITE_APPROPRIATE_WORD_HERE". Has voting rights and @opensuse.org e-mail....
Would we not end up in the same predicament?
Having to explain the difference between "member" and "voting member", having to separate these two in a friendly way such that those that apply to become a voting member and do not get accepted as such don't run away because the form e-mail they received is not friendly? Would we not need to fix the wiki to avoid all the red warning labels? Add all the arguments that have already been made in this thread.
No matter the "title" chosen, the basic conundrum remains. Given the governance model of the project and the logical need to limit the pool of people with certain rights/obligations to those that "show they care" creates a certain degree of separation. No matter what the "title" bestowed on each group, an explanation of/to both is required.
Therefore I proclaim that we can do just a good a job explaining the first (current) double meaning as we can explaining the modified naming.
Later, Robert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
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On 2015-06-04 14:40, Robert Schweikert wrote:
Now lets rename the two and see where we end up
Member of the openSUSE community: A person that contributes to the project but does not vote, have an @opensuse.org e-mail etc. (no form required)
openSUSE Voting Member: A person that has provided sustained substantial contributions to the project and has applied for and received membership "blessing/status/INSERT_OTHER_NOT_QUITE_APPROPRIATE_WORD_HERE". Has voting rights and @opensuse.org e-mail....
The first one does not currently get an @opensuse.org e-mail. Do we want to?
- -- Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" (Minas Tirith))
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On 06/04/2015 09:00 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2015-06-04 14:40, Robert Schweikert wrote:
Now lets rename the two and see where we end up
Member of the openSUSE community: A person that contributes to the project but does not vote, have an @opensuse.org e-mail etc. (no form required)
openSUSE Voting Member: A person that has provided sustained substantial contributions to the project and has applied for and received membership "blessing/status/INSERT_OTHER_NOT_QUITE_APPROPRIATE_WORD_HERE". Has voting rights and @opensuse.org e-mail....
The first one does not currently get an @opensuse.org e-mail. Do we want to?
Well, that's kind of the point of showing "sustained and substantial contribution", it shows that you care enough for a period of time. Therefore as a "perk" one gets @opensuse.org.
It all can be boiled down to the "show that you care" argument. If one wants a @linux.com address one shows that one cares about Linux by opening one's wallet.
Later, Robert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
Le 04/06/2015 14:40, Robert Schweikert a écrit :
Therefore I proclaim that we can do just a good a job explaining the first (current) double meaning as we can explaining the modified naming.
searching for synonyms, I could find: "representative" or "senior members"
jdd
On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 5:40 AM, Robert Schweikert rjschwei@suse.com wrote:
On Jun 3, 2015, at 5:40 PM, PatrickD Garvey patrickdgarveyt@gmail.com wrote:
So far, I haven't seen anyone participating in this discussion recognize the root cause of the need for the discussion or the letter: there has been an overloading of the meaning of the English word 'member'.
Those that apply have one understanding of the meaning of 'member' and those that reject that application have another.
Perhaps, if you better labeled the status gained by the granting of certain privileges, people would wait until they felt qualified. Maybe, 'openSUSE elector' could be used for that which must be requested?
Lets make the assumption that the issue lies with the overloading of "member" as in:
Member of the openSUSE community: A person that contributes to the project but does not vote, have an @opensuse.org e-mail etc. (no form required)
openSUSE Member: A person that has provided sustained substantial contributions to the project and has applied for and received membership "blessing/status/INSERT_OTHER_NOT_QUITE_APPROPRIATE_WORD_HERE". Has voting rights and @opensuse.org e-mail....
Now lets rename the two and see where we end up
Member of the openSUSE community: A person that contributes to the project but does not vote, have an @opensuse.org e-mail etc. (no form required)
openSUSE Voting Member: A person that has provided sustained substantial contributions to the project and has applied for and received membership "blessing/status/INSERT_OTHER_NOT_QUITE_APPROPRIATE_WORD_HERE". Has voting rights and @opensuse.org e-mail....
Would we not end up in the same predicament?
Having to explain the difference between "member" and "voting member", having to separate these two in a friendly way such that those that apply to become a voting member and do not get accepted as such don't run away because the form e-mail they received is not friendly? Would we not need to fix the wiki to avoid all the red warning labels? Add all the arguments that have already been made in this thread.
The key difference is you start with two labels that are more likely to be distinguished in the mind of the requester. They know that requesting "voting member" status is a step up from "member" before they make any request. They may actually research what is required to move up.
No matter the "title" chosen, the basic conundrum remains. Given the governance model of the project and the logical need to limit the pool of people with certain rights/obligations to those that "show they care" creates a certain degree of separation. No matter what the "title" bestowed on each group, an explanation of/to both is required.
I totally agree.
