Board meeting 2010-05-27

Roll Call

Present: Paul Frields, Josh Boyer, Tom Callaway, Chris Tyler, Dennis Gilmore, Matt Domsch, John Poelstra, Colin Walters, Mike McGrath, Christopher Aillon
Regrets:
Assigned meeting secretary: Colin Walters

licensing this site? If not, what would need to change for you to do so?

- https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Hall_Monitor_Policy&diff=172746&oldid=171600
- One objection was raised to first added bullet ("...achive: * the perception of the friendly inviting community")
  - Bullet struck from text.
- Not clear how to balance increased specificity with the demands on the monitors themselves
ACTION: continue discussion at future meeting, with input from current hall monitors
QUESTION: Is there anyone who does not support the changes made by Matt and John to this page? What would have to change for you to do that?

stickster: Concern from spot this will create more work
jwb: Somewhat arbitrary, may let threads continue
spot: Don't want to be in position of having to judge every single thread for purpose.
- Original purpose was to stop aggressively negative people.
mmgrath: Are these constraints or tools? (various opinions: the latter)
stickster: Need grounds for actions
spot: People are going to complain they're being profiled
mdomsch: Would be OK striking threads completely
stickster: OK for us to say we're comfortable with original policy
poelstra: Has there been a negative impact on Fedora as a result of invoking hall monitoring?
- (general discussion): No?
stickster: Binding with red tape doesn't work well; trying to define cases encourages more and more language lawyering
spot: Non-constructive threads are out of scope of hall monitoring
mdomsch: This was in the original - we can delete it, we have the technology. Was hall monitoring an experiment?
spot: Only one instance where we had to moderate someone for a period of time, but not justification to get rid of it
jwb: Uncertain we'll know until we get to another contentious point
stickster: Treating a symptom and not the disease; doctors treat both
spot: We want enforcers for something like Ubuntu's Social Contract
stickster: How do we quantify non-constructiveness?
(discussion): Not really possible
ctyler: Ok with removing it
ACTION: Matt made change to the page
ACTION: spot to present rationale on advisory-board list

(discussion about additional hall monitors)

Revisiting hall monitoring
"Poisonous people" problem -- how do we identify and solve it?
Lots of anecdotal advice, what about practical applications and examples of where it's been done right and wrong?
stickster: Hard to root out after it's been embedded for a long time from particular people
- Look for examples from other communities
- Want to encourage collaboration and interaction, but we've maybe encouraged growth without establishing clear ground rules
- without looking at the tradeoffs
ctyler: Need to make Fedora less hospitable for people who make Fedora less hospitable
Next Board will take up this issue
- possibly demands a special session, it's a complicated problem

Thursday, 2010-06-03 UTC 1600
- TENTATIVE
- Regular Board IRC Public meeting
- Potential first seating of new Board members