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Log

stickster #startmeeting Fedora Board 16:00
zodbot Meeting started Thu May 6 16:00:59 2010 UTC. The chair is stickster. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 16:00
zodbot Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic. 16:00
stickster #meetingname Fedora Board 16:01
zodbot The meeting name has been set to 'fedora_board' 16:01
stickster #topic Roll call! 16:01
* stickster 16:01
* poelcat 16:01
* gbinns 16:01
* spot burps 16:01
* walters waves 16:01
* mmcgrath 16:01
* ctyler smiles 16:02
stickster Do we have mdomsch, caillon, jwb, ctyler, dgilmore? 16:02
caillon yo 16:02
jwb here 16:02
mdomsch 16:02
mdomsch here 16:02
* ctyler smiles again 16:02
stickster #info Board members present: poelcat spot walters mmcgrath ctyler caillon jwb mdomsch stickster 16:03
stickster All right, hopefully dgilmore will be around shortly 16:03
stickster Let' 16:03
stickster oops. 16:03
stickster Let's get started 16:03
stickster We'll start with our planned Websites forum 16:03
stickster #topic Websites forum 16:03
stickster The Board wanted to have a forum at these meetings to talk more often with different teams and SIGs in Fedora about what they're working on, their plans for the next few months, and how we might be able to help them achieve those goals. 16:04
stickster I'd like to make those meetings a little more frequent, possibly doing this every two weeks instead of just once a month. 16:04
stickster mmcgrath volunteered the Websites team :-) to be the first participants 16:05
stickster So sijis, ricky, gbinns, can you talk to us about what you guys are currently working on? I'm aware of a good bit of it, but others may not be. 16:05
sijis hi all. its a pleasure to be here 16:05
stickster #info This section will run to about :30 after the hour 16:05
sijis i think this is a great idea to have these discussions 16:06
sijis the thing we are working on right now is getting the redesigned get.fp.o webpages up and going for release day 16:07
sijis its 98% done and can be seen at http://stg.fedoraproject.org 16:07
stickster #link http://stg.fedoraproject.org <-- staging for get.fp.o pages 16:07
stickster sijis: Those are being translated right now, right? 16:07
* stickster encourages Board members to ask questions freely 16:08
sijis yes, however we missed a few pieces of text thta need to be translated and i'll have to update the pot file after this meeting 16:08
ricky After that, we should email trans with the announcement to start translating :-) 16:08
stickster #info Websites is working on the get.fp.o redesigned pages, and they will be ready for F-13 GA 16:08
mmcgrath sijis: side note, I have something to ask you and ricky after the meeting 16:08
sijis mmcgrath: ok. 16:09
mdomsch sijis, is the redesigned get.fp.o on stg ? 16:09
stickster mdomsch: Yes, see #link above 16:09
sijis we've recently had a recent addition to the websites team, gbinns, and he's looking at getting us SEO ready 16:09
mmcgrath mdomsch: yeah I was looking for that too I thought it'd be up already 16:10
stickster sijis: There's been some work on the Spins sites too if I'm not mistaken 16:10
mmcgrath mdomsch: oh I see, it's under other options - http://stg.fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options 16:10
sijis he's working with marketing closely with this too 16:10
gbinns yes, the SEO is going well - a SOP is being finalized 16:10
poelcat sijis: that's great. are there any special areas that the websites team needs help in? 16:10
poelcat or areas you would like to grow next? 16:11
mmcgrath sorry, SEO ? 16:11
mdomsch I may be misreading this, but it seems that torrents are being pushed as the preferred mechanism 16:11
walters i assume the subtext of each one shouldn't all say "The GNOME-based" 16:11
* ricky would like to see some concentration on join.fp.o after the release - that was sidelined a bit for the get.fp.o redesign 16:11
stickster SEO = search engine optimization 16:11
mmcgrath oh right right 16:11
mdomsch are we also promoting direct download links? 16:11
mdomsch I like the tabs approach, but download methods cuts across those 16:12
sijis mdomsch: yes. i think the idea was for the gnome to be direct and the typical spins to be torrent primarily 16:13
* dgilmore is here 16:13
sijis poelcat: i think our efforts should move torwards freshening up fp.o 16:13
ricky It's *really* tough to fit every permutation of ISO and download method on this page, especially now that it has even more options than http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora-all 16:13
stickster walters: Yeah, there's a string error there that we'll correct before sending out the POT 16:14
ctyler looks like torrents on Desktop, Architecture, Activities pages, direct download on Formats page 16:14
mdomsch ricky, understood 16:14
stickster Yes, and I think the design process for these pages went through many iterations with constitutents before we found something that made people generally satisfied 16:14
mdomsch just being me, I'd really like to see "this is the most popular content", with multiple download methods, on the top of get.fp.o 16:15
mdomsch the desktop link is there, nice big box, I like that 16:15
sijis thinking about ricky's comment regarding join.fp.o. 16:16
stickster mdomsch: What happens now is that the first page is that method -- which is an ISO link. There's a "more options" link which allows you to see the whole lineup, and pick a torrent file if that's more convenient. The most popular by our stats is the ISO, so I think we're hitting that target correctly 16:17
