Hi all,
I warn you in advance that this is a very long email.
There's been a discussion on famsco-list for the last week and a half now, and I volunteered to try to summarize some of that conversation, so that we could move it to fedora-ambassadors-list.
The main topics of the discussion center around these three points:
* Purging of inactive Ambassadors * Mentoring * Raising the standard for membership
===
The thread was started by David Nalley, and his initial email brought up the following:
The "probation" idea for Fedora Ambassadors is flawed, and can be improved. Improving it will help raise the overall quality and effectiveness of Fedora Ambassadors. In particular, David advocated for the following:
1) Fixed term for probation should go away, and be replaced with a specific set of tasks that need to be achieved.
2) If someone makes no progress in X amount of time, we purge them from the system. If they are making progress, then give as much time as is needed.
3) New Ambassadors should immediately be given a mentor -- a specific name of an Ambassador in their region.
4) Current restrictions on getting resources as an Ambassador while on probation should go away, and be replaced with "at your mentor's discretion".
Max's note #1: This begins to lay out what looks like a more formal sponsorship process for Ambassadors, which is similar to the sort of thing that happens in the Fedora Package Maintainers community.
Max's note #2: As Fedora Ambassadors continues to grow, a sponsorship process becomes more and more critical, and Package Maintainers has set a good example and precedent.
===
Francesco Ugolini commented that we want to continue to ensure that resources are managed regionally (which is consistent with David's proposal), and that one important task will be to ensure that *whatever* the requirements are on new people who want to join Ambassadors, it be as clear, and as internationalized, as possible.
Max's note #3: In Ambassadors in particular, it's important for us to try to simplify and clarify policy as much as possible. The number of languages on our list and in our sub-project is very large, even compared to other parts of Fedora (perhaps with the exception of Localization).
===
Thomas Canniot expressed concerns with the mentorship idea. He was not "against" it, but wanted more discussion and some "convincing".
Now I'm going to list the three points that Thomas made, as well as some of the conversation that came after each of these points in the email thread.
(1) There are two types of Ambassadors -- the already-active Ambassadors around the world who don't need any mentorship, and the Ambassadors who do need mentorship and guidance.
David Nalley responded to this point by saying that some of the older Ambassadors didn't have anything like a mentor and had to figure out and build the current structure by trial and error. Now that we have a chance to be more efficient with training and mentorship, shouldn't we take that opportunity?
David said that he'd categorize Ambassadors instead as "those who take ownership of something" and "those who don't know that they *can* take ownership of something", and that we want to move people from the second group into the first group.
He also went on to say (and I'm adding in a bit of my own thoughts here also) that one of the goals of the Ambassadors project needs to be ensuring that new Ambassadors realize quickly that they play a crucial role in Fedora, and that they have tremendous power to represent Fedora, and that it is also very important that Ambassadors understand and believe in the main principles of Fedora -- the four foundations, for example, and what they mean.
(2) We don't need mentorship until the growth of Ambassadors slows down.
Max's note #4: I think the rate at which we are getting new Ambassadors clearly demonstrates that mentorship is needed now, because QUALITY is far more important than QUANTITY. I don't want to be signing up new Ambassadors if only 1 in 10 is developing into true stars and leaders in the Ambassadors community.
(3) Adding in mentorship and sponsorship suggests that we don't believe people can reach the same level of success as some of the older Ambassadors without help, and that is disappointing.
Max's note #5: Personally, I disagree with this. The ability to have a mentor or a sponsor (who serves as a mentor) is a luxury, not a sign of lack-of-confidence.
As David Nalley said: "The Ambassadors are representatives of the Fedora Project; They are the spokespeople and the public face for Fedora. What concerns me is that we essentially have these representatives that may know precious little about Fedora and free software, and the penchant for misrepresenting is high. I personally like our low barrier to entry. At the same time I think that it is incumbent upon us (FAmSCo) to provide the background education to the uninitiated if we are serious about our responsibilities the Ambassadors project and plant to continue having a low barrier to entry.
As has been noted previously in this email, the Package Maintainers team provides an excellent example of this, as does the Art team.
===
Joerg Simon responded with an email promoting the virtues of mentoring, with specific examples from his own time in Fedora, both the people who helped to mentor him (Chitlesh & Gerold) as well as the people who he has helped to mentor (Mirlan & Thibault). "Trust and Mentoring is the Key!", says Joerg, and I agree with him.
David Nalley notes that we don't want to devalue what it means to be a Fedora Ambassador by not having enough structure. Max adds that it is not simply enough to say "I think Fedora is great!" but rather that Ambassadors serve a specific, and crucial role in our community. We give our Ambassadors tremendous amounts of freedom and trust to be the public face of Fedora, and therefore there is a requirement to provide some level of "quality control" and oversight.
In short, Fedora Ambassadors is not a social club.
===
A specific proposed action by Joerg is to clean up the FAS group for Fedora Ambassadors.
David Nalley agreed, saying:
"This is an ideal time to do so - with the recent password reset I'd guess that 30% or more of the people in the Ambassador fas group have their fas account inactive due to failing to change their password. I'd argue that we should give them 30 days (~April 6th iirc) and if their account is still inactive in FAS we should jettison them. They clearly aren't active if they haven't had to use their fedora account (or missing the fedora email addy) over a period of 30 days. That's a better indication IMO than any 'I'm here' message."
Susmit and Francesco both gave a +1 to this, as did Rodrigo, who went a step further and said that in LATAM, he plans to have a personal conversation with all people who want to be Ambassadors.
===
A specific proposal for a FAmSCo vote was suggested by David:
""That FAmSCo direct the Ambassador Membership Service to request from Infrastructure a list of all users who are Ambassadors and whose account has remained inactive for a period of greater than 30 days after a password reset, and further that FAmSCo direct the Membership Service to purge said users from the Ambassadors list"
Fedora Infrastructure ran a query for us, which showed that of the 772 Ambassadors in FAS, 300 were inactive based on the statement above.
Max's note #6: For me, this sets off major alarm bells, and goes back to the idea of quantity versus quality. The Ambassadors numbers grow, but they are inflated because most of the people are joining the group because they want to basically join the Fedora Fan Club, and this is the closest thing that we have to that, but the purpose of Ambassadors is not to be a Fan Club.
Thomas Canniot agreed that this set off alarm bells for him to, and conceded that some cleanup of the FAS group is clearly necessary. Susmit notes that a mixture of automated and manual cleanup processes would be the best, to prevent false positives or other mistakes that could lead to hurting the feelings of an important community member.
Joerg states that he is in favor of cleaning up inactive accounts, and coupling that with a higher barrier to entry for the Ambassadors project. David agrees, and wonders why we are taking so long to make what seems like an obviously right decision.
Francesco notes that a decision is made, but that another opportunity for full discussion among Ambassadors is required, which is what this email that I have been writing attempts to lay out and summarize.
===
David Nalley notes that Fedora Infrastructure might already be planning some sort of action for people whose accounts remain inactive past a password reset, because there is a potential security issue for having dormant accounts, with various permissions, just sitting around. Perhaps our problem of inactivity will be solved by a larger problem of inactivity across Fedora that needs to be addressed.
Max's note #7: Solving the inactivity problem and the mentorship problem are two different things!!!
===
Max's note #8: It seems to me that the actions on the table for FAmSCo to ultimately deal with are:
(1) Dealing with inactive accounts, either within our sub-project itself or within the whole of Fedora Infrastructure.
(2) Reforming our barriers-to-entry and sponsorship process to remove time limits, but to require specific actions and a show of progress.
(3) Putting together a mentorship/sponsorship system similar to that of Package Maintainers.
(2) Reforming our barriers-to-entry and sponsorship process to remove time limits, but to require specific actions and a show of progress.
(3) Putting together a mentorship/sponsorship system similar to that of Package Maintainers.
Agreed.
Although, I'm not sure that a specific set of actions is required. For example, to enter packaging, everything relies on the sponsor, not on a list of actions. If your sponsor thinks you're ready, even if you didn't submit X packages and made Y reviews, then you can enter.
For Ambassadors too, I think the list should be only a guidance for the mentor/sponsor to take his decision, but in the end, he should decide if the new Ambassador is ready based on his impressions, not on a TODO list.
I only have one concern though: how will the first mentors/sponsors list be seeded ? Here is a quick proposal:
1. FAmSCo members are obviously active / able to sponsor a new Ambassador 2. FAmSCo members know the most proheminent regional leaders 3. FAmSCo members and those regional leaders know the most active Ambassadors in their regions and whether they are able to be a sponsor/mentor or not 4. Take all those people, from FAmSCo members to regional leaders and the ones they will point, you have a list of potential sponsors/mentors. 5. Ask all those people if they want to be a sponsor/mentor and give those who want an "ambassador-sponsor" title (in FAS ?) 6. Let the group grow just like the Packaging sponsors group is growing with its own set of quality measurement...
----------
Mathieu Bridon (bochecha)
- Ask all those people if they want to be a sponsor/mentor and give
those who want an "ambassador-sponsor" title (in FAS ?)
This is something i wouldn't mind doing for the UK region, but as a new father with a 6month old, i can't dedicate as much time as i would like. About the only thing i'm doing at the moment is the freemedia stuff and helping out in the #fedora-ambassadors channel as much as i can.
Cheers Paul
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 5:18 AM, Max Spevack mspevack@redhat.com wrote:
Hi all,
I warn you in advance that this is a very long email.
There's been a discussion on famsco-list for the last week and a half now, and I volunteered to try to summarize some of that conversation, so that we could move it to fedora-ambassadors-list.
The main topics of the discussion center around these three points:
- Purging of inactive Ambassadors
- Mentoring
- Raising the standard for membership
===
The thread was started by David Nalley, and his initial email brought up the following:
The "probation" idea for Fedora Ambassadors is flawed, and can be improved. Improving it will help raise the overall quality and effectiveness of Fedora Ambassadors. In particular, David advocated for the following:
- Fixed term for probation should go away, and be replaced with a specific
set of tasks that need to be achieved.
- If someone makes no progress in X amount of time, we purge them from the
system. If they are making progress, then give as much time as is needed.
- New Ambassadors should immediately be given a mentor -- a specific name
of an Ambassador in their region.
- Current restrictions on getting resources as an Ambassador while on
probation should go away, and be replaced with "at your mentor's discretion".
Max's note #1: This begins to lay out what looks like a more formal sponsorship process for Ambassadors, which is similar to the sort of thing that happens in the Fedora Package Maintainers community.
Max's note #2: As Fedora Ambassadors continues to grow, a sponsorship process becomes more and more critical, and Package Maintainers has set a good example and precedent.
===
Francesco Ugolini commented that we want to continue to ensure that resources are managed regionally (which is consistent with David's proposal), and that one important task will be to ensure that *whatever* the requirements are on new people who want to join Ambassadors, it be as clear, and as internationalized, as possible.
Max's note #3: In Ambassadors in particular, it's important for us to try to simplify and clarify policy as much as possible. The number of languages on our list and in our sub-project is very large, even compared to other parts of Fedora (perhaps with the exception of Localization).
===
Thomas Canniot expressed concerns with the mentorship idea. He was not "against" it, but wanted more discussion and some "convincing".
Now I'm going to list the three points that Thomas made, as well as some of the conversation that came after each of these points in the email thread.
(1) There are two types of Ambassadors -- the already-active Ambassadors around the world who don't need any mentorship, and the Ambassadors who do need mentorship and guidance.
David Nalley responded to this point by saying that some of the older Ambassadors didn't have anything like a mentor and had to figure out and build the current structure by trial and error. Now that we have a chance to be more efficient with training and mentorship, shouldn't we take that opportunity?
David said that he'd categorize Ambassadors instead as "those who take ownership of something" and "those who don't know that they *can* take ownership of something", and that we want to move people from the second group into the first group.
He also went on to say (and I'm adding in a bit of my own thoughts here also) that one of the goals of the Ambassadors project needs to be ensuring that new Ambassadors realize quickly that they play a crucial role in Fedora, and that they have tremendous power to represent Fedora, and that it is also very important that Ambassadors understand and believe in the main principles of Fedora -- the four foundations, for example, and what they mean.
