[Ambassadors] inactive ambassadors, a proposed solution
The purpose of this email is to try to lay out a roadmap for solving,
once and for all, the question of inactive Fedora Ambassadors.
GOALS OF IDENTIFYING INACTIVE AMBASSADORS:
(1) Housekeeping. All projects need to have their membership rosters
pruned from time to time. In Ambassadors, this is particularly
important because non-Fedora people might get in touch with Ambassadors,
and if they don't receive a response, it looks like Fedora is ignorning
them. Other sub-projects for which identifying inactive ambassadors are
crucial is packaging. If someone drops off the face of the earth, their
packages need to be given to a new owner.
Pages that need to a "refresh" policy:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/CountryList <-- I argue that
CountryList is the wrong name for this page, and it should be called
Directory.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/MembershipService/Verification
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Count <-- why do we even need
this page? Doesn't the CountryList page serve the same purpose?
How often are these pages currently updated? Is the process manual or
automated, or a mixture of both?
(2) Give a more prominent location to the "list of ambassadors per
country". That page should be the most visited page in all of Fedora
Ambassadors. People who are trying to find out about Fedora should be
visiting it, and Ambassadors who are looking for other Fedora folks near
them should be visiting it.
We should have something on fedoraproject.org that says "are you
interested in Fedora? Find a Fedora Ambassador near you to give you
some information" and you type in your location, and it spits back a
list of Ambassadors near you.
(3) In order for any of (2) to be successful, we need to make sure that
the people who are listed as Ambassadors are actually paying attention
to the Ambassadors part of Fedora. If someone is not, it doesn't mean
that they are a bad person -- it just means that they don't want to have
to deal with organizing events or asking questions from newbies to the
project.
I wouldn't be offended if someone removed me from the Fedora
Infrastructure group in FAS, because *I DON'T DO ANYTHING WITH FEDORA
INFRASTRUCTURE*. It doesn't mean I'm a bad person or not a Fedora
contributor, it just means that I don't participate in that part of
Fedora.
HOW DO WE IDENTIFY ACTIVE AMBASSADORS?
We come up with a policy that is simple, and fair.
An active ambassador is someone who:
1) Has joined the group in FAS.
2) Reads and/or posts on fedora-ambassadors-list.
3) Has a useful, up-to-date personal page on the Fedora wiki.
And does one or more of:
* Attends or organizes an event once in a release cycle.
* Maintains a blog on Planet Fedora, with about one post per month.
* Participates on fedora-list or fedoraforum.org to help people w/
questions.
* Indicates their willingness to mentor and guide new contributors or
new users.
WHAT DO WE DO WITH INACTIVE AMBASSADORS?
If someone is inactive, we *DO NOT* kick them out of the ambassadors
group in FAS, and we *DO NOT* remove them from fedora-ambassadors list.
But we should remove them from the "directory of Ambassadors sorted by
country", which I argue again needs to be much more visible and useful,
so that those inactive Ambassadors aren't being asked to do
public-facing things.
When someone re-surfaces or has more time for Ambassadors, we put them
back on the directory.
==================
Flame me.
--Max