Introducing SILO to the Fedora Board

Thu Jun 2 01:44:13 UTC 2011

Dave,

Thanks for the questions/comments.

Ideally, as I did say, it would be desirable to have some kind of
relationship with the Fedora Project but we do need to remain a 3rd party as
we would also like to provide community support and mediation services for
several other projects.

Regarding your....comments....about donations, while SILO is for all
practical purposes a NPO it will be receiving donations, and I don't see any
problem with that.  Neither I nor anyone on behalf of SILO asked you or
anyone else for donations though, and we never will.  That just never
happened.  We certainly will be set up to receive donations finally within
the next week or so though and any money donated will only be spent on SILO
activities.  I think that's a non-issue unless there's some factor I'm just
not aware of.  If there are real issues with the fact that we receive
donations I'm certainly open to hearing them-- I'm always looking to make
this effort better.

About 'threats', I certainly did announce that I would expose, without
demands, the actions of an operator that consistently abuses users in some
of the fedora-related projects' support channels and various administrative
channels after being bullied across several channels during the course of my
networking attempts for SILO.  I'm familiar with the interaction you're
talking about and I can assure you that I was flamed pretty hard before that
little explosion, though I did over-react when I realized that it was being
overlooked by several other appointed operators.  It's no excuse, but, I
take bullying very seriously, and I care deeply about what members of the
fedora community do when *representing* it.  I also believe that the
operators who allow that person's behavior have just as much a role in the
bullying as the person engaging in it.  I do think that muddles the issue
though, and if you'd like more background information I'd be happy to clue
you in on more details where appropriate ( admin at slackhappy.org ).  I will
say, though, that a common tactic in mitigation is to antagonize an accuser
until they react as this provides ammunition for deflection.

You touched on an interesting point, though:  If an abusive "operator"
(technicality in this case) can publicly wonton users for literally years
then won't the IRC-sig, who has existed all this time and watched it happen,
be of a mindset that is not receptive to dealing with that behavior?  How
can they not know?  I don't know the answer to that, to be honest, but, I
will address those concerns with the CWG as an aside from seeing what kind
of relationship can be established between SILO and the IRC sig for a more
long term solution.  What I mean there is that mediation should be done by a
neutral 3rd party to avoid just that kind of *contamination of values*.  It
creates an environment where automatically the user is relaying their
complaint to someone whose sole purpose is to deal with their type of issue
and won't feel an inherent need to defend their fellow operators or staff.
 On the flipside, operators would then be dealing with a mediator who is
level-headed and calm (too often after a heated scuffle of words, neither
party is calm or level headed, this removes that from the mix).

About the registration of ##fedora on Freenode, no, that's not the case--
it's not registered to SILO, but the channel owner there has invited SILO to
participate and for the time being it would be a great place to forward
users that otherwise would be banned.  My preference would be that they are
referred to #slackhappy, but, I can certainly see why the Fedora project
would want their IRC channel to forward to a channel appropriately titled.
 We could certainly see if it would be possible to acquire it later in the
context of your question.

I'm sure that no one associated with any fedora support mediums would want
users they ban to just not get help.  There are always alternative
resources, but not usually on the same network in the same medium to much of
a degree of reliability.  We're all in the business of helping people,
that's why these operating systems exist in the first place.

This is the second time since we've discussed this that you've assumed this
is a commercial interest.  It is not.  I hope that I've cleared that up for
you.

You have said that you have a solution that works.  I don't believe that's
accurate and that's why I'm here, typing this email.  The SIG ticket system
is managed by the same people engaging in the user abuse, and there are zero
policies in place that I'm aware of that describe penalties to operators who
engage in that abuse.  Those are both problems that need addressed, and I'd
like your input on how best SILO can help with that in a way that benefits
the *users as well as the operators*.

I like that there are works in progress, I like that there's a bit of
oversight for the management of the IRC channels too as that's a one-up in
the bigger game of providing support to the users, but these need to be
offered by separate entities to really be neutral, don't they?  There's an
inherent conflict of interest (one that I've personally seen manifested in
several fedora channels) when a person resolving a dispute is part of the
same entity as one of the people involved in it.  I don't know if I can be
much clearer about why that's necessary.

We could argue line-by-line about context behind log entries and deeper
philosophies behind acting belligerently towards users all day, and even
about whether or not operator abuse is a big issue in #fedora or not, but
anyone who's been on IRC knows that it's often a rough place to get tech
support.  It is.  That's universal.  That said, we could go the extra mile
and be a little better than we're expected to be, just because we can be.
 We're already on that road.

I'm in it for the users and I'd like to invite you to help me, Dave.  I
actually like to hear concerns about SILO while I'm fleshing out how we're
going to behave as an organization as it lets me correct mistakes, or
oversights that I didn't see before.  We're going to try to do this, and
we'll keep trying until we've got it right in a way that works for you, this
board, and the Fedora or SILO users.  I hope you keep trying, too.

