[FAmSCo] Fwd: [Ambassadors] What's really needed to be an Ambassador?

[Larry Cafiero]

2010/12/14 Joerg Simon <jsimon at fedoraproject.org>

> fwd from the Ambassadors List - would make a good agenda topic
>

My response to this on the Fedora Ambassadors mailing list:


2010/12/14 María Leandro <tatica at fedoraproject.org>

> Hello.
>
>
> Several times we repeat ourselves "we must encourage people to join our
> comunity" and also things like "we accept everyone, so everyone can be an
> Ambassador" but I consider this a lie to them and to us.
>

I don't think this is quite true. If we, as Ambassadors, find people are
interested in promoting or helping Fedora, we encourage -- or should
encourage -- them to join us. Secondly, we don't accept everyone nor should
we accept everyone -- we reject a significant amount of applicants in NA
alone because, for some reason, they are in the determination of the mentor
not a good fit for the project.


> Not everyone can be an ambassador, and this are some of the points I have
> consider to think like that:
>
> we often receive request of applicants for the ambassadors team of users
> that:
> 1.- Have never contribute to the project
> 2.- Have never been at any FOSS activity
> 3.- Have been rejected of X communities with a not-good record
>

This is really a separate issue. Many people who want to join are new to
Linux/FOSS and may not have contributed to a project before, or may not live
near an event or activity they can get to. This has to be handled on a
case-by-case basis, and the level of participation depends on what an
Ambassador can do

More times than not, people use the Ambassador program as a stepping stone
to go into other areas of the Fedora Project.


> But we also have to face that, those who get the "Ambassadors title" often:
> 1.- Dissapear without say anything
> 2.- Dissapear without help our community
> 3.- Claim to be "Fedora workers"
> 4.- Dissapear but keep using the @fedoraproject.org
>
> So, Do we really have an obligation to accept everyone?
>

No, and in my opinion and experience, it has never been the case that we
have "an obligation to accept everyone."


>  if not... Should we keep telling people that we will accept everyone to be
> Ambassador if we will/won't do it?
>

We don't, and we shouldn't tell them -- this is where the candidate/mentor
relationship comes in.  A mentor can tell whether someone will be a good,
average or bad ambassador, and we don't approve the bad ones. Sometimes, the
mentor gets duped -- and in this case there's nothing that can be done
unless the new ambassador does something the mentor deems against the rules
and the ambassador is expelled.

I think that the Ambassadors admission process need some rules besides the
> one that has (without be too excesive) to make a filter that can help us,
> Mentor, to provide a better guidance to those contributors that really
> deserve and want to be Fedora Ambassadors. So, I will write some few ideas
> and if you guys/girls are interested on give some feedback would be nice.
> (If you don't and the topic die here don't feel bad :) )
>
> 1.- Applicants must help to one of our 6 top teams [1]
> 2.- Applicants must help their local community, in case his/her city
> doesn't have a local community, she/he should try to build it.
> 3.- Applicants should at least attend to one FOSS event per year. (right
> now in all the country there are events, so this is not so crazy at all)
> 4.- Applicants should at least organize or help to organize a FOSS event.
>
>
This is an interesting list and I have no objection to any of them, although
if you have an ambassador in a country where there is no FOSS event, or no
FOSS event in their region (I'm specifically thinking Africa here), I think
number 3 is asking much for some who may want to promote Fedora/Linux/FOSS
but is not able to travel to an event. What I do want to say is that nearly
all ambassadors promote Fedora, Linux and FOSS at their own comfort level
and very few, if any, join with malicious intent.

Larry Cafiero
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