Therefore I proclaim that we can do just a good a job explaining the first (current) double meaning as we can explaining the modified naming.
I'm sorry, but I think you have missed the only opportunity to show there is a reason for an acceptance process without first confusing the applicant. "You only have one chance to make a good first impression." I think there is ample evidence the first impression currently generates confusion that is compounded by a poorly worded rejection letter.
Later, Robert
PatrickD
Le 04/06/2015 00:40, PatrickD Garvey a écrit :
So far, I haven't seen anyone participating in this discussion recognize the root cause of the need for the discussion or the letter: there has been an overloading of the meaning of the English word 'member'.
we had an extensive discussion on the subject when creating the membership process, but didn't find a really good wording
but I don't think these demands to be member as bad, on the contrary, these people are probably of good will and have to be kept connected on some way...
jdd
On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 1:31 AM, jdd jdd@dodin.org wrote:
Le 04/06/2015 00:40, PatrickD Garvey a écrit :
So far, I haven't seen anyone participating in this discussion recognize the root cause of the need for the discussion or the letter: there has been an overloading of the meaning of the English word 'member'.
we had an extensive discussion on the subject when creating the membership process, but didn't find a really good wording
I assume you can't point to a recording of that discussion, so please characterize whether there may have been any suggestion of the use of any other label than 'member' for the privileged participant.
but I don't think these demands to be member as bad, on the contrary, these people are probably of good will and have to be kept connected on some way...
Precisely, they seem to think they are requesting something less sophisticated than the Membership_officials attempt to validate against.
jdd
PatrickD
On Wed, 03 Jun 2015 09:32:11 -0400, Robert Schweikert wrote:
Then why bother having membership at all?
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run. Yes, this is a bit of an extreme statement, but is the logical consequence of not expecting people to actually contribute to the project to be a member.
I don't get the sense that that's what Cornelius is proposing or suggesting.
It's a question of approach - rather than a page that lists a bunch of warnings about what not to do, have a page that lists a bunch of things that you *need to do* or *should do* in order to be a project member.
In a way, you could say it's about a 'marketing spin' - provide a positive message that says the same thing, rather than a negative message that pushes people away.
Jim
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On 06/03/2015 11:09 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
On Wed, 03 Jun 2015 09:32:11 -0400, Robert Schweikert wrote:
Then why bother having membership at all?
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run. Yes, this is a bit of an extreme statement, but is the logical consequence of not expecting people to actually contribute to the project to be a member.
I don't get the sense that that's what Cornelius is proposing or suggesting.
It's a question of approach - rather than a page that lists a bunch of warnings about what not to do, have a page that lists a bunch of things that you *need to do* or *should do* in order to be a project member.
In a way, you could say it's about a 'marketing spin' - provide a positive message that says the same thing, rather than a negative message that pushes people away.
I very much doubt that anyone will argue against better presentation, improved wording look and feel. Thus, someone who feels strongly please go fix the page, instead of saying "it's not nice".
Later, Robert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
On Wed, 03 Jun 2015 12:42:41 -0400, Robert Schweikert wrote:
In a way, you could say it's about a 'marketing spin' - provide a positive message that says the same thing, rather than a negative message that pushes people away.
I very much doubt that anyone will argue against better presentation, improved wording look and feel. Thus, someone who feels strongly please go fix the page, instead of saying "it's not nice".
It seems that that's what the discussion is about - trying to fix the page, but not doing so unilaterally - instead, asking the community for input, which has led to a discussion about the membership stuff in general.
I don't see this as a bad thing - it's easier for people to know they're making a contribution that's deemed "worthwhile enough to be admitted as a member" if the guidelines are pretty clear.
When I applied for my membership, I wasn't sure if just answering questions in the forums was sufficient or would be seen as being sufficient - but that was the extent of my ongoing contribution at the time. As the person making the contribution, I felt it was sufficient, but in a matter like this, my opinion wouldn't matter - the opinion of the person reviewing the contribution is the opinion that matters.
Personally, I would like to see potential Members (with voting privileges) to not be as likely to feel uncertain about how their contributions will be judged. I think there has to be a measurement made, and such a measurement is going to be - by its nature - somewhat subjective, and there's an element of 'fit' that is bound to be applied when it comes to personalities, too.
On the one hand, being proactive in some cases would be a good thing - instead of waiting for someone contributing to apply for membership, recognizing the contribution and inviting them to apply would be a good thing - and in some cases, such an invitation is really a no-brainer.
But there also has to be a mechanism for people to let the project know how they're contributing to the project.