sijis i like the idea of fixiing but i think its more 'what steps should a new person do to get involved' 16:17
sijis i don't thin kthe current pages necessary show a direct path on how to accomplish that 16:17
stickster Having a more functional and clear join.fp.o is an incredibly worthwhile goal. 16:17
ricky Yeah, it's definitely not just a design issue, it's also a process thing 16:17
ricky s/also/mostly 16:17
mdomsch worksforme 16:18
stickster ricky: Exactly. We will probably want to build up the steps of figuring out the actual flow for a new contributor, and letting that inform the new design process 16:18
stickster sijis: And I think we already have in front of us the third and final phase of the website refresh, which is the main fp.o page 16:19
stickster Did the team want to talk about that? 16:19
sijis i did have a question on that.. i'm glad you brought that up. 16:19
sijis i believe the design team may have already put some mockups around that redesign. 16:19
sijis i just do not know if that's been approved or not 16:20
stickster In the interest of time, it seems that the current project is well on its way. 16:20
sijis of if its waiting on "something" to move that along 16:20
stickster So we can concentrate for the next few minutes on how the Board can help the Websites team succeed 16:20
mmcgrath 1 16:20
stickster sijis: Excellent -- let's discuss that. I believe that Mo Duffy probably hasn't visited those designs again since the beginning of the year, and they were originally proposed before F12 16:21
stickster I don't think there are drastic changes needed, but we might want to tune some of the graphics 16:21
sijis ok 16:22
mmcgrath sijis: so what are some of your biggest pain points and needs? 16:22
sijis the other thing, which i know has been brought up before, is "who is the target audience" 16:22
stickster The Board could help by setting some milestone dates after discussing them with Websites and Design... tune the mockups if needed, and start building the templates 16:23
sijis that sorta plays into my mind.. are we looking for more volunteers or downloads? 16:23
sijis what should we be looking to 'push' to visitors? 16:23
walters i think it only really makes sense to turn users into contributors 16:24
stickster The main page is a gateway to both. People mainly come to contribute as a result of using the download, so there should be a route to join from there, and information on how Fedora is produced. My recollection is that the "after download" page has a prominent splash about this, i.e. a "get involved" block 16:24
walters meaning if you're on get.fp.org, you're likely not a user yet 16:24
mdomsch on release days, esp. get.fp.o, focus must be on downloading the software. 16:25
sijis so not only download it and use it..but how to get involved and make it better. 16:25
ctyler every user is a potential contributor, so growing the user base grows the potential contributor base. but moving from user->contributor, or fringe contributor->core contributor, is critical 16:25
mdomsch picture this: a sf.net-style download page that appears when they click to download 16:25
mdomsch get.fp.o -> click download -> new page that talks about the benefits of being a contributor, which starts the actual ISO download in the background. 16:26
stickster #link http://duffy.fedorapeople.org/temp/woot/page3.png 16:26
stickster Ignore the panda issue for right now please. :-) 16:26
sijis mdomsch: you read my mind :) 16:26
mdomsch stickster, exactly 16:26
stickster The link above shows an "after download" page which we could flesh out with a good deal more information about getting involved. 16:26
gbinns from a research standpoint in terms of pushing content for either download or contribution, i've found that the most common searches related to our content are: linux, linux download, linux server, linux how to, linux command, install linux 16:27
* caillon also thinks we can do a better job of encouraging contributions from the default offering 16:27
gbinns #link http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1673758/linux_keyword_ideas_20100420_1535408.csv 16:27
caillon but, yeah, downloads are step 1, so i agree with the rest of those who have spoken 16:27
ctyler I think we're doing a better job getting people into FAS than getting them to contribute after they've joined. Do we have stats on FAS account growth, and how many of those account holders are active? 16:28
sijis caillon: what would you consider the default offering? 16:28
dgilmore ctyler: i agree 16:28
stickster sijis: Fortunately it doesn't need to be subjective 16:28
mdomsch ctyler, the definition of 'active' is subject to long debates too :-( 16:28
ricky ctyler: Yes - a very small percent of FAS accounts have CLA + 1 group :-/ 16:28
stickster sijis: We have a page on that -- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Default_offering 16:29
ctyler mdomsch: yes, but CLA+1 could be a start 16:29
stickster We are coming down to our time for this part of the meeting 16:29
stickster I see a few things on the Board's plate 16:29
mmcgrath ctyler: by our definition of 'contributor' we have 2800 contributors. 16:29
gbinns ctyler: since i'm new, my impression is that for anyone who is a new contributor there is a bit of a potentially overwhelming ramp up period in terms of figuring out what's going on in various groups they may be interested in - this could include learning terminology, or short-hand abbreviations and exchanges about specific tasks regarding a project that is already in progress. 16:29
stickster #action Start discussion with Websites and Design to set final milestones for main fp.o page design tuning and production schedule 16:29