(2) We don't need mentorship until the growth of Ambassadors slows down.
Max's note #4: I think the rate at which we are getting new Ambassadors clearly demonstrates that mentorship is needed now, because QUALITY is far more important than QUANTITY. I don't want to be signing up new Ambassadors if only 1 in 10 is developing into true stars and leaders in the Ambassadors community.
(3) Adding in mentorship and sponsorship suggests that we don't believe people can reach the same level of success as some of the older Ambassadors without help, and that is disappointing.
Max's note #5: Personally, I disagree with this. The ability to have a mentor or a sponsor (who serves as a mentor) is a luxury, not a sign of lack-of-confidence.
As David Nalley said: "The Ambassadors are representatives of the Fedora Project; They are the spokespeople and the public face for Fedora. What concerns me is that we essentially have these representatives that may know precious little about Fedora and free software, and the penchant for misrepresenting is high. I personally like our low barrier to entry. At the same time I think that it is incumbent upon us (FAmSCo) to provide the background education to the uninitiated if we are serious about our responsibilities the Ambassadors project and plant to continue having a low barrier to entry.
As has been noted previously in this email, the Package Maintainers team provides an excellent example of this, as does the Art team.
===
Joerg Simon responded with an email promoting the virtues of mentoring, with specific examples from his own time in Fedora, both the people who helped to mentor him (Chitlesh & Gerold) as well as the people who he has helped to mentor (Mirlan & Thibault). "Trust and Mentoring is the Key!", says Joerg, and I agree with him.
David Nalley notes that we don't want to devalue what it means to be a Fedora Ambassador by not having enough structure. Max adds that it is not simply enough to say "I think Fedora is great!" but rather that Ambassadors serve a specific, and crucial role in our community. We give our Ambassadors tremendous amounts of freedom and trust to be the public face of Fedora, and therefore there is a requirement to provide some level of "quality control" and oversight.
In short, Fedora Ambassadors is not a social club.
===
A specific proposed action by Joerg is to clean up the FAS group for Fedora Ambassadors.
David Nalley agreed, saying:
"This is an ideal time to do so - with the recent password reset I'd guess that 30% or more of the people in the Ambassador fas group have their fas account inactive due to failing to change their password. I'd argue that we should give them 30 days (~April 6th iirc) and if their account is still inactive in FAS we should jettison them. They clearly aren't active if they haven't had to use their fedora account (or missing the fedora email addy) over a period of 30 days. That's a better indication IMO than any 'I'm here' message."
Susmit and Francesco both gave a +1 to this, as did Rodrigo, who went a step further and said that in LATAM, he plans to have a personal conversation with all people who want to be Ambassadors.
===
A specific proposal for a FAmSCo vote was suggested by David:
""That FAmSCo direct the Ambassador Membership Service to request from Infrastructure a list of all users who are Ambassadors and whose account has remained inactive for a period of greater than 30 days after a password reset, and further that FAmSCo direct the Membership Service to purge said users from the Ambassadors list"
Fedora Infrastructure ran a query for us, which showed that of the 772 Ambassadors in FAS, 300 were inactive based on the statement above.
Max's note #6: For me, this sets off major alarm bells, and goes back to the idea of quantity versus quality. The Ambassadors numbers grow, but they are inflated because most of the people are joining the group because they want to basically join the Fedora Fan Club, and this is the closest thing that we have to that, but the purpose of Ambassadors is not to be a Fan Club.
Thomas Canniot agreed that this set off alarm bells for him to, and conceded that some cleanup of the FAS group is clearly necessary. Susmit notes that a mixture of automated and manual cleanup processes would be the best, to prevent false positives or other mistakes that could lead to hurting the feelings of an important community member.
Joerg states that he is in favor of cleaning up inactive accounts, and coupling that with a higher barrier to entry for the Ambassadors project. David agrees, and wonders why we are taking so long to make what seems like an obviously right decision.
Francesco notes that a decision is made, but that another opportunity for full discussion among Ambassadors is required, which is what this email that I have been writing attempts to lay out and summarize.
===
David Nalley notes that Fedora Infrastructure might already be planning some sort of action for people whose accounts remain inactive past a password reset, because there is a potential security issue for having dormant accounts, with various permissions, just sitting around. Perhaps our problem of inactivity will be solved by a larger problem of inactivity across Fedora that needs to be addressed.
Max's note #7: Solving the inactivity problem and the mentorship problem are two different things!!!
===
Max's note #8: It seems to me that the actions on the table for FAmSCo to ultimately deal with are:
(1) Dealing with inactive accounts, either within our sub-project itself or within the whole of Fedora Infrastructure.
(2) Reforming our barriers-to-entry and sponsorship process to remove time limits, but to require specific actions and a show of progress.
(3) Putting together a mentorship/sponsorship system similar to that of Package Maintainers.
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
Yet another warning that this is likely to be a long email.
In the course of our discussion on the FAmSCo list, Joerg has convinced me of the logic behind raising the barrier to entry. (Note that of the three issues that Max presented, this one only deals with raising the barrier to entry.)
Essentially it comes down to who we place the initial burden on. Mentoring is needed, but if the current virtually non-existent barrier remains it means that our limited supply of mentors will be incredibly taxed, and possibly with precious little gain.
In the course of that discussion a number of things were suggested as prerequisites - a few of which are listed below (not all of them as honestly the discussion is 38 pages worth of text at this point (sans prior email quoting) - has to be a Contributor to another Sub-Project inside Fedora where a sponsor is needed - is recommended by a Contributor to another Sub-Project inside Fedora who will take mentorship for that person - has contributed to Fedora on a event before
The idea being that this isn't a newbie group.
So lets first look at the definition of what a traditional ambassador is: a diplomat of the highest rank; accredited as representative from one country to another
In Fedora's case an Ambassador is a liaison to the general public and the open source community and represents the public face of Fedora. While charged with promoting Fedora, Ambassadors are more than PR droids as inherent in bearing the title of Ambassador comes the authority and expectation of getting things done and not just being a mouthpiece.
Looking at the more traditional examples of Ambassadors we find them to generally be experienced statesmen. They are the highest ranking diplomat sent to foreign entities.
The problem that I perceive, and I believe others do as well is that these representatives of the Fedora Project aren't living up to the same level of quality that we expect of Fedora as a distribution, or of the contributors in other portions of Fedora. We have high standards for packagers, art people, etc, and yet we don't for the representatives of the project?
I fully believe that a portion of the problem is our failure to communicate the authority which the Ambassadors are given. Max quoted me in saying that we have a large percentage of people who haven't yet realized that they can take ownership of things in Fedora and I fully believe this to be the case.
But more specifically, I perceive a problem in the following areas with a good percentage of new Ambassadors:
1. Lack of knowledge and understanding of the Free/Libre Open Source Software movement and it's philosophies and principles.
2. Lack of knowledge about the Fedora Project, it's goals, foundational believes, structure, and organization.
Please don't misunderstand me, I am not trying to create an elitist group or proposing that we remove existing Ambassadors because they 'aren't up to snuff'. What I am saying is that going forward we need to be able to provide a minimally acceptable quality. Every other subproject has work standards one must meet before being accepted. Why should we not hold ourselves to that same standard?
I unfortunately fear that left unchecked our organization will devolve into a social club.
Currently, the most arduous task for someone who wants to be n Ambassador is that they acquire a FAS account. I can't imagine many arguing that is enough to qualify them as the highest envoys in the land.
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 7:14 AM, David Nalley david@gnsa.us wrote:
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 5:18 AM, Max Spevack mspevack@redhat.com wrote:
Hi all,
I warn you in advance that this is a very long email.
There's been a discussion on famsco-list for the last week and a half now, and I volunteered to try to summarize some of that conversation, so that we could move it to fedora-ambassadors-list.
The main topics of the discussion center around these three points:
- Purging of inactive Ambassadors
- Mentoring
- Raising the standard for membership
===
The thread was started by David Nalley, and his initial email brought up the following:
The "probation" idea for Fedora Ambassadors is flawed, and can be improved. Improving it will help raise the overall quality and effectiveness of Fedora Ambassadors. In particular, David advocated for the following:
- Fixed term for probation should go away, and be replaced with a specific
set of tasks that need to be achieved.
- If someone makes no progress in X amount of time, we purge them from the
system. If they are making progress, then give as much time as is needed.
- New Ambassadors should immediately be given a mentor -- a specific name
of an Ambassador in their region.
- Current restrictions on getting resources as an Ambassador while on
probation should go away, and be replaced with "at your mentor's discretion".
Max's note #1: This begins to lay out what looks like a more formal sponsorship process for Ambassadors, which is similar to the sort of thing that happens in the Fedora Package Maintainers community.
Max's note #2: As Fedora Ambassadors continues to grow, a sponsorship process becomes more and more critical, and Package Maintainers has set a good example and precedent.
===
Francesco Ugolini commented that we want to continue to ensure that resources are managed regionally (which is consistent with David's proposal), and that one important task will be to ensure that *whatever* the requirements are on new people who want to join Ambassadors, it be as clear, and as internationalized, as possible.
Max's note #3: In Ambassadors in particular, it's important for us to try to simplify and clarify policy as much as possible. The number of languages on our list and in our sub-project is very large, even compared to other parts of Fedora (perhaps with the exception of Localization).
===
Thomas Canniot expressed concerns with the mentorship idea. He was not "against" it, but wanted more discussion and some "convincing".
Now I'm going to list the three points that Thomas made, as well as some of the conversation that came after each of these points in the email thread.
(1) There are two types of Ambassadors -- the already-active Ambassadors around the world who don't need any mentorship, and the Ambassadors who do need mentorship and guidance.
David Nalley responded to this point by saying that some of the older Ambassadors didn't have anything like a mentor and had to figure out and build the current structure by trial and error. Now that we have a chance to be more efficient with training and mentorship, shouldn't we take that opportunity?
David said that he'd categorize Ambassadors instead as "those who take ownership of something" and "those who don't know that they *can* take ownership of something", and that we want to move people from the second group into the first group.
He also went on to say (and I'm adding in a bit of my own thoughts here also) that one of the goals of the Ambassadors project needs to be ensuring that new Ambassadors realize quickly that they play a crucial role in Fedora, and that they have tremendous power to represent Fedora, and that it is also very important that Ambassadors understand and believe in the main principles of Fedora -- the four foundations, for example, and what they mean.
(2) We don't need mentorship until the growth of Ambassadors slows down.
Max's note #4: I think the rate at which we are getting new Ambassadors clearly demonstrates that mentorship is needed now, because QUALITY is far more important than QUANTITY. I don't want to be signing up new Ambassadors if only 1 in 10 is developing into true stars and leaders in the Ambassadors community.
(3) Adding in mentorship and sponsorship suggests that we don't believe people can reach the same level of success as some of the older Ambassadors without help, and that is disappointing.
Max's note #5: Personally, I disagree with this. The ability to have a mentor or a sponsor (who serves as a mentor) is a luxury, not a sign of lack-of-confidence.
As David Nalley said: "The Ambassadors are representatives of the Fedora Project; They are the spokespeople and the public face for Fedora. What concerns me is that we essentially have these representatives that may know precious little about Fedora and free software, and the penchant for misrepresenting is high. I personally like our low barrier to entry. At the same time I think that it is incumbent upon us (FAmSCo) to provide the background education to the uninitiated if we are serious about our responsibilities the Ambassadors project and plant to continue having a low barrier to entry.
As has been noted previously in this email, the Package Maintainers team provides an excellent example of this, as does the Art team.
===
Joerg Simon responded with an email promoting the virtues of mentoring, with specific examples from his own time in Fedora, both the people who helped to mentor him (Chitlesh & Gerold) as well as the people who he has helped to mentor (Mirlan & Thibault). "Trust and Mentoring is the Key!", says Joerg, and I agree with him.
David Nalley notes that we don't want to devalue what it means to be a Fedora Ambassador by not having enough structure. Max adds that it is not simply enough to say "I think Fedora is great!" but rather that Ambassadors serve a specific, and crucial role in our community. We give our Ambassadors tremendous amounts of freedom and trust to be the public face of Fedora, and therefore there is a requirement to provide some level of "quality control" and oversight.