Which, of course, is why we have a process for doing that. :)
Jim
Le 04/06/2015 05:22, Jim Henderson a écrit :
Personally, I would like to see potential Members (with voting privileges) to not be as likely to feel uncertain about how their contributions will be judged.
it's extremely difficult, thing for example of
* meeting participant (they name not being noted on the net) * chinese participant I don't know how to evaluate in a language I do'nt understand t all (alas)
and other reasons... jdd
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On 06/03/2015 11:22 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
On Wed, 03 Jun 2015 12:42:41 -0400, Robert Schweikert wrote:
In a way, you could say it's about a 'marketing spin' - provide a positive message that says the same thing, rather than a negative message that pushes people away.
I very much doubt that anyone will argue against better presentation, improved wording look and feel. Thus, someone who feels strongly please go fix the page, instead of saying "it's not nice".
It seems that that's what the discussion is about - trying to fix the page, but not doing so unilaterally - instead, asking the community for input, which has led to a discussion about the membership stuff in general.
Fair enough, but someone still has to act and do something. We can talk about how "nice it would be to fix the wiki" until we are all tiered and irritated. Thus in the hopes to end the beating around the bush inactivity, I removed most of the "Red" that appeared to be an issue to some people and modified the introduction on the page. Plus some other changes.
I left 1 warning (red), which was added by me, I think, a couple of years ago when we first had the discussion about maintaining the membership status. A similar discussion has been started by Michal, see the "openSUSE Members retirement" thread. We can fix this part of the page when that discussion concludes.
So, head on over to
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Members
to see if that goes in the right direction and if you think its worse than previously, oh well, everyone had a chance to start with the change s.
Later, Robert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
Le 04/06/2015 19:11, Robert Schweikert a écrit :
Fair enough, but someone still has to act and do something. We can talk about how "nice it would be to fix the wiki" until we are all tiered and irritated.
If I started the thread it's because I plan to use it to update what have to be updated. At the same time, there is no hurry, I wont probably do this before July and don't expect real work to be done before september (summer makes it difficult to find people).
I left 1 warning (red), which was added by me, I think, a couple of years ago when we first had the discussion about maintaining the membership status. A similar discussion has been started by Michal, see the "openSUSE Members retirement" thread. We can fix this part of the page when that discussion concludes.
the more I read posts, the more I wonder if it wouldn't be better to use the mail link on the application forme control to ask people *before* rejecting.
For example one of the OSC-15 staff member asked to be a member. I think it to be quite normal, but it's barely visible on the net, so I already asked him to wait after OSC, and complete the form. We may also ask Hans about this, but still I would like people to fill they wiki personal page as starting point
jdd
On Thu, 04 Jun 2015 13:11:46 -0400, Robert Schweikert wrote:
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On 06/03/2015 11:22 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
On Wed, 03 Jun 2015 12:42:41 -0400, Robert Schweikert wrote:
In a way, you could say it's about a 'marketing spin' - provide a positive message that says the same thing, rather than a negative message that pushes people away.
I very much doubt that anyone will argue against better presentation, improved wording look and feel. Thus, someone who feels strongly please go fix the page, instead of saying "it's not nice".
It seems that that's what the discussion is about - trying to fix the page, but not doing so unilaterally - instead, asking the community for input, which has led to a discussion about the membership stuff in general.
Fair enough, but someone still has to act and do something. We can talk about how "nice it would be to fix the wiki" until we are all tiered and irritated. Thus in the hopes to end the beating around the bush inactivity, I removed most of the "Red" that appeared to be an issue to some people and modified the introduction on the page. Plus some other changes.
Sure, eventually someone needs to change something. But how would the board feel if someone just went in and started changing stuff about project processes without any discussion at all?
I (or anyone else) could just go start changing stuff, and maybe piss a bunch of people off in the process. Better to have some discussion *first* about what changes the project thinks are appropriate.
This isn't something that's like patching a bug in a network driver. This is more like deciding that the entire network subsystem needs to be rewritten from scratch. Before doing that, you need to gather requirements.
I left 1 warning (red), which was added by me, I think, a couple of years ago when we first had the discussion about maintaining the membership status. A similar discussion has been started by Michal, see the "openSUSE Members retirement" thread. We can fix this part of the page when that discussion concludes.
So, head on over to
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Members
to see if that goes in the right direction and if you think its worse than previously, oh well, everyone had a chance to start with the change s.
I'm happy to see what jdd and the others who are spending time working on it come up with. I'm also happy to provide input and feedback on the proposed changes (which is how I'm contributing to this). I'm not in a position to *own* the process, nor am I part of the membership team (nor do I have time to join another team).
Jim
Le 03/06/2015 17:09, Jim Henderson a écrit :
It's a question of approach - rather than a page that lists a bunch of warnings about what not to do, have a page that lists a bunch of things that you *need to do* or *should do* in order to be a project member.