ctyler mmcgrath: 2800 FAS or CLA+1? 16:30
mmcgrath CLA+1 16:30
ctyler cool. What's current FAS count? 16:30
stickster #action Start discussion of a production schedule for a join.fp.o revamp, to follow main fp.o rollout 16:30
ricky ctyler: 31894 :-/ 16:31
caillon sijis, specifically, I meant that we could do a better job of encouraging contributions from within the OS that you've installed from our website. not anything for you guys to do, was just a comment 16:31
mmcgrath 1489 of those are packagers. 16:31
stickster gwerra: Sorry, I didn't see your ping earlier. 16:31
sijis caillon: ahh. gotcha. 16:31
mmcgrath ctyler: we have 31894 'active' accoutns. 45000 total. 16:31
stickster sijis: ricky: What other actions should the Board capture from this meeting to help you guys? 16:32
* stickster sees that 30 min is probably not enough for this type of meeting 16:33
mmcgrath stickster: I think we got too caught up on discussing the actual work they're doing. 16:33
walters stickster: well i imagine that as we cycle through groups we'll all have a better handle on what's happening and things can be shorter 16:33
walters delta from before 16:33
stickster mmcgrath: Yes. It's good for the Board to get informed about that stuff though -- not everyone here probably watches every team's list of knows all their projects 16:33
ctyler walters: +1 16:34
stickster walters: True also 16:34
sijis stickster: no, i think you got them. the fp.o and join.fp.o 16:34
mmcgrath stickster: but we were playing design team for like 10 minutes :) 16:34
stickster mmcgrath: yep 16:34
sijis playing design team isn't bad. 16:35
ctyler mmcgrath: would like to work with you sometime (soon) to do some analysis of the account stats 16:35
sijis it gives us an idea on what vision you guys have on how fp.o should function 16:35
stickster Board folks -- would you agree that we should try and do this for a full hour next time, until we get to a point where we're just looking at deltas? 16:35
ctyler stickster: +1 16:35
spot sure 16:35
mmcgrath 1 16:35
mdomsch 1 16:35
stickster sijis: We can definitely do that on the list, which helps more people see the conversation 16:36
dgilmore sure +1 16:36
stickster OK, I want to thank sijis, ricky, gbinns, gwerra for all being here. I'm sorry we didn't plan enough time for this but I think it was a really useful way to start. 16:36
walters well...maybe give 10 minutes for community questions? 16:36
stickster walters: we're about to open up for community Q&A, we can definitely start with Websites questions if there are any 16:37
stickster great idea 16:37
stickster sijis: ricky: gbinns: gwerra: Don't go anywhere quite yet! :-) 16:37
stickster #topic Community Q&A 16:38
stickster inode0: Go ahead -- I think you had a question John 16:38
stickster #agreed Team sessions will run 60 minutes in the future, since 30 minutes doesn't seem like enough at this point. We can reduce the time in the future if/when there's less to cover. 16:39
stickster inode0: Or... not? 16:39
jwb i'm not really sure we could have answered that potential question anyway 16:40
stickster OK, it was about knowing how many of the 2800 CLA+ folks started as users, which I don't think we can answer with any accuracy. 16:40
stickster We could try a random polling. 16:41
stickster That's worth a separate discussion, but we don't have an answer right now. 16:41
jwb that hasn't served us well for other items 16:41
stickster Go ahead Toshio 16:41
stickster jwb: true. 16:41
abadger1999 Are you going to forgo or cut down community QA until you get to deltas or have a different meeting serve for that? 16:41
stickster abadger1999: I think the idea is that we would make these IRC sessions more frequent so that we're offering at least the same amount of community Q&A if not more. 16:42
mdomsch we're also not strictly time-bound to 60 minutes 16:42
stickster For instance, we might separate the team sessions and have Q&A focus on that team, whereas the Board would continue to have a general IRC meeting for Board-focused Q&A 16:42
mmcgrath abadger1999: also I think there's been a general view that Q&A has been pretty low. 16:42
mmcgrath seems like we struggle for questions at times. 16:42
abadger1999 Sounds good. Can queue up the next question. 16:43
jwb yes 16:43
stickster Thanks, good question abadger1999 16:43
stickster Go ahead abadger1999, no one else seems to be in line 16:43
stickster (evidence of previous point?) 16:43
mmcgrath we're happy to answer questions if you've got 'em! 16:44
abadger1999 At least some of us were surprised by the powers that have been granted to the hall monitors by the policy. 16:44
abadger1999 Since we're talking about censorship, can we please enumerate the criteria for hall monitoring a thread and expand that as we run into more issues rather than the other way around. 16:44
* mmcgrath still thinks hall monitors are a bad idea. 16:45
abadger1999 That last sentence should have ended with a "?" :-) 16:46
mdomsch abadger1999, reading your posts, I believe you believe that the hall monitors overstepped their (assumed) boundaries in trying to quell discussion on devel@ earlier this week, after the thread crossed the several pages worth of mails threshhold 16:46
stickster I answered this in part on the FAB, but I worry that trying to draw finer lines isn't solving the real problem, which is how we can have more constructive dialogue on lists 16:46
mmcgrath stickster: we can't force it, which is what the current policy tries to do. 16:47
stickster For instance, although I didn't see the most recent moderation on f-devel-l until after it happened, I got involved myself in breaking up a fracas on another list 16:47