In short, Fedora Ambassadors is not a social club.
===
A specific proposed action by Joerg is to clean up the FAS group for Fedora Ambassadors.
David Nalley agreed, saying:
"This is an ideal time to do so - with the recent password reset I'd guess that 30% or more of the people in the Ambassador fas group have their fas account inactive due to failing to change their password. I'd argue that we should give them 30 days (~April 6th iirc) and if their account is still inactive in FAS we should jettison them. They clearly aren't active if they haven't had to use their fedora account (or missing the fedora email addy) over a period of 30 days. That's a better indication IMO than any 'I'm here' message."
Susmit and Francesco both gave a +1 to this, as did Rodrigo, who went a step further and said that in LATAM, he plans to have a personal conversation with all people who want to be Ambassadors.
===
A specific proposal for a FAmSCo vote was suggested by David:
""That FAmSCo direct the Ambassador Membership Service to request from Infrastructure a list of all users who are Ambassadors and whose account has remained inactive for a period of greater than 30 days after a password reset, and further that FAmSCo direct the Membership Service to purge said users from the Ambassadors list"
Fedora Infrastructure ran a query for us, which showed that of the 772 Ambassadors in FAS, 300 were inactive based on the statement above.
Max's note #6: For me, this sets off major alarm bells, and goes back to the idea of quantity versus quality. The Ambassadors numbers grow, but they are inflated because most of the people are joining the group because they want to basically join the Fedora Fan Club, and this is the closest thing that we have to that, but the purpose of Ambassadors is not to be a Fan Club.
Thomas Canniot agreed that this set off alarm bells for him to, and conceded that some cleanup of the FAS group is clearly necessary. Susmit notes that a mixture of automated and manual cleanup processes would be the best, to prevent false positives or other mistakes that could lead to hurting the feelings of an important community member.
Joerg states that he is in favor of cleaning up inactive accounts, and coupling that with a higher barrier to entry for the Ambassadors project. David agrees, and wonders why we are taking so long to make what seems like an obviously right decision.
Francesco notes that a decision is made, but that another opportunity for full discussion among Ambassadors is required, which is what this email that I have been writing attempts to lay out and summarize.
===
David Nalley notes that Fedora Infrastructure might already be planning some sort of action for people whose accounts remain inactive past a password reset, because there is a potential security issue for having dormant accounts, with various permissions, just sitting around. Perhaps our problem of inactivity will be solved by a larger problem of inactivity across Fedora that needs to be addressed.
Max's note #7: Solving the inactivity problem and the mentorship problem are two different things!!!
===
Max's note #8: It seems to me that the actions on the table for FAmSCo to ultimately deal with are:
(1) Dealing with inactive accounts, either within our sub-project itself or within the whole of Fedora Infrastructure.
(2) Reforming our barriers-to-entry and sponsorship process to remove time limits, but to require specific actions and a show of progress.
(3) Putting together a mentorship/sponsorship system similar to that of Package Maintainers.
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
Yet another warning that this is likely to be a long email.
In the course of our discussion on the FAmSCo list, Joerg has convinced me of the logic behind raising the barrier to entry. (Note that of the three issues that Max presented, this one only deals with raising the barrier to entry.)
Essentially it comes down to who we place the initial burden on. Mentoring is needed, but if the current virtually non-existent barrier remains it means that our limited supply of mentors will be incredibly taxed, and possibly with precious little gain.
In the course of that discussion a number of things were suggested as prerequisites - a few of which are listed below (not all of them as honestly the discussion is 38 pages worth of text at this point (sans prior email quoting)
- has to be a Contributor to another Sub-Project inside Fedora where a
sponsor is needed
- is recommended by a Contributor to another Sub-Project inside Fedora
who will take mentorship for that person
- has contributed to Fedora on a event before
The idea being that this isn't a newbie group.
So lets first look at the definition of what a traditional ambassador is: a diplomat of the highest rank; accredited as representative from one country to another
In Fedora's case an Ambassador is a liaison to the general public and the open source community and represents the public face of Fedora. While charged with promoting Fedora, Ambassadors are more than PR droids as inherent in bearing the title of Ambassador comes the authority and expectation of getting things done and not just being a mouthpiece.
Looking at the more traditional examples of Ambassadors we find them to generally be experienced statesmen. They are the highest ranking diplomat sent to foreign entities.
The problem that I perceive, and I believe others do as well is that these representatives of the Fedora Project aren't living up to the same level of quality that we expect of Fedora as a distribution, or of the contributors in other portions of Fedora. We have high standards for packagers, art people, etc, and yet we don't for the representatives of the project?
I fully believe that a portion of the problem is our failure to communicate the authority which the Ambassadors are given. Max quoted me in saying that we have a large percentage of people who haven't yet realized that they can take ownership of things in Fedora and I fully believe this to be the case.
But more specifically, I perceive a problem in the following areas with a good percentage of new Ambassadors:
- Lack of knowledge and understanding of the Free/Libre Open Source
Software movement and it's philosophies and principles.
- Lack of knowledge about the Fedora Project, it's goals,
foundational believes, structure, and organization.
Please don't misunderstand me, I am not trying to create an elitist group or proposing that we remove existing Ambassadors because they 'aren't up to snuff'. What I am saying is that going forward we need to be able to provide a minimally acceptable quality. Every other subproject has work standards one must meet before being accepted. Why should we not hold ourselves to that same standard?
I unfortunately fear that left unchecked our organization will devolve into a social club.
Currently, the most arduous task for someone who wants to be n Ambassador is that they acquire a FAS account. I can't imagine many arguing that is enough to qualify them as the highest envoys in the land.
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
Great conversation and I personally agree now would be the time to possibly purge the Ambassador group of those said "stale" accounts. I also think part of the prerequisites should entail introduction to a mentor prior to being accepted in. (Which is really what many of you are also stating).
The problem that seems to occur at least from my stand point currently, is that interested people perform all the needed steps in becoming an Ambassador, I attempt to figure out if they are located in my region, once the welcome email comes out (which some times is easy and some times is not because their wiki profile does or doesn't state where in the USA they are actually located), I shoot them a personal "Welcome" email and state that if they need any assistance with anything or mentoring to let me know, and more times than not I never hear back from them. (Is this a sign that they know what they are expected to do and dont need any assistance? Or am I, in simple blunt terms, just getting blown off?)
I personally would really like to be in contact with potential candidates of the Ambassadors located in my specific region, prior to them being accepted. This way I can not only get to know them, but I can also begin the mentor process if needed, even before they are accepted.
As many have mentioned I am not trying to turn this into an "elitist" group either but as David has mentioned Ambassadors do have a lot of power, whether they realize it or not and should that be conveyed through the acceptance process.
Just my 2 cents
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 8:08 PM, Brian Powell bpowell01@gmail.com wrote:
Great conversation and I personally agree now would be the time to possibly purge the Ambassador group of those said "stale" accounts. I also think part of the prerequisites should entail introduction to a mentor prior to being accepted in. (Which is really what many of you are also stating).
Good idea
I attempt to figure out if they are located in my region, once the welcome email comes out (which some times is easy and some times is not because their wiki profile does or doesn't state where in the USA they are actually located), I shoot them a personal "Welcome" email and state that if they need any assistance with anything or mentoring to let me know, and more times than not I never hear back from them. (Is this a sign that they know what they are expected to do and dont need any assistance? Or am I, in simple blunt terms, just getting blown off?)
I try doing the same and have never got as reply from such people. Nither have I seen their pages being completed.
Regards
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 5:14 AM, David Nalley david@gnsa.us wrote:
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 5:18 AM, Max Spevack mspevack@redhat.com wrote:
Hi all,
I warn you in advance that this is a very long email.
There's been a discussion on famsco-list for the last week and a half now, and I volunteered to try to summarize some of that conversation, so that we could move it to fedora-ambassadors-list.
The main topics of the discussion center around these three points:
- Purging of inactive Ambassadors
- Mentoring
- Raising the standard for membership
===
The thread was started by David Nalley, and his initial email brought up the following:
The "probation" idea for Fedora Ambassadors is flawed, and can be improved. Improving it will help raise the overall quality and effectiveness of Fedora Ambassadors. In particular, David advocated for the following:
- Fixed term for probation should go away, and be replaced with a specific
set of tasks that need to be achieved.
- If someone makes no progress in X amount of time, we purge them from the
system. If they are making progress, then give as much time as is needed.
- New Ambassadors should immediately be given a mentor -- a specific name
of an Ambassador in their region.
- Current restrictions on getting resources as an Ambassador while on
probation should go away, and be replaced with "at your mentor's discretion".
Max's note #1: This begins to lay out what looks like a more formal sponsorship process for Ambassadors, which is similar to the sort of thing that happens in the Fedora Package Maintainers community.
Max's note #2: As Fedora Ambassadors continues to grow, a sponsorship process becomes more and more critical, and Package Maintainers has set a good example and precedent.
===
Francesco Ugolini commented that we want to continue to ensure that resources are managed regionally (which is consistent with David's proposal), and that one important task will be to ensure that *whatever* the requirements are on new people who want to join Ambassadors, it be as clear, and as internationalized, as possible.
Max's note #3: In Ambassadors in particular, it's important for us to try to simplify and clarify policy as much as possible. The number of languages on our list and in our sub-project is very large, even compared to other parts of Fedora (perhaps with the exception of Localization).
===
Thomas Canniot expressed concerns with the mentorship idea. He was not "against" it, but wanted more discussion and some "convincing".
Now I'm going to list the three points that Thomas made, as well as some of the conversation that came after each of these points in the email thread.
(1) There are two types of Ambassadors -- the already-active Ambassadors around the world who don't need any mentorship, and the Ambassadors who do need mentorship and guidance.
David Nalley responded to this point by saying that some of the older Ambassadors didn't have anything like a mentor and had to figure out and build the current structure by trial and error. Now that we have a chance to be more efficient with training and mentorship, shouldn't we take that opportunity?
David said that he'd categorize Ambassadors instead as "those who take ownership of something" and "those who don't know that they *can* take ownership of something", and that we want to move people from the second group into the first group.
He also went on to say (and I'm adding in a bit of my own thoughts here also) that one of the goals of the Ambassadors project needs to be ensuring that new Ambassadors realize quickly that they play a crucial role in Fedora, and that they have tremendous power to represent Fedora, and that it is also very important that Ambassadors understand and believe in the main principles of Fedora -- the four foundations, for example, and what they mean.
(2) We don't need mentorship until the growth of Ambassadors slows down.
Max's note #4: I think the rate at which we are getting new Ambassadors clearly demonstrates that mentorship is needed now, because QUALITY is far more important than QUANTITY. I don't want to be signing up new Ambassadors if only 1 in 10 is developing into true stars and leaders in the Ambassadors community.
(3) Adding in mentorship and sponsorship suggests that we don't believe people can reach the same level of success as some of the older Ambassadors without help, and that is disappointing.
Max's note #5: Personally, I disagree with this. The ability to have a mentor or a sponsor (who serves as a mentor) is a luxury, not a sign of lack-of-confidence.
As David Nalley said: "The Ambassadors are representatives of the Fedora Project; They are the spokespeople and the public face for Fedora. What concerns me is that we essentially have these representatives that may know precious little about Fedora and free software, and the penchant for misrepresenting is high. I personally like our low barrier to entry. At the same time I think that it is incumbent upon us (FAmSCo) to provide the background education to the uninitiated if we are serious about our responsibilities the Ambassadors project and plant to continue having a low barrier to entry.
As has been noted previously in this email, the Package Maintainers team provides an excellent example of this, as does the Art team.
===
Joerg Simon responded with an email promoting the virtues of mentoring, with specific examples from his own time in Fedora, both the people who helped to mentor him (Chitlesh & Gerold) as well as the people who he has helped to mentor (Mirlan & Thibault). "Trust and Mentoring is the Key!", says Joerg, and I agree with him.
David Nalley notes that we don't want to devalue what it means to be a Fedora Ambassador by not having enough structure. Max adds that it is not simply enough to say "I think Fedora is great!" but rather that Ambassadors serve a specific, and crucial role in our community. We give our Ambassadors tremendous amounts of freedom and trust to be the public face of Fedora, and therefore there is a requirement to provide some level of "quality control" and oversight.