I image *three* things, and no more at the beginning of the page:
* one for people with no special knowledge (may be fixing typos or making basic wiki translations)
* one for developers: open and make active an obs account
* one for intermediate: write wiki documentation, reports bugs in bugzilla
for example
In a way, you could say it's about a 'marketing spin' - provide a positive message that says the same thing, rather than a negative message that pushes people away.
yes, exactly
jdd
On Wed, 03 Jun 2015 19:48:01 +0200, jdd wrote:
Le 03/06/2015 17:09, Jim Henderson a écrit :
It's a question of approach - rather than a page that lists a bunch of warnings about what not to do, have a page that lists a bunch of things that you *need to do* or *should do* in order to be a project member.
I image *three* things, and no more at the beginning of the page:
- one for people with no special knowledge (may be fixing typos or
making basic wiki translations)
one for developers: open and make active an obs account
one for intermediate: write wiki documentation, reports bugs in
bugzilla
for example
Makes sense, though I can see how these categories would grow pretty substantially. For example, the dedicated forum staff (of which I'm a member) make a pretty sustained contribution to the project, not just in terms of helping people in the forums (which could well be a valid type of contribution itself even without being official "forum staff"), but also in terms of managing the forums - moderation of posts, dealing with problem forum members (there's that overloading again <g>), and so on.
But there also comes (thinking out loud) the evaluation of the actual contribution in the forums. Someone who posts hundreds of messages that aren't helpful isn't as valuable as someone who posts 20 good answers. Measuring quality vs. quantity is a long-standing forum issue (not just for OSF, either - Kim, the guy who runs our sponsor's forums, has been dealing with that issue almost as long as I've known him.) There are also other forums out there, like forosuse.es for the Spanish-speaking audience, or alionet's French openSUSE forums).
Jim
Jim Henderson wrote:
But there also comes (thinking out loud) the evaluation of the actual contribution in the forums. Someone who posts hundreds of messages that aren't helpful isn't as valuable as someone who posts 20 good answers. Measuring quality vs. quantity is a long-standing forum issue (not just for OSF, either - Kim, the guy who runs our sponsor's forums, has been dealing with that issue almost as long as I've known him.) There are also other forums out there, like forosuse.es for the Spanish-speaking audience, or alionet's French openSUSE forums).
Also thinking out loud - hasn't this issue been tackled quite well by stackoverflow, serverfault et al ?
On Thu, 04 Jun 2015 08:48:04 +0200, Per Jessen wrote:
Jim Henderson wrote:
But there also comes (thinking out loud) the evaluation of the actual contribution in the forums. Someone who posts hundreds of messages that aren't helpful isn't as valuable as someone who posts 20 good answers. Measuring quality vs. quantity is a long-standing forum issue (not just for OSF, either - Kim, the guy who runs our sponsor's forums, has been dealing with that issue almost as long as I've known him.) There are also other forums out there, like forosuse.es for the Spanish-speaking audience, or alionet's French openSUSE forums).
Also thinking out loud - hasn't this issue been tackled quite well by stackoverflow, serverfault et al ?
Through the use of reputation points, yes, to an extent - it's a peer based system. The trick is to manage people trying to game the system (which does happen). I'm not sure how Stackoverflow handles that. There are some controls in vBulletin (as I recall) to limit the number of reputation points you can assign. We also currently have the forum configured to not allow anyone who isn't staff to assign negative reputation, because personalities clash and that clouds the objectivity of a user who's angry about an answer they got (and we get that through cultural/language misunderstandings not infrequently - it's not common, but it does happen).
Jim
Le 04/06/2015 05:13, Jim Henderson a écrit :
But there also comes (thinking out loud) the evaluation of the actual contribution in the forums. Someone who posts hundreds of messages that
the membership comity have no way (and no will, I guess) to evaluate the quality of the posts. What I have already done, when there are only little posts is to see if there where questions or answers, of course only answers have to count.
What we could do (to come back to the subject), and I already did sometime, is to use the link "contact email"
http://dodin.org/owncloud/index.php/s/D9pdU6sIwPsml4q
to ask for more infos. For example, most of the people do not have filled they personal wiki page. This page (wiki) should be a good place to list contributions, even for forum members.
jdd
On Thu, 04 Jun 2015 10:28:27 +0200, jdd wrote:
Le 04/06/2015 05:13, Jim Henderson a écrit :
But there also comes (thinking out loud) the evaluation of the actual contribution in the forums. Someone who posts hundreds of messages that
the membership comity have no way (and no will, I guess) to evaluate the quality of the posts. What I have already done, when there are only little posts is to see if there where questions or answers, of course only answers have to count.
What we could do (to come back to the subject), and I already did sometime, is to use the link "contact email"
http://dodin.org/owncloud/index.php/s/D9pdU6sIwPsml4q
to ask for more infos. For example, most of the people do not have filled they personal wiki page. This page (wiki) should be a good place to list contributions, even for forum members.