abadger1999 mdomsch: Correct -- My reading of the policy (and at least adamw's as well) does not imply that power. 16:47
abadger1999 mmcgrath: Well said. 16:47
mdomsch I was thankfully offline for a few days when that particular thread exploded, thus missed it until after I saw abadger1999's note about it being quelled 16:48
stickster I think there are probably parts of that thread that are important issues we need to confront and solve 16:48
mmcgrath if kevin wants to hurt his own cause by flying off the handle again, and using his full name in a subject in a provocative manor. It's his right to do so. 16:48
mdomsch I'm all for letting threads go long, even rapid as this one seems to have been, as long as it's still civil (albeit redundant) 16:49
jwb i am, for obvious reasons, going to exclude myself from this entire conversation unless explicitly asked something 16:49
* spot is as well 16:49
poelcat spot: why? 16:50
jwb we're both hall monitors? 16:50
jwb seems a conflict of interest 16:50
* poelcat didn't realize spot was 16:50
stickster The monitors are currently spot, jwb, and skvidal 16:50
ctyler Good discourse is great. Free speech is great. But I do think there is such a thing as a thread that sucks the life out of the community, and that makes it unfun to be there. 16:51
mmcgrath ctyler: in that scenario, you're treating the symptom not the problem. 16:51
stickster Some discussions are by nature unfun. But there are ways to keep them from starting out with people groaning and refusing to read them. 16:51
poelcat mmcgrath: what is a better approach? 16:52
mmcgrath poelcat: having a proper vision that people can read and say "ehh, fedora's not for me" 16:53
abadger1999 Note that although I wouldn't want a policy that gives hall monitors the power to quell discussions just for being long, I'm even more concerned by people thinking that the hall monitors have a broad and undefined power to stop "problematic" threads. Some sort of criteria that can be applied fairly and in a well defined manner is the very least that is necessary to make a censorship policy workable. 16:53
mmcgrath which we're getting closer to, but didn't have for years. So we have lots of discourse of lots of different people, with conflicting views all saying "Fedora is for me" 16:53
mmcgrath and they're all fighting for it. over time some will win, some will lose. 16:54
stickster abadger1999: I agree that length isn't a deciding factor. But we've all been around long enough to see people start discussions by trolling. What happens in those cases, when you can't have everyone just ignore the trolling? (And I'm not talking about the current moderated discussion in particular.) 16:56
mdomsch I hate trying to narrowly define either permissions or restrictions; I prefer to trust the judgement of the people enacting what we tried to make as a reasonable policy. 16:56
ctyler mmcgrath: that's good, as long as the way in which the fight is conducted doesn't drive away willing and able contributors 16:56
poelcat mmcgrath: how long do the fights go on before our community becomes a battle ground with a stench nobody is attracted to? 16:56
dgilmore long discussions can be fruitful and positive 16:56
stickster mdomsch: +1 16:56
mdomsch in this case, I would have let it go, but I'm also not tasked with being a monitor 16:56
mmcgrath ctyler: you really want willing and able contributors that don't agree with the vision we've set forth? 16:56
poelcat dgilmore: do we have any recent excamples? 16:56
mmcgrath poelcat: I think we're already there actually. 16:56
mmcgrath poelcat: but we're adults here most of the time. 16:57
ctyler mmcgrath: what about willing and able contributors who agree with the vision but can't stand the noise? 16:57
dgilmore poelcat: not that i can think of. but doesnt mean its not happened in the past or could not happen again 16:57
stickster mdomsch: And I would further add that we can and should rotate monitor duties 16:57
mmcgrath ctyler: you're just talking about thin skinned people now. 16:57
poelcat dgilmore: so your position is let things roll, some good things might come from it and that is better than any bad that might in the mean time? 16:58
mdomsch stickster, at the risk of taking on more work, yeah... 16:58
dgilmore mmcgrath: we definetly have people who dont agree with the vision as set forth by the board 16:58
mmcgrath criticism, fights, they're going to happen. They're particularly bad right now because of lots of things going on. The last two (different) polls I saw puts Ubuntu at an order of magnitude more popular then Fedora. 16:58
* mdomsch suspects that thin-skinned contributors will simply skip the long threads 16:58
mmcgrath Everyone's a little testy right now. 16:58
dgilmore poelcat: not at all what i said and dont go putting words in my mouth 16:58
poelcat dgilmore: not my intention at all, trying to clarify and udnerstand your point of view 16:59
abadger1999 stickster: you've got two problems there: 1) Can you define trolling well enough to be able to censor troll-posts without censoring non-troll-posts? 2) We don't want to be "Jeopardy" --> Where the discussion that arises from trolling becomes good but because someone asks that the troll criteria be applied fairly to the thread, someone has to restate the good part of the discussion in another thread. 16:59
mdomsch mmcgrath, this month's Linux Journal puts it at 33% Ubuntu, 9% fedora, ... 16:59
dgilmore poelcat: im saying one simple thing. a long thread does not mean its not productive 16:59
poelcat dgilmore: fair enough :) 16:59