In short, Fedora Ambassadors is not a social club.
===
A specific proposed action by Joerg is to clean up the FAS group for Fedora Ambassadors.
David Nalley agreed, saying:
"This is an ideal time to do so - with the recent password reset I'd guess that 30% or more of the people in the Ambassador fas group have their fas account inactive due to failing to change their password. I'd argue that we should give them 30 days (~April 6th iirc) and if their account is still inactive in FAS we should jettison them. They clearly aren't active if they haven't had to use their fedora account (or missing the fedora email addy) over a period of 30 days. That's a better indication IMO than any 'I'm here' message."
Susmit and Francesco both gave a +1 to this, as did Rodrigo, who went a step further and said that in LATAM, he plans to have a personal conversation with all people who want to be Ambassadors.
===
A specific proposal for a FAmSCo vote was suggested by David:
""That FAmSCo direct the Ambassador Membership Service to request from Infrastructure a list of all users who are Ambassadors and whose account has remained inactive for a period of greater than 30 days after a password reset, and further that FAmSCo direct the Membership Service to purge said users from the Ambassadors list"
Fedora Infrastructure ran a query for us, which showed that of the 772 Ambassadors in FAS, 300 were inactive based on the statement above.
Max's note #6: For me, this sets off major alarm bells, and goes back to the idea of quantity versus quality. The Ambassadors numbers grow, but they are inflated because most of the people are joining the group because they want to basically join the Fedora Fan Club, and this is the closest thing that we have to that, but the purpose of Ambassadors is not to be a Fan Club.
Thomas Canniot agreed that this set off alarm bells for him to, and conceded that some cleanup of the FAS group is clearly necessary. Susmit notes that a mixture of automated and manual cleanup processes would be the best, to prevent false positives or other mistakes that could lead to hurting the feelings of an important community member.
Joerg states that he is in favor of cleaning up inactive accounts, and coupling that with a higher barrier to entry for the Ambassadors project. David agrees, and wonders why we are taking so long to make what seems like an obviously right decision.
Francesco notes that a decision is made, but that another opportunity for full discussion among Ambassadors is required, which is what this email that I have been writing attempts to lay out and summarize.
===
David Nalley notes that Fedora Infrastructure might already be planning some sort of action for people whose accounts remain inactive past a password reset, because there is a potential security issue for having dormant accounts, with various permissions, just sitting around. Perhaps our problem of inactivity will be solved by a larger problem of inactivity across Fedora that needs to be addressed.
Max's note #7: Solving the inactivity problem and the mentorship problem are two different things!!!
===
Max's note #8: It seems to me that the actions on the table for FAmSCo to ultimately deal with are:
(1) Dealing with inactive accounts, either within our sub-project itself or within the whole of Fedora Infrastructure.
(2) Reforming our barriers-to-entry and sponsorship process to remove time limits, but to require specific actions and a show of progress.
(3) Putting together a mentorship/sponsorship system similar to that of Package Maintainers.
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
Yet another warning that this is likely to be a long email.
In the course of our discussion on the FAmSCo list, Joerg has convinced me of the logic behind raising the barrier to entry. (Note that of the three issues that Max presented, this one only deals with raising the barrier to entry.)
Essentially it comes down to who we place the initial burden on. Mentoring is needed, but if the current virtually non-existent barrier remains it means that our limited supply of mentors will be incredibly taxed, and possibly with precious little gain.
In the course of that discussion a number of things were suggested as prerequisites - a few of which are listed below (not all of them as honestly the discussion is 38 pages worth of text at this point (sans prior email quoting)
- has to be a Contributor to another Sub-Project inside Fedora where a
sponsor is needed
- is recommended by a Contributor to another Sub-Project inside Fedora
who will take mentorship for that person
- has contributed to Fedora on a event before
The idea being that this isn't a newbie group.
So lets first look at the definition of what a traditional ambassador is: a diplomat of the highest rank; accredited as representative from one country to another
In Fedora's case an Ambassador is a liaison to the general public and the open source community and represents the public face of Fedora. While charged with promoting Fedora, Ambassadors are more than PR droids as inherent in bearing the title of Ambassador comes the authority and expectation of getting things done and not just being a mouthpiece.
Looking at the more traditional examples of Ambassadors we find them to generally be experienced statesmen. They are the highest ranking diplomat sent to foreign entities.
The problem that I perceive, and I believe others do as well is that these representatives of the Fedora Project aren't living up to the same level of quality that we expect of Fedora as a distribution, or of the contributors in other portions of Fedora. We have high standards for packagers, art people, etc, and yet we don't for the representatives of the project?
I fully believe that a portion of the problem is our failure to communicate the authority which the Ambassadors are given. Max quoted me in saying that we have a large percentage of people who haven't yet realized that they can take ownership of things in Fedora and I fully believe this to be the case.
But more specifically, I perceive a problem in the following areas with a good percentage of new Ambassadors:
- Lack of knowledge and understanding of the Free/Libre Open Source
Software movement and it's philosophies and principles.
- Lack of knowledge about the Fedora Project, it's goals,
foundational believes, structure, and organization.
Please don't misunderstand me, I am not trying to create an elitist group or proposing that we remove existing Ambassadors because they 'aren't up to snuff'. What I am saying is that going forward we need to be able to provide a minimally acceptable quality. Every other subproject has work standards one must meet before being accepted. Why should we not hold ourselves to that same standard?
I unfortunately fear that left unchecked our organization will devolve into a social club.
Currently, the most arduous task for someone who wants to be n Ambassador is that they acquire a FAS account. I can't imagine many arguing that is enough to qualify them as the highest envoys in the land.
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
-- Note: I guess it's a thread of long emails --
I for one, will yield to our great FAmSCo overlords! :)
Seriously, I am truly grateful for the vote I placed for many now participating in FAmSCo. As David is on his first term, I'm excited for the needed discussions and directoins brought forth. I'm excited to see needed change happening because of this cohesion among our FAmSCo leadership.
To start with, I've seen the discussion of Active and Inactive Ambassadors be brought up (by me and others) only to be shut down by some who would wish to discourage alienating other Ambassadors who are doing good works. But I always thought there were ways to identify those who were driving ambassadorship in Fedora, the methods we used were archaic and incomplete. In this case, while I don't believe it will ever be perfect, I think we're getting very close to a good system that can improve the quality of the Fedora Ambassadors. I also believe that the quantity will not slow too much, but rather more people will be interested because they will gain valuable skills now as an Ambassador.
Raising the barrier some is good and that's why mentoring will be a very important part of this barrier. So far, I've seen some great suggestions for how to do that, and I agree with the basic sentiment of a sponsor. Essentially, every other FAS group has one, we should too. The sponsor is the mentor, the person who makes sure that the new ambassadors understands the issues and drives the sponsorship based upon some specific milestones as well as a few loose guidelines. My theory is somewhat similar to the one provided by David and others, we should sponsor new members who have proven themselves and I think that's really important.
Lastly, I think there are minimums people can achieve, but because Fedora Ambassadors can lurk in many places, having a set of requirements might be a bit tight. I'd like to suggest that the new prospective Ambassador and their mentors sit down with a list of *suggested* requirements, something they can tangibly look at and say, yes, I think I can accomplish X, Y and Z to become an ambassador. Here's a couple quick examples.
All prospective ambassadors would complete some some minimal set of acknowledgement like Wiki page, introducing yourself, the open source projects you are involved in and a basic set of benefits you bring to Fedora. Something similar to what Joerg is requiring now.
= Prospective Ambassador A agrees to accomplish the following to become officially sponsored within Fedora Ambassadors =
- Blog about your belief system with regard to free software - Attend a conference in your region with other Ambassadors and under the guidance of you mentor - Make a report and blog/email it to the appropriate lists. - Regularly participate in regional ambassador meetings.
= Prospective Ambassador B agrees to accomplish the following to become officially sponsored within Fedora Ambassadors =
- Attend local LUGs and present on what Fedora is and it's core goals (four foundations, etc) - Identify initiatives within Fedora that you'd like to promote to others, maybe Fedora Infrastructure. Join this group and help to promote it to new contributors - Regularly participate in regional ambassador meetings.
I know my examples are weak, and that probably encouraging ambassadors into another group of their interest would be key elements of mentoring/sponsorship, but at some point we need to set those limits. I just think they don't have to be a set list, but rather an agreed upon set of promises between the prospective ambassador and the mentor/sponsor.
I am really appreciative of this direction and am looking forward to seeing more positive direction and guidance with these sorts of initiatives.
Cheers,
Clint
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 3:55 PM, Clint Savage herlo1@gmail.com wrote:
To start with, I've seen the discussion of Active and Inactive Ambassadors be brought up (by me and others) only to be shut down by some who would wish to discourage alienating other Ambassadors who are doing good works. But I always thought there were ways to identify those who were driving ambassadorship in Fedora, the methods we used were archaic and incomplete. In this case, while I don't believe it will ever be perfect, I think we're getting very close to a good system that can improve the quality of the Fedora Ambassadors. I also believe that the quantity will not slow too much, but rather more people will be interested because they will gain valuable skills now as an Ambassador.
The big problem of the active/inactive ambassadors was that it underlined a deep vision of that issue.
From this perspective what Max summarized wanted to underline that we
want to solve a big lack in our commuity starting from another point of view, understanding what community really need.
Raising the barrier some is good and that's why mentoring will be a very important part of this barrier. So far, I've seen some great suggestions for how to do that, and I agree with the basic sentiment of a sponsor. Essentially, every other FAS group has one, we should too. The sponsor is the mentor, the person who makes sure that the new ambassadors understands the issues and drives the sponsorship based upon some specific milestones as well as a few loose guidelines. My theory is somewhat similar to the one provided by David and others, we should sponsor new members who have proven themselves and I think that's really important.
Sure. Raising the barrier doesn't mean block the gowth of Ambassadors: the main goal is to make Ambassadors working giving community (the World) the best "service" we can give, helping spreading open source and finding new contributors.
I know my examples are weak, and that probably encouraging ambassadors into another group of their interest would be key elements of mentoring/sponsorship, but at some point we need to set those limits. I just think they don't have to be a set list, but rather an agreed upon set of promises between the prospective ambassador and the mentor/sponsor.
Sure, that's why this discussion was opened to the community and why we wanted people know what we are discussing about: people have to understand that we don't want to block community growth, but just manage a really big community with tools that could really improve their experience.
I'm sure Ambassadors could agree on this set of proposals David done, in order to achive this goal we must be sure the processes proposed are clear.
Regards
Francesco Ugolini
Too many emails and too long to quote.
I am kind of newbie as Ambassador, I feel that I manage to get things going. Having said that, I feel that if I had a mentor it would save me time from exploring and learning to start doing things. If there were higher barriers to become an Ambassador at the time that I started, I still join and overcome those barriers. I think that the problem is not about filters and mentorship, that has to be done. The real task is about how to do it.
Hello,
As max's email suggests its the best time to refine the process and ensure quality rather than quality. But the refinement and decisions on the tasks and mentoring need to be fundamental in the growth as an ambassador right? So our objectives and direction in this matter and what mentor to which "newbie" ambassador is what is going to matter!
First the apologies of the case, if they find errors in my English.
Well I want to comment on the matter from the standpoint of a new ambassador of Fedora, because I have 1 weeks that my application was approved.
There are many people who want to begin to join Fedora, but often can not find how to start, I think if it is convenient to have mentors available to help the newly initiated to give guidance, not necessarily the same country as in my case in my country there was no ambassador, so far. I think it would be very good to have documentation, that this reflected the experience and knowledge of the ambassadors who have some time and assets. That as said: "David Nalley, some of the greatest ambassadors have nothing as a mentor and had to learn and build the current structure by trial and error. Now we have the opportunity to become more efficient with training and mentoring We do not have that opportunity? "
So I believe we must build on these experiences, and serve as a guide for new ambassadors like me and so I think it helps to improve the quality of new ambassadors, I think this is an improvement.