Another possibility would be to ask the people who are already in that venue about the contributions of the specific person. I don't think anyone on the forum staff would have a problem answering questions along those lines - "Hey, JohnDoe says that they contribute in the forums - what can you tell us about the manner of contribution that you see from them?"
Same would hold for the wiki - the people who manage the wiki are probably in a good position to at least find out about specific user contributions.
Jim
On 06/03/2015 03:32 PM, Robert Schweikert wrote:
In order to move forward we have to eventually stop squabbling about the fundamentals and leave them alone.
when a community is as great as it can be, then it's great to go on doing what one have always done,
when it's not (or in any case of wishing to evolve), it's a great idea to review fundamentals (of course not everyday)
And anyway, even without the "members system", it will always been (wise) elder who will go on influencing the community - or most of it.
;-)
Hey,
On 03.06.2015 15:04, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
So you want people who never have done anything "continued and substantial" to our project to join the body that elects our board? I'm pretty sure that this isn't a good idea :-)
I want people who want to contribute feel welcome, even if they haven't done anything yet. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea.
Me too :-)
I want the board to be elected by people who express that they want to be part of the community. I want it to be a representation of the people who feel part of the community. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea as well.
Me too :-)
I want to operate from a point of view that people mean well when they want to join openSUSE and optimize for getting new contributors on board, not for protecting against potential abuse. I'm pretty sure that this also is a good idea for an open community like openSUSE is.
Me too, but I don't want it to be that black/white. I want to be open and still have see some degree of protection. Well-balanced.
So to live up to our expectations as open community, to remove a barrier in becoming a contributor, to encourage people to join us, we could get rid of the validation and rejection step and just let everybody become a member who wants to.
We could also simply make it more friendly right? This is what JDD initially wanted to do...
This way the board would be the representative of all self-proclaimed members of the openSUSE community, which I think is exactly what it should be.
The work would still be done by those who are active. The decisions would still be taken by those who do the work.
Except in escalation between the people who do the work. Then it would be taken by (self-proclaimed) members who don't have to suffer the consequences.
We still would have protection mechanisms like the veto power of the chairman of the board.
The veto power of the not-elected chairman is in no way protection of our community. I think in fact it is a risk. As risky as the sponsor owned trademark.
But we would have a more open, more welcoming, more inclusive community. That's what I would really like to see.
Me too, just not at that cost. I would like to be more open, welcoming and inclusive without making Membership 'free'. I want openSUSE Members to be a 100% contributors.
Henne
Le 03/06/2015 16:32, Henne Vogelsang a écrit :
We could also simply make it more friendly right? This is what JDD initially wanted to do...
it's still the main goal -)
we need members. We need contributors.
I know the two are not exactly the same. If contributors do not care to be member, it's not a problem, membership is just (IMHO) a way to make contributors "more stable" and a bit more openSUSE centrics.
if welcoming in a good way the newcomers we can get some more contributors, it's a good thing. Don't be neither too optimisic, most of them will vanish, but still some may stay...
jdd
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On 06/02/2015 07:30 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Monday 01 June 2015 15:06:54 Robert Schweikert wrote:
"Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time. However, this does not preclude you from applying again in the future after you have had a chance to be more involved with the openSUSE projec t."
Where is it defined what a "contribution level to warrant us to accept your application" is?
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Members
It would be much better, if people would have a concrete idea of what they would have to actually do to become members.
But is not an exact science as in "x number of lines of code", "y number of packages", "z number of wiki pages translated". I'd say casting activity into exact "hard" accountable numbers would be a futile attempt.
That said, the whole idea of judging people's contributions feels unwelcoming to me. I think it is a structural flaw of the openSUSE membership that you can't join by doing things, but you have to pass a committee.
No one has to be a member. All contributors are recognized. Being a member just provides some "perks". For the most part, other than board elections all contributors are on equal footing. There is no distinction between members and non-members.
As we have an elected board a definition of a group regarding who gets to run and who gets to vote is probably a reasonable approach. Having this pool boundless, i.e. everyone in the world that claims to contribute gets to vote or run for a board position is probably not practical. A membership model appears reasonable. Of course the membership model could be changed to a "pay for membership" model. This would require that we have some means to collect funds, another problem.
This is not how you encourage people to become part of a community. I would be very much in favor of just eliminating the need for discussing wording of rejection letters by not rejecting people who want to be part of the community.
Everyone can be part of the community, no one if forced to be a member. I think Jan pointed out that he is not a member but very much feels that he has influence on the project and where it is going. Thus, there is at least some evidence that the "membership" part is not much, if any of a deterrent.
Later, Robert
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 08:28:46 Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/02/2015 07:30 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Monday 01 June 2015 15:06:54 Robert Schweikert wrote:
"Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time. However, this does not preclude you from applying again in the future after you have had a chance to be more involved with the openSUSE projec t."