mmcgrath at the same time, packagers used to be able to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. But that doesn't scale. So we're putting process in place and of course they all hate that too. 16:59
dgilmore like a long package review doesnt mean its a bad package 16:59
abadger1999 stickster: OTOH, you're trying to treat something that, perhaps shouldn't be treated. 16:59
poelcat dgilmore: how about a few people repeating the same point of view 5,000 times? 17:00
dgilmore it could just be that things are being lernt and knowledge is being transfered 17:00
ctyler mmcgrath: not sure we want to evolve to be a community of only the thickest-skinned people, otoh 17:00
stickster abadger1999: I don't believe that's true, because I've been to a number of presentations over the past year about the social effects of bad behavior in communities 17:00
abadger1999 stickster: ie: the proposed solution is worse than the problem. 17:00
stickster The brunt of it is borne by people who aren't even participating in the conversation. 17:00
abadger1999 stickster: I've been to presentations and discussions about that too -- 17:00
mmcgrath ctyler: not a goal, just a natural progression of having an open platform. 17:00
dgilmore poelcat: its probably not productive. but its not what i was talking about or commenting on 17:01
mmcgrath mdomsch: the last two I saw were these two - http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/385955/9735b1dea4e57b0c/, http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/linux-bakers-dozen/ 17:01
abadger1999 stickster: But we were invariably talking about the non-excellence factor; not redundance, trolls, etc. 17:01
dgilmore poelcat: i was just saying because its long doesnt mean its bad 17:01
poelcat dgilmore: you and I are in agreement then :) 17:01
mmcgrath which had ubuntu at 50% and fedora at 5%, and ubuntu at 54% and Fedora at 24 (that one's not an order of magnitude, just double) 17:01
abadger1999 for instance, the poisonous people talks and threads from GSoC. 17:01
jwb abadger1999, can you define how being a troll would _not_ be non-excellence? 17:02
jwb i'm slightly confused, and just want clarification 17:02
abadger1999 we're talking about stoppingthe threads; are we not? 17:02
mmcgrath we shouldn't have enforcement against trolls. It's just going to make them angry. 17:02
mmcgrath we're talking about mailing lists here. This is an email problem. The only way to fix it is to stop using mailing lists. 17:03
jwb abadger1999, according to you, you just said "we're invariably talking about the non-excellence factor" 17:03
jwb abadger1999, so which are you talking about? 17:03
abadger1999 jwb: And that still might need to define the criteria for what is a troll. 17:03
stickster abadger1999: Which goes right back to my point about this not being a simple binary problem. 17:03
walters my main input here is while i don't much like the hall monitoring, i also don't think just not having it and telling people to delete emails is really viable either 17:03
stickster Which, for better or worse, is characteristic of a lot of social issues. 17:04
stickster walters: What do you think would work better? 17:04
walters i don't know =) 17:04
jwb abadger1999, i think i see now. thank you for clarifying 17:04
abadger1999 stickster: Exactly. But where you are erring on the side of removing discussion, I think it is much better to err on the side of leaving the discussion open. 17:04
mmcgrath stickster: if stopping those thread is really of paramount importance. Then get rid of the people starting them. 17:04
mmcgrath I'm clearly not actually proposing it. 17:05
mmcgrath but if that's the goal, that's really the only way to solve it. But that's lunacy so heated threads are just a fact of lief. 17:05
mmcgrath we're generally talking about an angry vocal minority who hasn't accepted or doesn't like being a vocal minority. That's the problem. How do you solve that? 17:06
dgilmore mmcgrath: not be ignoring them 17:06
stickster abadger1999: So what I would propose then, is that a change of the hall monitor policy is really not the answer here, but rather asking the community on the list to step up their self-policing a bit 17:06
mmcgrath we're not ignoring them, we're telling them no 17:06
dgilmore mmcgrath: right but they see it as being ignored and then they get louder 17:07
abadger1999 stickster: Censoring without clear criteria that people can apply to themselves inspires its own kind of negative environment for communication that is much worse than enumerating the problems as they come up. 17:07
* spot needs to go, feel free to continue in my absence. 17:07
poelcat mmcgrath: i like what you're saying about the mechanism (email) being the problem... i had something drafted for the advisory-board thread about maybe needing to move some of the devel discussion to a different medium (ftalk, fad, etc.), but wasn't sure if it added to the discussion 17:07
mmcgrath stickster: we've never seen any community nor list self-policing. How are we going to have them increase it? 17:07
stickster mmcgrath: >0 would be a start 17:07
mmcgrath but we're saying we have a problem, the solution we're proposing doesn't actually exist. 17:08
abadger1999 stickster: I think you still need to clarify the hall monitor policy -- because currently different people are interpreting what the hal monitor's powers are. 17:08
abadger1999 stickster: But yes, I would be totally fine with my proposal #1 changes to show that redundancy, length, etc are not criteria *and* asking members oft he community to be more frugal/self-policing. 17:09