This is my small contribution.
2009/3/26 jose manimala josemanimala@gmail.com
Hello,
As max's email suggests its the best time to refine the process and ensure quality rather than quality. But the refinement and decisions on the tasks and mentoring need to be fundamental in the growth as an ambassador right? So our objectives and direction in this matter and what mentor to which "newbie" ambassador is what is going to matter! -- Jose M Manimala http://www.jmmblog.in.eu.org Ph: +919790824111 GPGkeyID: F5DD9656
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
Morpheus..we can start a forum where we can provide all the basic details about how to start with fedora ambassador program..also how these new ambassdor can contibute to foss.
i'm a new ambassador so i know the difficulties faced by beginners..
we can also help them decide what sort of activities they need to do to contribute to foss.
ragards,
Rachit gupta B.Tech (CSE) VIT University,Vellore
2009/3/26 Morpheus . . morpheusv@gmail.com
First the apologies of the case, if they find errors in my English.
Well I want to comment on the matter from the standpoint of a new ambassador of Fedora, because I have 1 weeks that my application was approved.
There are many people who want to begin to join Fedora, but often can not find how to start, I think if it is convenient to have mentors available to help the newly initiated to give guidance, not necessarily the same country as in my case in my country there was no ambassador, so far. I think it would be very good to have documentation, that this reflected the experience and knowledge of the ambassadors who have some time and assets. That as said: "David Nalley, some of the greatest ambassadors have nothing as a mentor and had to learn and build the current structure by trial and error. Now we have the opportunity to become more efficient with training and mentoring We do not have that opportunity? "
So I believe we must build on these experiences, and serve as a guide for new ambassadors like me and so I think it helps to improve the quality of new ambassadors, I think this is an improvement.
This is my small contribution.
2009/3/26 jose manimala josemanimala@gmail.com
Hello,
As max's email suggests its the best time to refine the process and ensure quality rather than quality. But the refinement and decisions on the tasks and mentoring need to be fundamental in the growth as an ambassador right? So our objectives and direction in this matter and what mentor to which "newbie" ambassador is what is going to matter! -- Jose M Manimala http://www.jmmblog.in.eu.org Ph: +919790824111 GPGkeyID: F5DD9656
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
i'm a new ambassador so i know the difficulties faced by beginners..
Can you please list the difficulties? We would like to hear them(and take necessary action to make your experience better.) Thanks.
Hi,
I have been an ambassador for more than a year now, but honestly have not been able to contribute in ways I thought I would when I joined. My only contribution would be a little help here and there in spreading the word of Fedora to friends, colleges, students. I have also helped in burning cds and installation.
Honestly the difficulties I faced were mainly I did not have anyone to account to. I believe that we can come up with plans but with work pressure and other factors plans can go wasted if we are not accountable to some body. I did not have a schedule as what are the possibilities I could achieve in a year or a given time.
I do meticulously read the threads in the list, but that's all. I do want to be involved but I am not very clear on how I could do things. I did write a mail on it and did get a suggestion to get into infrastructure, but then again I was clueless there too. I did send a mail to that list but did not get any replies. I do understand we all have busy schedules, but the idea of a mentor would be good. As one with more experience in the group will definitely be able to see capabilities in one with lesser experience and be able to guide that person.
Currently I am in Bangkok, Thailand. The meeting schedule comes up on the time I am unable to attend. With just another ambassador in the area I really am clueless in promoting fedora beyond my work place. I have been successful at work getting one of the servers to run on fedora and many other machines too. I would love to do more.
Satyajit Ranjeev
On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 8:33 PM, Satyajit satyajit@nerdshack.com wrote:
Hi,
I have been an ambassador for more than a year now, but honestly have not been able to contribute in ways I thought I would when I joined. My only contribution would be a little help here and there in spreading the word of Fedora to friends, colleges, students. I have also helped in burning cds and installation.
Same with me Satyajit. But I believe, that's the whole ambassador in a nutshell. :D
Honestly the difficulties I faced were mainly I did not have anyone to account to. I believe that we can come up with plans but with work pressure and other factors plans can go wasted if we are not accountable to some body. I did not have a schedule as what are the possibilities I could achieve in a year or a given time.
Since, Fedora Ambassadors is a volunteer program, it should not impose on time you can't commit. For myself and others in the Philippines, we have three big activities for every year - two Fedora release parties and the Software Freedom Day. In between those three, we split time on whatever comes along and if we can fit them on our schedules.
I do meticulously read the threads in the list, but that's all. I do want to be involved but I am not very clear on how I could do things. I did write a mail on it and did get a suggestion to get into infrastructure, but then again I was clueless there too. I did send a mail to that list but did not get any replies. I do understand we all have busy schedules, but the idea of a mentor would be good. As one with more experience in the group will definitely be able to see capabilities in one with lesser experience and be able to guide that person.
I agree whole-heartedly on the mentor thing. It would make the assimilation process faster.
Currently I am in Bangkok, Thailand. The meeting schedule comes up on the time I am unable to attend. With just another ambassador in the area I really am clueless in promoting fedora beyond my work place. I have been successful at work getting one of the servers to run on fedora and many other machines too. I would love to do more.
If it's any consolation, we're re-organizing APAC to better respond to the geographical challenges APAC Fedora Ambassadors face. I believe you're in our group[1] :D
Satyajit Ranjeev
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/APAC/Regions
2009/3/29 Heherson Pagcaliwagan herson@azneita.org:
If it's any consolation, we're re-organizing APAC to better respond to the geographical challenges APAC Fedora Ambassadors face. I believe you're in our group[1] :D
This is news to me. What sort of rearrangement? Has this been discussed here or is it still in FAMsCo list.
Regards
This is news to me. What sort of rearrangement? Has this been discussed here or is it still in FAMsCo list.
No, we discussed it in our previous APAC meeting. I know you couldn't attend the meeting, but did you went through the meeting log? Please do. But, if you want to discuss it, please send a separate mail else we will go off track of this current discussion about mentorship and others.
Thanks.
2009/3/29 Rachit Gupta rachit.tech@gmail.com:
Morpheus..we can start a forum where we can provide all the basic details about how to start with fedora ambassador program..also how these new ambassdor can contibute to foss.
Easier said than done. Take the clue from Ambassador's Quick Starter Guide[1] (I am not accusing anyone here) project. And isn't the mailing list supposed to serve exactly the same purpose?
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Quick_guide
Regards
On Mar 29, 2009, at 10:28 AM, Rangeen Basu sherry151@gmail.com wrote:
2009/3/29 Rachit Gupta rachit.tech@gmail.com:
Morpheus..we can start a forum where we can provide all the basic details about how to start with fedora ambassador program..also how these new ambassdor can contibute to foss.
Easier said than done. Take the clue from Ambassador's Quick Starter Guide[1] (I am not accusing anyone here) project. And isn't the mailing list supposed to serve exactly the same purpose?
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Quick_guide
Regards
Rangeen Basu Roy Chowdhury Fedora Ambassador sherry151@gmail.com
Personally, I would like to see the Ambassadors mailing list _NOT_ used to discuss the basic elements of contributing to an OSS project or discussion of basic ideas and philosohy of OSS in general. Currently I think it is used for these types of discussion, which is why we have hundreds of messages that say "me too" or "I'm here". That said, I think we can all agree that currently we do a poor job of orienting new ambassadors to steer them towards alternatives. The regional Ambassadors list is more suited to answering new Ambassadors' questions as the people or processes tend to vary enough region to region.
I don't want to discourage participation in the community, but many of us agree that the noise to useful message ratio on ambassador-list is skewed towards noise. It boils down to this: Think about all the senior people in the community worldwide that read your email to ambassador-list, what impression do you want to make on them? Does your email convey this impression?
Having access to the global Fedora community is a privlege, like all privleges, if it is abused, it will dissapear.
Many of us have ideas of what we'd like a new ambassador mentoring program to look like. David (ke4qqq) has an email he sends to new North American ambassadors to welcome them. I'll put it on a wiki page tonight along with the thoughts mentioned throughout this thread, I think that those things will likely be a good start for us to help orient new members joining our sub-community in Fedora. I'm travelling today, so if someone wants to take the initiative for creating the page, I wouldn't mind ;-)
-Scott
On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Scott McBrien smcbrien@gmail.com wrote:
On Mar 29, 2009, at 10:28 AM, Rangeen Basu sherry151@gmail.com wrote:
2009/3/29 Rachit Gupta rachit.tech@gmail.com:
Morpheus..we can start a forum where we can provide all the basic details about how to start with fedora ambassador program..also how these new ambassdor can contibute to foss.
Easier said than done. Take the clue from Ambassador's Quick Starter Guide[1] (I am not accusing anyone here) project. And isn't the mailing list supposed to serve exactly the same purpose?
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Quick_guide
Regards
Rangeen Basu Roy Chowdhury Fedora Ambassador sherry151@gmail.com
Personally, I would like to see the Ambassadors mailing list _NOT_ used to discuss the basic elements of contributing to an OSS project or discussion of basic ideas and philosohy of OSS in general. Currently I think it is used for these types of discussion, which is why we have hundreds of messages that say "me too" or "I'm here". That said, I think we can all agree that currently we do a poor job of orienting new ambassadors to steer them towards alternatives. The regional Ambassadors list is more suited to answering new Ambassadors' questions as the people or processes tend to vary enough region to region.
I don't want to discourage participation in the community, but many of us agree that the noise to useful message ratio on ambassador-list is skewed towards noise. It boils down to this: Think about all the senior people in the community worldwide that read your email to ambassador-list, what impression do you want to make on them? Does your email convey this impression?
Having access to the global Fedora community is a privlege, like all privleges, if it is abused, it will dissapear.
Many of us have ideas of what we'd like a new ambassador mentoring program to look like. David (ke4qqq) has an email he sends to new North American ambassadors to welcome them. I'll put it on a wiki page tonight along with the thoughts mentioned throughout this thread, I think that those things will likely be a good start for us to help orient new members joining our sub-community in Fedora. I'm travelling today, so if someone wants to take the initiative for creating the page, I wouldn't mind ;-)
-Scott
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
Interesting point Scott - we've long resisted having separate mailing lists because we didn't want to fragment the community. That said - the various regions are very different in many ways. Things that I can do in the US might not work in EMEA, etc. Perhaps it's time to reconsider this. I have to admit the noise is pretty high at times, and I know a number of prominent people who heavily filter (via procmail) this list.
Hi,
--- On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 3:24 AM, David Nalley david@gnsa.us wrote: | Things that I can | do in the US might not work in EMEA, etc. --
Agreed. But, some ideas/concepts brought in a region, could possibly be useful in other regions as well [1]. We have to analyze it on a case-by-case basis alone, and cannot make a generalized statement.
My thoughts on the Fedora Ambassador program:
* New joinees to Fedora Project should _not_ be given the title 'Fedora Ambassador'. You could address them as "Fedora Followers" or "Fedora Admirer" or "Fedora Fan" or come up with a name! You could put them under "observation" for 3-6 months before making them Fedora Ambassadors. And six months is sufficient time for them to decide and do any work (documentation, artwork, packaging, code, testing, bug triaging, advocacy, translation et. al.).
* Every six months, every Fedora Ambassadors' work can be reviewed, and renewed. What is required is a measure to find out inactive people. This is useful for Infrastructure to purge inactive accounts. This could possibly be done every six months. And this is reasonable enough time, for anyone to participate in the Fedora project. No excuses!
Since, we have different channels of communication (wiki, mailing lists, IRC) etc. any login or recent activity by a user could be time-stamped. If no activity has been registered in the last six months, Infrastructure could take their remedy measures.
Regards,
SK
[1] Pop Idol in UK. American Idol in US. Indian Idol in India.
Hi all,
sorry if i don't understand about this big fuss of "Ambassador" ? I see for years Fedora is running better and better not only the Fedora Core OS but as the whole in community. I believe Fedora do not need such MIRO control on Ambassadorship.
What Fedora can do is just trigger email to the Ambassadors, those responded, classified them as Active Ambassadors and make them listed in Fedora Ambassadors page so to like others to contact them. For those whom do not reply with in a month, KIV them to Ambassador KIV group, make them hidden to End User but not Ambassasors, but purge them off after half year of no reply.