Where is it defined what a "contribution level to warrant us to accept your application" is?
This by itself is not a very welcoming page. The warnings what not to do dominate everything else. We do want to have active contributors and members. I'm sure there is a more welcoming way to present this.
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On 06/03/2015 08:30 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 08:28:46 Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/02/2015 07:30 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Monday 01 June 2015 15:06:54 Robert Schweikert wrote:
"Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time. However, this does not preclude you from applying again in the future after you have had a chance to be more involved with the openSUSE projec t."
Where is it defined what a "contribution level to warrant us to accept your application" is?
This by itself is not a very welcoming page. The warnings what not to do dominate everything else. We do want to have active contributors and members. I'm sure there is a more welcoming way to present this.
You are welcome to fix it ;)
- -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
On Wednesday 03 June 2015 08:52:29 Robert Schweikert wrote:
You are welcome to fix it ;)
That's what my other mail is about ;-)
On 06/02/2015 01:30 PM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Monday 01 June 2015 15:06:54 Robert Schweikert wrote:
"Thank you for your contributions so far to the openSUSE Project. All contributions are important and valued. After review of your application for membership, we were unable to verify a contribution level that would warrant us to accept your application at this time. However, this does not preclude you from applying again in the future after you have had a chance to be more involved with the openSUSE projec t."
Where is it defined what a "contribution level to warrant us to accept your application" is? It would be much better, if people would have a concrete idea of what they would have to actually do to become members.
That said, the whole idea of judging people's contributions feels unwelcoming to me. I think it is a structural flaw of the openSUSE membership that you can't join by doing things, but you have to pass a committee. This is not how you encourage people to become part of a community. I would be very much in favor of just eliminating the need for discussing wording of rejection letters by not rejecting people who want to be part of the community.
thanks Cornelius,
this idea is welcomed to study for an "open community"
(meaning study => not throwing immediately to trash just because it's a "different way to imagine community in the future" ...
it cannot be changed in 5 minutes, but it's great to notice that "judging" & "open" do not match very well together.
It would need a bit more exchange (according to me) and exploration on concrete situations (and testing).
(then ... about 500 members, as Robert said : only around 120 voting or going to OSC ... meaning around 100 members being concerned or active ?)
I would just ask a concrete question to jdd :
1. could you (as part of the "jury") give us the number of ppl asking to become members ? (for ex last year, or last month)
2. how much were accepted and refused
=> these answers would give an idea if the "problem to solve would be to motivate new contributors ?" - or "to not demotivate the .. ppl who asked to become members ?" for the last ... months)
3. I have no concrete informations, but we (for sure nearly all) know that in 2011, a lot of ppl did booths all around the planet (smile), with plushes, CD, fun etc... And we all know that it's no more that in 2015 ...
that could be a question too ...
resume : it's great to review the letter content, of course if it can be more open for the person who asked to become member - it's great if it means a first step on "re-youth openSUSE community" ...
so to come back to Cornelius suggestion, it's exactly the question of opened or closed system (basic systemic principles) :
if the community do not wish new members/contributors (ok you can be one without the other) then ... the community has to make it hard to be recognised as a member,
if the community wish to include more members/contributors, then the community makes it more easy to join ...
quality/quantity questions ... open/close ... it's a choice (that can change) ...
ok ... if openSUSE community wish to have more "quality" contributors/members,
than ok for an "hard way to get there" ...
but then, the question would be :
how big would be the plush I win ? (even if contributors are not paid, you cannot avoid the question like : do we say thank you ? do we recognise the work done ? do we give fun to members, why a contributor would join openSUSE rather than any other community ... as they all wish it too etc ...)
enought ...
thank you Cornelius - I appreciate ++ your way of suggesting new ideas
hey jdd
I just did forget to send this part to you, as member of the "jura member" ;-) - thanks
On 06/03/2015 09:56 PM, Françoise Wybrecht wrote:
I would just ask a concrete question to jdd :
- could you (as part of the "jury") give us the number of ppl asking to
become members ? (for ex last year, or last month)
- how much were accepted and refused
=> these answers would give an idea if the "problem to solve would be to motivate new contributors ?" - or "to not demotivate the .. ppl who asked to become members ?" for the last ... months)
Le 04/06/2015 07:57, Françoise Wybrecht a écrit :
hey jdd
I just did forget to send this part to you, as member of the "jury member" ;-) - thanks
On 06/03/2015 09:56 PM, Françoise Wybrecht wrote:
I would just ask a concrete question to jdd :
- could you (as part of the "jury") give us the number of ppl asking to
become members ? (for ex last year, or last month)
- how much were accepted and refused
I do not have these numbres, and don't know how to have them.