stickster mmcgrath: To your earlier point -- about solving the problem of a vocal minority that doesn't like being a vocal minority. This is one of the toughest problems in community management 17:09
stickster Because no community leader -- not me, Max, Jono Bacon, Joe Brockmeier, or anyone else -- wants to tell people to walk away. 17:09
stickster It seems very harsh. 17:10
mmcgrath no one wants it, but what if that's what we need? 17:10
stickster At the same time, there are all sorts of human relationships that are really bad for both people involved. As much as I think analogies can be bad, this one's pretty applicable. 17:10
poelcat maybe I took Chris DiBona's recent talk too literally, but he suggested just dropping them 17:11
poelcat http://video.linuxfoundation.org/video/1716 17:12
mdomsch it's somewhat hard to do that 17:12
mdomsch short of moderate/ban from emails 17:12
stickster mmcgrath: I could be reading you wrong here, so apologies if so. But when I hear you say that, I get the feeling you think it's kind of a one-time action 17:12
* poelcat not saying I would do it or that it's easy... it is not 17:12
mdomsch given that's our primary communication mechanism 17:12
mmcgrath stickster: well that's the other side of this problem. Their unwillingness to leave. 17:13
jwb nobody has told anyone to leave. how can anyone be considered unwilling? 17:13
mdomsch so I don't quite ignore the trolls, but I do listen to their comments with increased waryness 17:13
mmcgrath It just seems so clear to me that Ralf and Kevin in particular (I'm not above naming names) hate it here. They just hate it. And they'd probably have a much better time in another free software project. 17:13
mmcgrath jwb: I've asked ralf to leave before. 17:13
* stickster thinks it's not productive to name names here. 17:14
jwb i see. the Fedora Board has not done that, to my knowledge, in any sort of official capacity 17:14
mmcgrath stickster: I just don't see a point in being coy. 17:14
mmcgrath we all know who we're talking about here. This last thread that got clipped off had Kevin's name in the subject. 17:14
stickster But clearly there are people in the Fedora community who seem very unsatisfied with the whole of the Project, and for whom that's not a recent turn of events. 17:14
mmcgrath and he has EVERY right to be here. 17:15
dgilmore mmcgrath: ive told ralph in the past when he was talking to me that he did not have to be here 17:15
mmcgrath It certainly is a hard problem. 17:15
mmcgrath We don't want everyone who's unhappy with Fedora to leave. 17:15
stickster mmcgrath: If it wasn't we'd have solved it years ago. 17:16
mmcgrath But some people in particular are chronically unhappy here. 17:16
dgilmore we have some vocal fedora contributors who are really unhappy with things 17:16
dgilmore some have been unhappy for years 17:17
* ctyler returns from brief interruption, speed-reads scrollback 17:17
mdomsch chronically unhappy, and prolifically vocal 17:18
stickster mmcgrath: I think the deciding difference is whether the unhappiness comes from (1) something that can be potentially changed to make one happier; (2) something that for one reason or another won't or is incredibly unlikely to be changed, so you'll be unhappy forever about it. 17:18
ctyler 1 17:18
mmcgrath I guess the point here is that we can't not make decisions just because we're worried about pissing someone off. 17:18
stickster And if it's (2) that's the problem *and* you can't accept it, why would you want to stay around? 17:18
mmcgrath especially if we think we're honestly making the right decision. 17:18
mmcgrath stickster: agreed. 17:19
mdomsch mmcgrath, I think we've been good about that lately - making decisions, knowing it'll hack some people off, and yet doing so because we think it's the right way for the project to go. Dealing with long threads thereafter is part of the repercussion. I'm fine with that. 17:19
stickster mmcgrath: I also agree with your point about decisions. Else we wouldn't have spent so much time defining and writing down decision points about user base, default offering, and so forth. 17:19
stickster And I think the purpose of that is not just to generate a page that we can then hack up over time and change repeatedly. 17:20
poelcat it comes full circle to the bigger questions we've been grappling with, "What do we really want the Fedora Project to be?" if we know what that is then we have a better sense of where some of the hard decisions need to be made 17:20
mmcgrath mdomsch: agreed, but I do have a problem with the repercussions on us getting clipped off by a hall monitor policy we ourselves created. It's just too much censorship for me. 17:20
mmcgrath poelcat: and how do we get it to be that. 17:21
jwb can i ask a question for a second? 17:21
mmcgrath volunteer labor is extremely difficult to work with sometimes. In Infrastructure in particular there's a lot of very non-glamorous work that's not getting done because volunteers don't get any value out of doing it. 17:21
stickster The purpose is to generate a starting point, plant a flag, and say, "The Board exists to define and lead in these areas. This is a decision, let's move on from here." 17:22
mdomsch so, let's tie this off then, and suggest that hall monitors provide additional latitude to long threads that may be redundant, but that aren't violent 17:22
mmcgrath jwb: of course? 17:22
jwb is there anyone on the Board that thinks the recent hall monitor action was inappropriate? if so, instead of jumping into a huge political and moral discussion on the policy itself, could you explain why you think that and possibly give some constructive criticism to the hall monitors? 17:22