Just my 2cts worth.
On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 15:37 +0800, Jason Benedict wrote:
Hi all,
sorry if i don't understand about this big fuss of "Ambassador" ? I see for years Fedora is running better and better not only the Fedora Core OS but as the whole in community. I believe Fedora do not need such MIRO control on Ambassadorship.
What Fedora can do is just trigger email to the Ambassadors, those responded, classified them as Active Ambassadors and make them listed in Fedora Ambassadors page so to like others to contact them. For those whom do not reply with in a month, KIV them to Ambassador KIV group, make them hidden to End User but not Ambassasors, but purge them off after half year of no reply.
Just my 2cts worth.
+ 1
:)
Roy Ong wrote:
On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 15:37 +0800, Jason Benedict wrote:
Hi all,
sorry if i don't understand about this big fuss of "Ambassador" ? I see for years Fedora is running better and better not only the Fedora Core OS but as the whole in community. I believe Fedora do not need such MIRO control on Ambassadorship.
What Fedora can do is just trigger email to the Ambassadors, those responded, classified them as Active Ambassadors and make them listed in Fedora Ambassadors page so to like others to contact them. For those whom do not reply with in a month, KIV them to Ambassador KIV group, make them hidden to End User but not Ambassasors, but purge them off after half year of no reply.
Just my 2cts worth.
- 1
:)
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
+1 from me too
Paul
sorry if i don't understand about this big fuss of "Ambassador" ? I see for
years Fedora is running better and better not only the Fedora Core OS but as the whole in community.
- 1
+1 from me too
-10e1000 So, with this, problem solved. Everything it's "just fine". Despite the fact this is the longest thread I saw until now on this mailing list (apart from the useless "me too"). If we can't agree on a solution to the problem it doesn't mean the problem isn't there! Let's just stick out heads on the sand. "Fedora it's going great!" There is no such thing of Ubuntu (it seems to be tabu to talk about this), there is no such thing as 40% of the registered ambassadors (this is almost 1 in 2 of them!) inactive. The activity of the rest of them consists mainly on asking in vain "what can I do?". I'm sorry but it doesn't seems to me that things are ok at all. We have every week a few new ambassadors registred. This is really a good thing. But how many of them will end up being real contributors? If we continue like this, we'll have next year 2000 ambassadors (wich looks great on paper) and the next survey will prove that 90% of them are inactive. We might as well create 10000 fictive accounts on Fedora ambassadors list and be proud of our "strenght". I whant to know that this thread will be closed in N days and the decisions are XYand Z. Whatever decisions will come up it will be better that ignoring the problem.
Ewan Luca
On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 13:27 +0300, Ewan Luca wrote:
sorry if i don't understand about this big fuss of "Ambassador" ? I see for years Fedora is running better and better not only the Fedora Core OS but as the whole in community. + 1 +1 from me too
-10e1000 So, with this, problem solved. Everything it's "just fine". Despite the fact this is the longest thread I saw until now on this mailing list (apart from the useless "me too"). If we can't agree on a solution to the problem it doesn't mean the problem isn't there! Let's just stick out heads on the sand. "Fedora it's going great!" There is no such thing of Ubuntu (it seems to be tabu to talk about this), there is no such thing as 40% of the registered ambassadors (this is almost 1 in 2 of them!) inactive. The activity of the rest of them consists mainly on asking in vain "what can I do?". I'm sorry but it doesn't seems to me that things are ok at all. We have every week a few new ambassadors registred. This is really a good thing. But how many of them will end up being real contributors? If we continue like this, we'll have next year 2000 ambassadors (wich looks great on paper) and the next survey will prove that 90% of them are inactive. We might as well create 10000 fictive accounts on Fedora ambassadors list and be proud of our "strenght". I whant to know that this thread will be closed in N days and the decisions are XYand Z. Whatever decisions will come up it will be better that ignoring the problem.
Ewan Luca
The idea about it is that it takes too much effort to "police" the system. You can set the bar really high and make it "difficult" to achieve the Ambassador status or set it lower and make it all inclusive.
Quantity or Quality? I know we all want Quality ... but how does one quantify ambassador behavior that is worthwhile for the community?
FOR EXAMPLE, imagine if we set up a scoring system that only renews your ambassador status for the next month only if you score 500 or higher (you will be automatically de-registered from the ambassador system if you end the month with less than 500 points)
-> all ambassadors start with 500 points -> there is an auto-write down of 100 points every month -> +100 for finishing and completing new ambassador briefing/training -> +100 for successfully initiating and driving a community event -> +100 for delivering an address at an approved event -> -100 for not participating actively/effectively on mailing lists -> -200 for not attending meetings -> -200 for not responding to your fedora emails in a timely fashion
This system ensures that we will have "active" ambassadors but just how many ambassadors will be left at the end of the year? 10? 15?
Its a tough balancing act. Too many ambassadors and we are seen to be ineffective. Too few ambassadors and others may feel that its only an "exclusive" few that get to "promote" Fedora.
While I definitely agree that "772 Ambassadors in FAS, 300 were inactive" as shown in Max's initial email on 26 Mar 2009 is high, at this time, we just need a simple mechanism to "remove" these inactive accounts and keep going. No point spending too much time and effort to monitor these inactive accounts. Let's spend time on the core efforts instead.
My personal 2cents ...
(a) if you do not have valid contact information on your wiki page, it tells the world that you are not willing to have others contact you
(b) if you do not keep a valid email address on the FAS system, it shows that you don't want the administrator to contact you
(c) if you don't want the world to contact you and you don't want the administrator to contact you ... then shouldn't you be excused from the ambassador list?
If this (a) + (b) + (c) brings the list down to a reasonable size, then we would have achieve the objective. Its simple and shouldn't annoy anyone ....... or at least, that's what I hope :)
On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 19:14 +0800, Roy Ong wrote:
-> all ambassadors start with 500 points -> there is an auto-write down of 100 points every month -> +100 for finishing and completing new ambassador briefing/training -> +100 for successfully initiating and driving a community event -> +100 for delivering an address at an approved event -> -100 for not participating actively/effectively on mailing lists -> -200 for not attending meetings -> -200 for not responding to your fedora emails in a timely fashion
Just to make sure I have not missed it... is there really a new ambassador briefing and training?
Thanks,
cprofitt
Roy Ong wrote:
On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 13:27 +0300, Ewan Luca wrote:
sorry if i don't understand about this big fuss of "Ambassador" ? I see for years Fedora is running better and better not only the Fedora Core OS but as the whole in community. + 1 +1 from me too
-10e1000 So, with this, problem solved. Everything it's "just fine". Despite the fact this is the longest thread I saw until now on this mailing list (apart from the useless "me too"). If we can't agree on a solution to the problem it doesn't mean the problem isn't there! Let's just stick out heads on the sand. "Fedora it's going great!" There is no such thing of Ubuntu (it seems to be tabu to talk about this), there is no such thing as 40% of the registered ambassadors (this is almost 1 in 2 of them!) inactive. The activity of the rest of them consists mainly on asking in vain "what can I do?". I'm sorry but it doesn't seems to me that things are ok at all. We have every week a few new ambassadors registred. This is really a good thing. But how many of them will end up being real contributors? If we continue like this, we'll have next year 2000 ambassadors (wich looks great on paper) and the next survey will prove that 90% of them are inactive. We might as well create 10000 fictive accounts on Fedora ambassadors list and be proud of our "strenght". I whant to know that this thread will be closed in N days and the decisions are XYand Z. Whatever decisions will come up it will be better that ignoring the problem.
Ewan Luca
The idea about it is that it takes too much effort to "police" the system. You can set the bar really high and make it "difficult" to achieve the Ambassador status or set it lower and make it all inclusive.
Quantity or Quality? I know we all want Quality ... but how does one quantify ambassador behavior that is worthwhile for the community?
FOR EXAMPLE, imagine if we set up a scoring system that only renews your ambassador status for the next month only if you score 500 or higher (you will be automatically de-registered from the ambassador system if you end the month with less than 500 points)
-> all ambassadors start with 500 points -> there is an auto-write down of 100 points every month -> +100 for finishing and completing new ambassador briefing/training -> +100 for successfully initiating and driving a community event -> +100 for delivering an address at an approved event -> -100 for not participating actively/effectively on mailing lists -> -200 for not attending meetings -> -200 for not responding to your fedora emails in a timely fashion
This system ensures that we will have "active" ambassadors but just how many ambassadors will be left at the end of the year? 10? 15?
Its a tough balancing act. Too many ambassadors and we are seen to be ineffective. Too few ambassadors and others may feel that its only an "exclusive" few that get to "promote" Fedora.
While I definitely agree that "772 Ambassadors in FAS, 300 were inactive" as shown in Max's initial email on 26 Mar 2009 is high, at this time, we just need a simple mechanism to "remove" these inactive accounts and keep going. No point spending too much time and effort to monitor these inactive accounts. Let's spend time on the core efforts instead.
My personal 2cents ...
(a) if you do not have valid contact information on your wiki page, it tells the world that you are not willing to have others contact you
(b) if you do not keep a valid email address on the FAS system, it shows that you don't want the administrator to contact you
(c) if you don't want the world to contact you and you don't want the administrator to contact you ... then shouldn't you be excused from the ambassador list?
If this (a) + (b) + (c) brings the list down to a reasonable size, then we would have achieve the objective. Its simple and shouldn't annoy anyone ....... or at least, that's what I hope :)
+1 :-)
Ewan Luca wrote:
sorry if i don't understand about this big fuss of "Ambassador" ? I see for years Fedora is running better and better not only the Fedora Core OS but as the whole in community. + 1 +1 from me too
-10e1000 So, with this, problem solved. Everything it's "just fine". Despite the fact this is the longest thread I saw until now on this mailing list (apart from the useless "me too"). If we can't agree on a solution to the problem it doesn't mean the problem isn't there! Let's just stick out heads on the sand. "Fedora it's going great!" There is no such thing of Ubuntu (it seems to be tabu to talk about this), there is no such thing as 40% of the registered ambassadors (this is almost 1 in 2 of them!) inactive. The activity of the rest of them consists mainly on asking in vain "what can I do?". I'm sorry but it doesn't seems to me that things are ok at all. We have every week a few new ambassadors registred. This is really a good thing. But how many of them will end up being real contributors? If we continue like this, we'll have next year 2000 ambassadors (wich looks great on paper) and the next survey will prove that 90% of them are inactive. We might as well create 10000 fictive accounts on Fedora ambassadors list and be proud of our "strenght". I whant to know that this thread will be closed in N days and the decisions are XYand Z. Whatever decisions will come up it will be better that ignoring the problem.
You have your point. Ignore this issue is not a solution. That is where and why i mentioned Fedora can try this for a start:- ----- What Fedora can do is just trigger email to the Ambassadors, those responded, classified them as Active Ambassadors and make them listed in Fedora Ambassadors page so to like others to contact them. For those whom do not reply with in a month, KIV them to Ambassador KIV group, make them hidden to End User but not Ambassasors, but purge them off after half year of no reply. -----
Then improve it along the way, rather then keep going on in the mailing list and no action per say. India had did a good job on start the mailing list out to all ambassadors in India to screen for active and inactive ambassadors. So, may be Fedora Ambassadors steering committee, Susmit, as a mentor for the APAC region can assist in getting it done like wise in India ?And in Region EMEA, they got "2. Ambassadors Membership Verification (Joerg)" may be APAC can learn from them, Just another 2cts worth.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Clint Savage herlo1@gmail.com wrote:
Lastly, I think there are minimums people can achieve, but because Fedora Ambassadors can lurk in many places, having a set of requirements might be a bit tight. I'd like to suggest that the new prospective Ambassador and their mentors sit down with a list of *suggested* requirements, something they can tangibly look at and say, yes, I think I can accomplish X, Y and Z to become an ambassador. Here's a couple quick examples.
All prospective ambassadors would complete some some minimal set of acknowledgement like Wiki page, introducing yourself, the open source projects you are involved in and a basic set of benefits you bring to Fedora. Something similar to what Joerg is requiring now.