right now there are 11 people asking to be a member, on which 4 didn't give any reason at al (No given contributions), and most do not have a wiki personal page.
the membeship commity do have some tools at hand, very convenient to sacn the net and see who do what:
http://dodin.org/owncloud/index.php/s/D9pdU6sIwPsml4q
but this comity itself is not very active:-( We need on the beginning to clean it :-( - as they have to be at least 4 votes to accept or decline
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Membership_officials
jdd
On 06/04/2015 10:09 AM, jdd wrote:
Le 04/06/2015 07:57, Françoise Wybrecht a écrit :
hey jdd
I just did forget to send this part to you, as member of the "jury member" ;-) - thanks
On 06/03/2015 09:56 PM, Françoise Wybrecht wrote:
I would just ask a concrete question to jdd :
- could you (as part of the "jury") give us the number of ppl asking to
become members ? (for ex last year, or last month)
- how much were accepted and refused
I do not have these numbres, and don't know how to have them.
right now there are 11 people asking to be a member, on which 4 didn't give any reason at al (No given contributions), and most do not have a wiki personal page.
Thank you jdd for your answer,
and of course, this doesn't give a good idea (11 ppl since ... ? for ... months ? )
the membeship commity do have some tools at hand, very convenient to sacn the net and see who do what:
http://dodin.org/owncloud/index.php/s/D9pdU6sIwPsml4q
but this comity itself is not very active:-( We need on the beginning to clean it :-( - as they have to be at least 4 votes to accept or decline
ok ;-)
and of course, that could be another thread ...
your idea to change the "letter not accepted as member" got nice suggestions and a lot of exchanges ...
so congrat ;-))
Hello,
Am Freitag, 29. Mai 2015 schrieb Michal Hrusecky:
Or you join our bi-weekly project meeting to see what' going on, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Meetings
I assume you are thinking about the project meeting here. For those who didn't notice it: the project meeting changed from "every two weeks" to "on demand", see https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Project_meeting
A more general pointer to IRC and the mailing lists might be helpful.
Regards,
Christian Boltz
I have taken a moment to attempt to improve on the message. Obviously this is a rough draft, so please give any feedback.
Hi <username>,
Thank you for your interest in becoming an openSUSE member. We would like to preface by explaining the consequences of becoming a member. Membership allows contributors to participate in the governance of the openSUSE project. We wish to encourage that the project be governed by the community that participates in it's development and longevity. For this reason we have created a method to determine users qualifications. At this time we have determined that your application does not meet the requirements. We would like to encourage you to participate in the community and on the project. We look forward to receiving your application in the future.
As a person new to openSUSE you might check the "How to Participate" which gives a variety of possibilities, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate to start contributing. Or you join our bi-weekly project meeting to see what' going on, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Meetings
If you disagree with the decision, please send an email to membership-officials@opensuse.org
You can start contributing to openSUSE right away, you do not need to become a recognized openSUSE member,
Best Regards, Membership officials
-----Original Message-----From: Michal Hrusecky michal@hrusecky.net To: opensuse-project@opensuse.org Subject: Re: [opensuse-project] letter to people not accepted to be a member Date: Fri, 29 May 2015 22:53:50 +0200
Michal Hrusecky - 22:31 29.05.15 wrote:
jdd - 9:57 29.05.15 wrote:
Hello,
I do not have at hand the letter that is received by people asking to be a member but with no or nearly no contribution, and so refused.
I think this letter is much too rude, and that it's a waste of good will not to make some sort of follow up. There are not so many :-)
I would prefer/suggest to start with pointing out what is wrong/rude in current letter.
So I dug up the letter, we can discuss it and see where are places for improvements:
Hi <username>,
everybody is welcome to participate and get involved in the openSUSE project and we grant membership for those that have shown a continued and substantial contribution to the openSUSE project. Membership officials have rejected your application since that does not apply to you. We just found too little contribution and encourage you to get more involved with openSUSE and then apply again for membership.
As a person new to openSUSE you might check the "How to Participate" which gives a variety of possibilities, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate to start contributing. Or you join our bi-weekly project meeting to see what' going on, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Meetings
If you disagree with the decision, please send an email to membership-officials@opensuse.org
You can start contributing to openSUSE right away, you do not need to become a recognized openSUSE member,
Best Regards, Membership officials
I can try to do so.
I propose to have a letter of this sort (very incomplete, please read and comment)
https://en.opensuse.org/User:Jdd/letter_to_people_asking_to_be_a_member_2015
do we have a forum/mailing list that we could ask such people to subscribe? "opensuse@" seems to me much to intimidating :-)
I would advice against pointing to one particular person as this person would become single critical point in the whole process. I think opensuse or opensuse-project seems like a good place to start.
self edit... At this time we have determined that your application does not meet the requirements. diff At this time we have determined that your application does not meet the contribution requirements.