jwb i mean.... damn. we're just people. people can make mistakes. that doesn't mean the policy is flawed or immoral or evil 17:23
mmcgrath jwb: I generally was surprised it got monitored when it did. I thought it was a little too preemptive based on current policy. 17:23
jwb why? 17:23
mdomsch jwb, that's what I'm getting to. I would have let the thread go. I don't have a firm criteria for when the right time to shut such down would be, but it didn't seem to be full of personal attacks. 17:24
mmcgrath beats me. I know pornography when I see it. I didn't think i was looking at pornography yet. 17:24
poelcat mmcgrath: i wasn't 17:24
poelcat surprised 17:24
jwb mdomsch, mmcgrath, interesting 17:24
* mmcgrath notes his pornography reference was to Potter Stewart. 17:25
mmcgrath in case anyone reading this doesn't get the reference :) 17:25
stickster mmcgrath: I did :-) 17:25
abadger1999 jwb: I think the policy is flawed in that different people are responding different ways to that question. It needs to be clarified to either show that that action was proper or clarified to show that it's not. 17:25
mdomsch I also tend to batch read devel@, and had missed a few days worth; that tends to remove a lot of my "why is this person filling up my inbox" angst 17:25
dgilmore mmcgrath: i agree. i felt it was way to soon. it was noisy and not entirely productive, but it was not agressive or violent or threatening. 17:25
poelcat jwb: i thought it made sense in the larger context that this issue is being beaten to death by a couple of people that have already beaten it to death multiple times and that conversation is not increasing in quality or reaching any constructive conclusions 17:26
abadger1999 jwb: Whether it's immoral and evil is separate from that :-) 17:26
stickster In addition the need for moderation was unclear because there are strong personalities involved, there were some legitimate issues in Kevin's thread (even if we may disagree with his conclusions), Seth who posted the monitoring notice is on FESCo which was part of the subject matter, people had complained... It was probably not the clearest of cuts. And despite getting OT in some subthreads, there was still some substance in 17:27
stickster it. 17:27
jwb poelcat, from a personal perspective, that is why i consented 17:27
ctyler So the counter-question is this: was anyone surprised it wasn't cut off earlier? Would those who felt it was cut off at a reasonable point also have been comfortable with it going on just a bit longer? 17:28
ctyler I believe that entrusting some people with this responsibility was and is the right way to go, rather than codifying everything. I support mdomsch's proposal of giving the hall monitors some feedback (recommending that long but non-violent threads be permitted) and continuing on. 17:28
poelcat jwb: iow it was more counter-productive than productive in the overall scheme of things and someone could help me see that I'm wrong too... i'm open to that 17:28
poelcat but it is a judgement call 17:29
* stickster doesn't have anything more to add to this. 17:30
mmcgrath We need threads like that to start. Dissent is extremely important. We just need them to not get so out of hand :) 17:30
poelcat does anyone have the hall monitor policy link handy? 17:31
stickster https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Hall_Monitor_Policy 17:31
* ctyler can't outclick stickster 17:31
poelcat i think what might be missing is our overall objectives for having this policy... IOW what do we want to acheive by having it 17:32
stickster I'm +1 to mdomsch's suggestion. 17:32
poelcat maybe it is there, but i kind of get lost in all the words 17:32
mmcgrath stickster: maybe we need a volunteer bill of rights or something. 17:32
stickster It's hard to see this as a trend when the monitors have jumped in so rarely over the last year to begin with. 17:32
mdomsch stickster, agreed there - it's rarely been used 17:33
mdomsch which is as it should be in a healthy environment 17:33
stickster mdomsch: Agree. 17:33
abadger1999 ctyler: I am agaisnt this being a judgement call... censorship itself creates a negative environment for communication -- if the criteria for what gets you placed in that category is unclear, it is much worse than if it's clear what you should and should not do. 17:33
* poelcat wonders if censorship is an overly loaded term here 17:34
jwb it is 17:34
abadger1999 It's a loaded term -- is it overly loaded? 17:34
mmcgrath poelcat: we're preventing people from saying things they'd otherwise want to say. 17:34
jwb no, we aren't 17:34
poelcat mmcgrath: not exactly 17:34
stickster I think that simply asking the monitors, as they continue, to be aware of the potential to stifle worthwhile (even if not fun) discussion. 17:34
stickster sorry, didn't finish that sentence. 17:35
abadger1999 poelcat: Overall objective is to keep people "be[ing] excellent to each other". 17:35
ctyler abadger1999: doesn't that just make it a prejudgement call, where we need to try and envision all possible situations in advance? 17:35
abadger1999 ctyler: Yes. 17:35
poelcat abadger1999: so that ______ ? (this is the part i think is missing) 17:35
mdomsch it's really point 3 that abadger1999 is concerned about, right? closing threads? As opposed to the private mails to contributors who are not being polite 17:35
mmcgrath mdomsch: yeah. 17:36
abadger1999 mdomsch: As far as I can see, yes. 17:36
mmcgrath I might have made this up but I thought we had the ability to force a cool down period on people 17:36
mdomsch we do; we can moderate an individual's right to post to the lis 17:36
mdomsch list 17:36
mmcgrath I'm not sure if that's better or worse though :) 17:36
