2010/12/14 MarĂa Leandro <tatica(a)fedoraproject.org>:
Hello.
I will like to receive some feedback about a topic that has been runing in
my head for a while already and brings the matter of "What's really needed
to be a Fedora Ambassador?". 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. 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
I agree with your concern but I do think that it is not impossible to
start your journey as a contributor within the Ambassador group. Such
beginners won't be the sort of ambassador you are thinking about for
some time but there are ways for them to contribute that are valuable
(like finding and producing swag, doing regional shipping, etc.).
Generally though starting out as an ambassador is not ideal and more
often than not probably results in failure. I have seen exceptions.
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? if not... Should we
keep telling people that we will accept everyone to be Ambassador if we
will/won't do it? 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.
Here are some ideas, as I say feel free to comment, aproove or deny the
I've struggled with similar feelings in the past and still share them.
One thing that always sticks in my mind from reading a bit about the
Apaches, who I think are an interesting example of an "open source"
society, is that for them the concept of coercion is absent from
governance structure. There is no notion of "you must" or "you
should"
in their language. People are left free to act or not as they choose.
What makes them act in a united way is not coercion, it is shared
beliefs and values. This is how I would like the Fedora Project to
model itself. While rules are still needed for many things, with
careful use of language we can avoid contributors feeling like they
are being told what to do and instead choose to work in community
adopted ways on their own.
Given all that I always cringe a little when I see proposed lists that
say "you must" and "you should" and this happens a lot. Your list
above we could rephrase without these as a list of things exceptional
ambassadors do.
I'll stop my philosophical digression about coercion now and get back
to your point. Two changes I support that are a little less structured
in terms of expected activity but which I think would help us get
moving in the direction you are going are:
(1) Accept new ambassadors by invitation from mentors (or other
respected community ambassadors). I don't need a lot of formality when
tatica says person X is ready to be in the ambassador group. I trust
tatica to make that judgment.
(2) In the absense of (1) when a candidate "self-nominates" to join
the group, in addition to the mentoring process I would like to see a
very simple requirement added that the candidate must have been in the
Fedora Project for some time period (3 months, 6 months, I don't
really care what period it is so long as it is more than 48 hours). I
think if someone creates a FAS account and hangs about the project for
a period of time they are far less likely to disappear right after
becoming an ambassador. I see far too many failures when a candidate
often on the same day creates a FAS account and applies to join the
ambassadors group.
John