-----Original Message-----From: Joel Gordon jgordon@suse.com To: Michal Hrusecky michal@hrusecky.net Cc: opensuse-project@opensuse.org Subject: Re: [opensuse-project] letter to people not accepted to be a member Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2015 13:34:54 -0600
I have taken a moment to attempt to improve on the message. Obviously this is a rough draft, so please give any feedback.
Hi <username>,
Thank you for your interest in becoming an openSUSE member. We would like to preface by explaining the consequences of becoming a member. Membership allows contributors to participate in the governance of the openSUSE project. We wish to encourage that the project be governed by the community that participates in it's development and longevity. For this reason we have created a method to determine users qualifications. At this time we have determined that your application does not meet the requirements. We would like to encourage you to participate in the community and on the project. We look forward to receiving your application in the future.
As a person new to openSUSE you might check the "How to Participate" which gives a variety of possibilities, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate to start contributing. Or you join our bi-weekly project meeting to see what' going on, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Meetings
If you disagree with the decision, please send an email to membership-officials@opensuse.org
You can start contributing to openSUSE right away, you do not need to become a recognized openSUSE member,
Best Regards, Membership officials
-----Original Message-----From: Michal Hrusecky michal@hrusecky.net To: opensuse-project@opensuse.org Subject: Re: [opensuse-project] letter to people not accepted to be a member Date: Fri, 29 May 2015 22:53:50 +0200
Michal Hrusecky - 22:31 29.05.15 wrote:
jdd - 9:57 29.05.15 wrote:
Hello,
I do not have at hand the letter that is received by people asking to be a member but with no or nearly no contribution, and so refused.
I think this letter is much too rude, and that it's a waste of good will not to make some sort of follow up. There are not so many :-)
I would prefer/suggest to start with pointing out what is wrong/rude in current letter.
So I dug up the letter, we can discuss it and see where are places for improvements:
Hi <username>,
everybody is welcome to participate and get involved in the openSUSE project and we grant membership for those that have shown a continued and substantial contribution to the openSUSE project. Membership officials have rejected your application since that does not apply to you. We just found too little contribution and encourage you to get more involved with openSUSE and then apply again for membership.
As a person new to openSUSE you might check the "How to Participate" which gives a variety of possibilities, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate to start contributing. Or you join our bi-weekly project meeting to see what' going on, http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Meetings
If you disagree with the decision, please send an email to membership-officials@opensuse.org
You can start contributing to openSUSE right away, you do not need to become a recognized openSUSE member,
Best Regards, Membership officials
I can try to do so.
I propose to have a letter of this sort (very incomplete, please read and comment)
https://en.opensuse.org/User:Jdd/letter_to_people_asking_to_be_a_member_2015
do we have a forum/mailing list that we could ask such people to subscribe? "opensuse@" seems to me much to intimidating :-)
I would advice against pointing to one particular person as this person would become single critical point in the whole process. I think opensuse or opensuse-project seems like a good place to start.
On 29.05.2015 09:57, jdd wrote:
Hello,
I do not have at hand the letter that is received by people asking to be a member but with no or nearly no contribution, and so refused.
Just for my understanding: This discussion is only about people who asked to become a new member, but haven't contributed so much. Or is it also to be sent out to people who are member, but haven't contributed so much recently? To throw them kind of out? No, probably not, right? /me afraid ;-)
Thanks, Klaas
Le 02/06/2015 09:28, Klaas Freitag a écrit :
On 29.05.2015 09:57, jdd wrote:
Hello,
I do not have at hand the letter that is received by people asking to be a member but with no or nearly no contribution, and so refused.
Just for my understanding: This discussion is only about people who asked to become a new member, but haven't contributed so much.
yes
Or is it
also to be sent out to people who are member, but haven't contributed so much recently? To throw them kind of out? No, probably not, right? /me afraid ;-)
no.
for present members I have an other mail in dscussion (thread title: letter to non active openSUSE members), but obviously not the same one
jdd
Le 29/05/2015 09:57, jdd a écrit :
I propose to have a letter of this sort (very incomplete, please read and comment)
Hello,
I said I will come back to my main threads. That's it.
But there it's only to close the thread.
There are no more pending case on the todo list. So nothing is any more urgent.
For people asking with no contribution at all, It's probably best to act on this list before the end of the votes, by sending a mail to ask them to contribute as soon as possible.
as a remainder, the page URL:
https://connect.opensuse.org/mod/groups/membershipreq.php?group_guid=111
if you want to help, but can't se the page, may be you can ask to be part of the membership_official team :-)
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Membership_officials#Members
however, don't worry if it's a bit long, the summer is not a very good time, specially with leap being around the corner :-)
thanks, this thread is closed (IMHO) jdd
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