Prospective Ambassador accumulates enough credits (integral valued) through different Fedora related activities on Fedora site, in the Internet and off line. This requires some modifications in the present infrastructure, but should prove to be useful for other Fedora groups.
Best
A. Mani
-- A. Mani Member, Cal. Math. Soc
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 6:14 AM, David Nalley david@gnsa.us wrote:
Yet another warning that this is likely to be a long email.
In the course of our discussion on the FAmSCo list, Joerg has convinced me of the logic behind raising the barrier to entry. (Note that of the three issues that Max presented, this one only deals with raising the barrier to entry.)
I don't object to raising the barrier but I want to be very careful how we do it.
Essentially it comes down to who we place the initial burden on. Mentoring is needed, but if the current virtually non-existent barrier remains it means that our limited supply of mentors will be incredibly taxed, and possibly with precious little gain.
In the course of that discussion a number of things were suggested as prerequisites - a few of which are listed below (not all of them as honestly the discussion is 38 pages worth of text at this point (sans prior email quoting)
- has to be a Contributor to another Sub-Project inside Fedora where a
sponsor is needed
I very strongly disagree with this idea for two reasons.
(1) The notion of a sponsor is inconsistent across Fedora groups. Some, like the art team, don't even have a notion of a sponsor. For the ambassadors our sponsor, kital, guides new folks through the process and then approves them as members. In packaging, as I understand their process, the sponsor basically vouches for the new member's competence to create packages properly (i.e., has demonstrated appropriate skills) and recommends that the community accept the new member into the group (which is done by vote). In infrastructure as I understand that process the sponsor vouches for both skills and trustworthiness.
Due to the inconsistent role of the sponsor across Fedora groups I think this requirement is arbitrary and meaningless. Being on the art team is no less meaningful or important than being a bug triager in my mind.
(2) While I will not deny that being a member of other FAS groups is a good thing, I don't think it defines in any way a good ambassador. Someone who spends 90% of his Fedora time helping other Fedora users solve their problems in a positive way on IRC and 10% of his time promoting Fedora at his local user group meetings deserves in my mind to be an ambassador every bit as much as anyone else even if he belongs to no other FAS groups. And requiring him to join another group that he doesn't want to join just seems silly to me.
- is recommended by a Contributor to another Sub-Project inside Fedora
who will take mentorship for that person
Being recommended by another Fedora contributor is a fine endorsement. But how can the contributor be the ambassador's mentor when the contributor isn't an ambassador?
- has contributed to Fedora on a event before
Has contributed to the Fedora community in some demonstrable way before? Has contributed in the role of an ambassador previously in some demonstrable way? I don't see any reason to elevate events above other ways of contributing.
The idea being that this isn't a newbie group.
So lets first look at the definition of what a traditional ambassador is: a diplomat of the highest rank; accredited as representative from one country to another
In Fedora's case an Ambassador is a liaison to the general public and the open source community and represents the public face of Fedora. While charged with promoting Fedora, Ambassadors are more than PR droids as inherent in bearing the title of Ambassador comes the authority and expectation of getting things done and not just being a mouthpiece.
I still want to allow people to contribute in ways they find enjoyable. So if someone wants to be a PR droid by blogging incessantly that is cool with me. If someone else wants to do every single thing that an ambassador could possibly do that is even cooler. I'm ok letting the ambassador decide in what ways they are happy contributing. Not everyone can be the Ambassador to the UN. Someone might just want to be the Ambassador to Fedora, South Dakota.
Looking at the more traditional examples of Ambassadors we find them to generally be experienced statesmen. They are the highest ranking diplomat sent to foreign entities.
The problem that I perceive, and I believe others do as well is that these representatives of the Fedora Project aren't living up to the same level of quality that we expect of Fedora as a distribution, or of the contributors in other portions of Fedora. We have high standards for packagers, art people, etc, and yet we don't for the representatives of the project?
This is a very compelling statement. Maybe one place to start turning this tide is by expressing this point more effectively on the wiki. Ambassadors are critical to the mission of the project. Begin to set the expectation of what an ambassador is in the first place people read about ambassadors.
I fully believe that a portion of the problem is our failure to communicate the authority which the Ambassadors are given. Max quoted me in saying that we have a large percentage of people who haven't yet realized that they can take ownership of things in Fedora and I fully believe this to be the case.
But more specifically, I perceive a problem in the following areas with a good percentage of new Ambassadors:
- Lack of knowledge and understanding of the Free/Libre Open Source
Software movement and it's philosophies and principles.
- Lack of knowledge about the Fedora Project, it's goals,
foundational believes, structure, and organization.
Also all points I completely agree with.
Please don't misunderstand me, I am not trying to create an elitist group or proposing that we remove existing Ambassadors because they 'aren't up to snuff'. What I am saying is that going forward we need to be able to provide a minimally acceptable quality. Every other subproject has work standards one must meet before being accepted. Why should we not hold ourselves to that same standard?
I unfortunately fear that left unchecked our organization will devolve into a social club.
Currently, the most arduous task for someone who wants to be n Ambassador is that they acquire a FAS account. I can't imagine many arguing that is enough to qualify them as the highest envoys in the land.
I agree with this sentiment but tempered with the realization that many ambassadors do all their work in very localized areas and we need to not set barriers that prohibit such an arrangement.
Thanks David and others who are working on this issue. It is really a very important enterprise and one I hope we get right. The result of this is critical to the smooth functioning of our group as we continue to grow in numbers. I think you are definitely heading down the right track here.
John
I fully agree with the concept of raising the barrier to entry and mentoring
Raising of the barrier to entry can be done through some kind of online testing if possible ( I dont have much idea about them). A person who is applying for Fedora ambassadorship should give that test and have to clear it before moving to the next round that can be a one to one irc session .If both the sessions are satisfactory the person will be selected for a 3-6 months of probation / training period where he has to fulfill some goals to become a Fedora Ambassador.
Shambo
Hi
On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Shambo Bose shambo.linux@gmail.com wrote:
I fully agree with the concept of raising the barrier to entry and mentoring
Raising of the barrier to entry can be done through some kind of online testing if possible ( I dont have much idea about them). A person who is applying for Fedora ambassadorship should give that test and have to clear it before moving to the next round that can be a one
IMHO, such tests for entry are always a bad idea though I am not very clear about what kind of test you are talking about. If it something like a written test then bad bad idea. You cannot judge the potential of a person by only a test. It is much more subjective and should be spread over a longer time span.
to one irc session .If both the sessions are satisfactory the person will be selected for a 3-6 months of probation / training period where he has to fulfill some goals to become a Fedora Ambassador.
As Max stated, a variable probation period is better. For example what about a person who is just perfect for the job and can cope up in just a week. 3 months is a wastage for him. So, again the same concept of sponsors like the packaging project comes in. I believe raising the barrier is good but finding people to judge whether an applicant has crossed that barrier is even more important and so is to find proper mentors who can teach how to cross that barrier.
Regards
Inline reply
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 11:45 PM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 6:14 AM, David Nalley david@gnsa.us wrote:
Yet another warning that this is likely to be a long email.
In the course of our discussion on the FAmSCo list, Joerg has convinced me of the logic behind raising the barrier to entry. (Note that of the three issues that Max presented, this one only deals with raising the barrier to entry.)
I don't object to raising the barrier but I want to be very careful how we do it.
Essentially it comes down to who we place the initial burden on. Mentoring is needed, but if the current virtually non-existent barrier remains it means that our limited supply of mentors will be incredibly taxed, and possibly with precious little gain.
In the course of that discussion a number of things were suggested as prerequisites - a few of which are listed below (not all of them as honestly the discussion is 38 pages worth of text at this point (sans prior email quoting)
- has to be a Contributor to another Sub-Project inside Fedora where a
sponsor is needed
I very strongly disagree with this idea for two reasons.
(1) The notion of a sponsor is inconsistent across Fedora groups. Some, like the art team, don't even have a notion of a sponsor. For the ambassadors our sponsor, kital, guides new folks through the process and then approves them as members. In packaging, as I understand their process, the sponsor basically vouches for the new member's competence to create packages properly (i.e., has demonstrated appropriate skills) and recommends that the community accept the new member into the group (which is done by vote). In infrastructure as I understand that process the sponsor vouches for both skills and trustworthiness.
Some of these points are nits, but I think competence in packaging is but 1/2 of the process is also proving that you understand the packaging guidelines. Community doesn't vote, the sponsor has the authority vested in him to approve or deny an applicant. FESCo does vote on proven packager and packaging sponsors to approve them.
Due to the inconsistent role of the sponsor across Fedora groups I think this requirement is arbitrary and meaningless. Being on the art team is no less meaningful or important than being a bug triager in my mind.
(2) While I will not deny that being a member of other FAS groups is a good thing, I don't think it defines in any way a good ambassador. Someone who spends 90% of his Fedora time helping other Fedora users solve their problems in a positive way on IRC and 10% of his time promoting Fedora at his local user group meetings deserves in my mind to be an ambassador every bit as much as anyone else even if he belongs to no other FAS groups. And requiring him to join another group that he doesn't want to join just seems silly to me.
I don't think Joerg intended these to be cumulative. Rather that any of these is sufficient. Yes inherently some of these people. may not meet this specific criteria, but if an individual is doing work in Fedora in another aspect that gives them that much better of a perspective to represent Fedora IMO.
- is recommended by a Contributor to another Sub-Project inside Fedora
who will take mentorship for that person
Being recommended by another Fedora contributor is a fine endorsement. But how can the contributor be the ambassador's mentor when the contributor isn't an ambassador?
- has contributed to Fedora on a event before
Has contributed to the Fedora community in some demonstrable way before? Has contributed in the role of an ambassador previously in some demonstrable way? I don't see any reason to elevate events above other ways of contributing.
The idea being that this isn't a newbie group.
So lets first look at the definition of what a traditional ambassador is: a diplomat of the highest rank; accredited as representative from one country to another
In Fedora's case an Ambassador is a liaison to the general public and the open source community and represents the public face of Fedora. While charged with promoting Fedora, Ambassadors are more than PR droids as inherent in bearing the title of Ambassador comes the authority and expectation of getting things done and not just being a mouthpiece.
I still want to allow people to contribute in ways they find enjoyable. So if someone wants to be a PR droid by blogging incessantly that is cool with me. If someone else wants to do every single thing that an ambassador could possibly do that is even cooler. I'm ok letting the ambassador decide in what ways they are happy contributing. Not everyone can be the Ambassador to the UN. Someone might just want to be the Ambassador to Fedora, South Dakota.
I don't care if someone is an Ambassador to the world or an Ambassador to Liberty, SC (town of 3000) In my mind the standard is good representation, be that to 5 people or 50,000.
Looking at the more traditional examples of Ambassadors we find them to generally be experienced statesmen. They are the highest ranking diplomat sent to foreign entities.
The problem that I perceive, and I believe others do as well is that these representatives of the Fedora Project aren't living up to the same level of quality that we expect of Fedora as a distribution, or of the contributors in other portions of Fedora. We have high standards for packagers, art people, etc, and yet we don't for the representatives of the project?
This is a very compelling statement. Maybe one place to start turning this tide is by expressing this point more effectively on the wiki. Ambassadors are critical to the mission of the project. Begin to set the expectation of what an ambassador is in the first place people read about ambassadors.
I fully believe that a portion of the problem is our failure to communicate the authority which the Ambassadors are given. Max quoted me in saying that we have a large percentage of people who haven't yet realized that they can take ownership of things in Fedora and I fully believe this to be the case.
But more specifically, I perceive a problem in the following areas with a good percentage of new Ambassadors:
- Lack of knowledge and understanding of the Free/Libre Open Source
Software movement and it's philosophies and principles.
- Lack of knowledge about the Fedora Project, it's goals,
foundational believes, structure, and organization.
Also all points I completely agree with.
Please don't misunderstand me, I am not trying to create an elitist group or proposing that we remove existing Ambassadors because they 'aren't up to snuff'. What I am saying is that going forward we need to be able to provide a minimally acceptable quality. Every other subproject has work standards one must meet before being accepted. Why should we not hold ourselves to that same standard?