Whew, that was alot to cover in one post, Dave :)  Did you have any other
concerns?  I'd like to get all of them out now so that I can get it all
panned out.  I just want you clear on the fact that SILO will be
accomodating the Fedora administrative needs with the users' needs as its
focus.

Matt Clark
Slackhappy International Linux Organization
www.slackhappy.org

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 9:21 AM, Dave Riches <david.r at ultracar.co.uk> wrote:

>  On 06/01/2011 11:08 AM, Matt Clark wrote:
>
> Hello folks,
>
>  I have been authorized to speak on behalf of Slackhappy International
> Linux Organization (SILO) to explain a little about what we do and why we're
> here.  I was bouncing around the various fedora-related channels and it's
> been suggested to me that this would be the best place to get a constructive
> discussion going about some plans SILO has in the works.
>
>  We do have a website, www.slackhappy.org, but more directly, SILO is an
> organization dedicated to improving the state of support in the various FOSS
> communities with a focus on administrative behavior.  We believe that the
> profile for the general linux user has changed over the last few years and
> that so must the tools used to provide support to them.
>
>  In short, what we're creating is a common 3rd party to act as a mediator
> between the user and operators in IRC support channels, forum
> administrators, and any other medium that users receive linux or FOSS
> support.
>
> Am I correct in thinking you want the Fedora Project to publicly endorse
> SILO, or just the channel operators?
>
>
>  We do this for free.
>
> When did this change? The other day on #fedora-ops you asked for us to
> solicit your organisation which received donations. When I asked where my
> donation would get spent, it turned out if you received enough it would be
> paid to the "reps"
>
>
>  The ultimate goal is to give users a place to go to when they feel that
> an operator is abusive and that no one is addressing the issue.  I think
> we've all caught an operator on a bad day (or caught a bad operator on a
> good day) and there's nothing more frustrating or degrading to a project's
> image than the kinds of things that happen in those situations.  I see it as
> a 'win-win' for everyone that it's addressed.
>
> Not really, I see this as an unqualified "mediation" service which
> addresses a non-issue. During my contribution to the project as an operator
> on #fedora, I am yet to see an issue (including your own) that was not
> resolved by the irc-support-sig...If it ain't broke, don't fix it?
>
>
>  Since it was decided to take on this task, the most difficult part has
> been finding out what we as an organization need to do to be able to work
> closely with operators and users in a community so that we can do what we
> set out to do.
>
> So far, you actually managed to alienate a large proportion of #fedora
> channel operators by threatening them publicly and giving unsubstantiated
> report statistics for bad practise despite numerous requests to provide the
> information so we can act on it. I'm not sure how effective a mediation
> service that doesn't share its complains/logs would be in the real world as
> resolving issues.
>
>   In order for this to work we would need policies that are universally
> easy for operators in those channels to work with, and for users to remedy
> situations where they feel like they've been treated unfairly.
>
> the irc-support-sig works hard to put policies and
> standard-operating-procedures in place, and publicly available. Perhaps you
> could take a look at https://fedorahosted.org/irc-support-sig/
>
>   While we're user-oriented, it's also important to work with the
> administrators of the projects we try to help if we would expect any
> cooperative efforts.
>
>  Currently, we're paying alot of attention to #fedora on the freenode
> network
>
> possibly a side issue, but you have also obtained ##fedora for your own
> purposes?
>
>  where some ongoing problems seem to need addressed.
>
> I don't see any ongoing, un-addressed issues, perhaps you could point me to
> them/provide reports/logs?
>
>   I think this is the perfect opportunity to start figuring out how SILO
> will work.
>
> I'm personally not interested in anyone else's business opportunities apart
> from my own, Fedora for me is about freedom, and I love contributing to
> fedora in as many ways as I can..I for one won't contribute to someone
> else's seemingly commercial project.
>
>   What kind of policies or arrangements would we need to have banned users
> in fedora irc channels be referred to our channel, and what kind of policies
> or arrangements would we need to have to get operators in freenode projects
> to work with our staff to mediate problems?
>
> Again, I think this is a non-issue, as we already have a solution that
> works...when a user has an issue that cannot be addressed by the support
> sig, CWG or board..I would perhaps then consider your proposals
>
>
>  I'm aware that there is an IRC sig, and I was referred here by several
> when this was discussed.  I have quite a few ideas about implementation of
> all of this but I didn't want to flood our introduction with information.
>
>  Thanks for your time, and I look forward to working with/for you,
>
> No worries!, and although you won't be working with me personally, I wish
> you all the best with your venture :-)
>
>
>  Matt Clark
> Slackhappy International Linux Organization
> www.slackhappy.org
>
>
>
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