mmcgrath have we ever done that? 17:37
spot mmcgrath: yes 17:37
poelcat we want people to be excellent to each other so that the Fedora Project is a growing, healthy, innovative, place to work on free software together 17:37
ctyler I'm with stickster and mdomsch for recommending that the monitors be encouraged not to stifle non-"violent" discussion, and to continue their work. 17:37
abadger1999 ctyler: I'd rather we err on the side of not censoring and adding to the criteria as we go along then leave people wondering if they could get in trouble for what their posting and leaving open to abuse. 17:38
jwb "get in trouble"? 17:38
ctyler abadger1999: Not sure that, in this case, anyone is "in trouble". 17:38
stickster I think having some level of concern about my peers' perception of my words and action makes me (hopefully) more thoughtful about the words I write. 17:39
mdomsch well, to be fair, thread closures aren't enforceable either, though it gives the appearance of being enforceable, and does tend to end that thread fairly quickly. 17:39
jwb mdomsch, um, yes they are 17:39
abadger1999 poelcat: This is another reason that was presented when the policy opened: "be excellent to each other so we don't appear to be immature name callers when outsiders/new people read our archives.": 17:40
* ctyler notes, "or force them to mutate into threads about the HM policy" 17:40
jwb abadger1999, i understand your concerns, and even agree with some of it to a degree, but i think some of your words are being inflammatory 17:40
abadger1999 jwb, ctyler: It's in trouble in the same sense as if you're computer has a computer virus sending out email to infect others, your ISP takes away your ability to connect to the internet. -- You've had some of your abilities taken away. 17:41
jwb ok, now you're just using hyperbolic analogies 17:41
mdomsch jwb, no, not really; sure you can cause the thread to stop, and you can moderate the individuals completely, but if it's really a topic people want to talk about, they will just open a new thread and the same people will join in (or be moderated from doing so). 17:41
abadger1999 jwb: Interesting. The ironist in me thinks you should hall monitor me so we achieve closure :-) 17:41
abadger1999 jwb: But the serious side asks, which words? 17:41
jwb mdomsch, oh, to that degree, true 17:42
jwb abadger1999, i'm done with this line of conversation. it's going nowhere 17:43
mmcgrath jwb: that's the core of the problem with the hall monitors... not everyone else is done with it yet :) 17:43
poelcat what is the outcoming or next actions we want from this conversation? 17:43
poelcat s/outcoming/outcome 17:43
stickster In the interest of arriving at a conclusion to this discussion... which, although long, clearly has been non-violent and I would even say somewhat excellent... Can we agree for right now, to proceed as mdomsch suggested, but keep an eye on future moderation and, if a trend is happening, reopen this issue? 17:43
jwb mmcgrath, i meant my direct discussion with abadger1999 17:43
abadger1999 jwb: Excuse me? I asked which words are inflamatory. And you aren't going to tell me which those are? 17:44
mdomsch therefore, a [HALL-MONITORED] message should just be an indication that perhaps the thread isn't being productive anymore; different than a warning for un-excellent behavior/language sent to an individual. 17:44
ctyler 1 17:44
jwb abadger1999, correct 17:44
abadger1999 stickster: The board might but I would not like that. Please add some wording to the policy to express mdomsch's clarification. 17:44
abadger1999 That way future hall monitors know what is expected of them. 17:45
mdomsch proposal: strike point 3. Add a second sub-topic, regarding long threads and [HALL-MONITORED] possible actions, what that means, and what we expect in that situation. 17:46
mdomsch that clearly separates the warnings for un-excellent individual behavior from expected actions to long and unproductive threads. IMHO they are separate concerns. 17:46
abadger1999 mdomsch: Thank you kindly. 17:46
* ctyler proposes that mdomsch draft changes, we'll ratify next Thu. 17:47
mdomsch ok 17:47
* poelcat proposes adding something about what we want hall monitoring to acheive 17:47
stickster mdomsch: You could use the wiki page and just add a
This page is a draft only
It is still under construction and content may change. Do not rely on the information on this page.
to top, to make things simple 		17:48
poelcat IOW the big picture reason why we do it 17:48
stickster poelcat: +1. 17:48
stickster #action mdomsch Draft clarifications to the hall monitoring policy for Board approval 17:49
stickster poelcat: Can I #action you for that? 17:49
stickster Or are you looking for me or someone else to write it up? 17:49
poelcat stickster: yes :) 17:50
poelcat yes, i will do it 17:50
stickster #action poelcat Add text for the big-picture purpose to the wiki page 17:50
stickster This was a long meeting but I hope Board members felt the discussion was worthwhiel. 17:51
stickster *worthwhile, even. 17:51
stickster abadger1999: Thank you for the question and for contributing here 17:51
abadger1999 stickster, mdomsch: Thanks for getting to a proposal! 17:51
stickster #topic Next iRC meeting 17:52
stickster #info Board will publicly announce a next team session IRC meeting as soon as we have a schedule drawn up. 17:52
stickster #action stickster to draft said schedule for team session IRC meetings, new FAB topic 17:53
stickster OK, I'm going to skip the call for all other business because we're so far over time. 17:53
stickster #endmeeting 17:53

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