I unfortunately fear that left unchecked our organization will devolve into a social club.
Currently, the most arduous task for someone who wants to be n Ambassador is that they acquire a FAS account. I can't imagine many arguing that is enough to qualify them as the highest envoys in the land.
I agree with this sentiment but tempered with the realization that many ambassadors do all their work in very localized areas and we need to not set barriers that prohibit such an arrangement.
Again the standard that I think we attain to is quality representation. I can't justify lowering the standards in my mind because a person will only be the face of Fedora to 50 people. Bad representation is bad representation. What we must guard against is emplacing arbitrary standards that don't increase quality.
Thanks David and others who are working on this issue. It is really a very important enterprise and one I hope we get right. The result of this is critical to the smooth functioning of our group as we continue to grow in numbers. I think you are definitely heading down the right track here.
John
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 7:15 AM, David Nalley david@gnsa.us wrote:
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 11:45 PM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 6:14 AM, David Nalley david@gnsa.us wrote:
Essentially it comes down to who we place the initial burden on. Mentoring is needed, but if the current virtually non-existent barrier remains it means that our limited supply of mentors will be incredibly taxed, and possibly with precious little gain.
In the course of that discussion a number of things were suggested as prerequisites - a few of which are listed below (not all of them as honestly the discussion is 38 pages worth of text at this point (sans prior email quoting)
- has to be a Contributor to another Sub-Project inside Fedora where a
sponsor is needed
I very strongly disagree with this idea for two reasons.
(1) The notion of a sponsor is inconsistent across Fedora groups. Some, like the art team, don't even have a notion of a sponsor. For the ambassadors our sponsor, kital, guides new folks through the process and then approves them as members. In packaging, as I understand their process, the sponsor basically vouches for the new member's competence to create packages properly (i.e., has demonstrated appropriate skills) and recommends that the community accept the new member into the group (which is done by vote). In infrastructure as I understand that process the sponsor vouches for both skills and trustworthiness.
Some of these points are nits, but I think competence in packaging is but 1/2 of the process is also proving that you understand the packaging guidelines. Community doesn't vote, the sponsor has the authority vested in him to approve or deny an applicant. FESCo does vote on proven packager and packaging sponsors to approve them.
I only intended to make one point here, the role of sponsors in various Fedora groups means different things to different groups. If the point is to belong to some other part of Fedora then whether it has sponsorship or not is irrelevant.
Due to the inconsistent role of the sponsor across Fedora groups I think this requirement is arbitrary and meaningless. Being on the art team is no less meaningful or important than being a bug triager in my mind.
(2) While I will not deny that being a member of other FAS groups is a good thing, I don't think it defines in any way a good ambassador. Someone who spends 90% of his Fedora time helping other Fedora users solve their problems in a positive way on IRC and 10% of his time promoting Fedora at his local user group meetings deserves in my mind to be an ambassador every bit as much as anyone else even if he belongs to no other FAS groups. And requiring him to join another group that he doesn't want to join just seems silly to me.
I don't think Joerg intended these to be cumulative. Rather that any of these is sufficient. Yes inherently some of these people. may not meet this specific criteria, but if an individual is doing work in Fedora in another aspect that gives them that much better of a perspective to represent Fedora IMO.
Sure. Someone who spends countless hours in #fedora is better prepared to be a good ambassador in #fedora than someone who is fixated on packaging cowsay for example. Belonging to one FAS group and even being an active contributor in that group buys you something but I think you are overselling its importance. An ambassador participating in other FAS groups makes the ambassador a better ambassador. This is in large part I think because when an ambassador participates in other groups he looks around through his ambassador eyes. But belonging to another FAS group has little relation in my mind to becoming a good ambassador to start with. How many current packagers would make good ambassadors? I don't know the answer to that question but I suspect that being a packager is not highly correlated with being a good ambassador. If it isn't a good indicator I don't think it makes a good screening test.
I think it mostly come down to my agreeing with Mathieu. I don't think lists of required actions and experiences can ever take the place of human judgment. If these lists are for the benefit of sponsors to help guide them then it doesn't matter so much to me whether they are incomplete or contain things I might disagree with in some way. If they are to be advertised to potential new contributors then I probably won't ever like the list that results.
- is recommended by a Contributor to another Sub-Project inside Fedora
who will take mentorship for that person
Being recommended by another Fedora contributor is a fine endorsement. But how can the contributor be the ambassador's mentor when the contributor isn't an ambassador?
- has contributed to Fedora on a event before
Has contributed to the Fedora community in some demonstrable way before? Has contributed in the role of an ambassador previously in some demonstrable way? I don't see any reason to elevate events above other ways of contributing.
The idea being that this isn't a newbie group.
So lets first look at the definition of what a traditional ambassador is: a diplomat of the highest rank; accredited as representative from one country to another
In Fedora's case an Ambassador is a liaison to the general public and the open source community and represents the public face of Fedora. While charged with promoting Fedora, Ambassadors are more than PR droids as inherent in bearing the title of Ambassador comes the authority and expectation of getting things done and not just being a mouthpiece.
I still want to allow people to contribute in ways they find enjoyable. So if someone wants to be a PR droid by blogging incessantly that is cool with me. If someone else wants to do every single thing that an ambassador could possibly do that is even cooler. I'm ok letting the ambassador decide in what ways they are happy contributing. Not everyone can be the Ambassador to the UN. Someone might just want to be the Ambassador to Fedora, South Dakota.
I don't care if someone is an Ambassador to the world or an Ambassador to Liberty, SC (town of 3000) In my mind the standard is good representation, be that to 5 people or 50,000.
Maybe I don't understand your point exactly. When you say, "... inherent in bearing the title of Ambassador comes the authority and expectation of getting things done and not just being a mouthpiece," what things is the Ambassador to Fedora, South Dakota expected to get done?
I think promoting Fedora in that community is enough, that is my expectation of the ambassador. The ambassador has a world of opportunity to do more in some locations but I'm really not sure that is universal.
Looking at the more traditional examples of Ambassadors we find them to generally be experienced statesmen. They are the highest ranking diplomat sent to foreign entities.
The problem that I perceive, and I believe others do as well is that these representatives of the Fedora Project aren't living up to the same level of quality that we expect of Fedora as a distribution, or of the contributors in other portions of Fedora. We have high standards for packagers, art people, etc, and yet we don't for the representatives of the project?
This is a very compelling statement. Maybe one place to start turning this tide is by expressing this point more effectively on the wiki. Ambassadors are critical to the mission of the project. Begin to set the expectation of what an ambassador is in the first place people read about ambassadors.
I fully believe that a portion of the problem is our failure to communicate the authority which the Ambassadors are given. Max quoted me in saying that we have a large percentage of people who haven't yet realized that they can take ownership of things in Fedora and I fully believe this to be the case.
But more specifically, I perceive a problem in the following areas with a good percentage of new Ambassadors:
- Lack of knowledge and understanding of the Free/Libre Open Source
Software movement and it's philosophies and principles.
- Lack of knowledge about the Fedora Project, it's goals,
foundational believes, structure, and organization.
Also all points I completely agree with.
Please don't misunderstand me, I am not trying to create an elitist group or proposing that we remove existing Ambassadors because they 'aren't up to snuff'. What I am saying is that going forward we need to be able to provide a minimally acceptable quality. Every other subproject has work standards one must meet before being accepted. Why should we not hold ourselves to that same standard?
I unfortunately fear that left unchecked our organization will devolve into a social club.
Currently, the most arduous task for someone who wants to be n Ambassador is that they acquire a FAS account. I can't imagine many arguing that is enough to qualify them as the highest envoys in the land.
I agree with this sentiment but tempered with the realization that many ambassadors do all their work in very localized areas and we need to not set barriers that prohibit such an arrangement.
Again the standard that I think we attain to is quality representation. I can't justify lowering the standards in my mind because a person will only be the face of Fedora to 50 people. Bad representation is bad representation. What we must guard against is emplacing arbitrary standards that don't increase quality.
The standards are to prevent bad representation. I'm willing to admit that in many situations mediocre representation is better than no representation, and in many locations that will be the choice we get to begin with. I favor entry level requirements that allow for this.
John
So long mails are back in fashion. Yupiii!
Ambassador guidance I read the hole thread and I want to stress the points made by other new ambassadors that posted replies: New ambassadors need guidance! 3 weeks ago, as a newly accepted ambassador I feel the need to get a starting point. This is why I started https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Quick_guide. As of today little progress has been achieved due to lack of contribution from people who have the knowledge or experience to make such contribution. As my knowledge of Fedora community I'll complete the project so new ambassadors will have at least some point of reference.
About mentor and sponsor. I am yet to understand the difference between mentor and sponsor and I'm sure this might be confusing to other new ambassadors as well. I'm going to reffer for now to a "mentor" as somebody that will help/guide/point me as a new ambassador in the right direction. I understand that the workload involved in mentoring might be overwhelming but I would have liked (still am) to know that X is my mentor and I can ask him what I need to know. Without this help I'm left wondering the wiki labyrinth. I undestand that there are people that can get theyr compass on their own. Good for them. I need a mentor. I would liked as a newly accepted ambassador to get the "Welcome mail" (the one I myself get from Jorg -thank you Jorg - for example) with 2 links: - "Quick guide for ambassadors" - "Apply for a mentor" where, after I read the basics, I can ASK to be assigned to a mentor*. By making such an application for a mentor the new ambassador will be more likely to understand the rules and implications of such a relation.
Ambassadors standard - measurement and control Let me make myself into a case study. I became an Fedora ambassador 2 days after I instaled linux for the first time on a computer. I have no technical studies or background and no thing but a general idea of Open Source. Yet I'v been accepted as ambassador (for you to judge if this was a mistake for Fedora community as I know now that I can contribute without such technical knoledge). I think the question to be asked is: "Am I *now* a good ambassador?" There is no measurement sistem to determine that. There is no one to held me accontable so I can sit on my ass and replay now and then "me too" endless mails. I'm willing (and I think this is how it should be) to send once o month (or every 2 months or... to be decided) a activity report (to Famsco or to my mentor or on my wiki page). If I miss 3 raports in a row I be degraded from ambassador status or put on probation or shoot or something. Hereby is my first rapport: e1luca ambassadors activities (example) new installs: 0 public apearences: 0 media appearences: 0 private meetings(Fedora subject) 2 blogposts 5 details: www.opencurse.blogspot.com other Fedora related 2 details: Quick guide, Fedora interviews Now, knowing what I'm doing famsco might have a clearer understanding of what the results of Fedora Ambassadors really are (see next point).
Ambassadors standard - measurement and control (II) I would like to see somewere "Fedora ambassadors anual report". For this we need clear goals, measurement systems and structure. Even with 300 inactive ambassadors there are still 400 people in our organisation. This is a lot of manpower. We should be able to get some measurable results from such a force. (wars and revolution have been started with less!)
Ewan Luca, Fedora Ambassador
Am Freitag 27 März 2009 16:19:06 schrieb Ewan Luca:
- "Quick guide for ambassadors"
I think the welcome message[1] contains a lot usefull informations you can follow. We enhance this permanent as soon as someone makes a good suggestion. If you think we need more details - feel free to enhance the content behind the links!
- "Apply for a mentor" where, after I read the basics, I can ASK to be
We do this since awhile - i have sent you only the welcome message[1] - i assumed you are one of nicu's crew, my fault sorry
I have added the regional mentor information to [1]
[1]https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/MembershipService#Final_Welcome_M...
cu Joerg
2009/3/27 Ewan Luca ewanluca@gmail.com:
So long mails are back in fashion. Yupiii!
Ambassador guidance I read the hole thread and I want to stress the points made by other new ambassadors that posted replies: New ambassadors need guidance! 3 weeks ago, as a newly accepted ambassador I feel the need to get a starting point. This is why I started https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Quick_guide. As of today little progress has been achieved due to lack of contribution from people who have the knowledge or experience to make such contribution. As my knowledge of Fedora community I'll complete the project so new ambassadors will have at least some point of reference.
I'm sorry if I can't work actviely on thas stuff now, but, due to language barrier, creating some interesting content require time, and, surely, a 99% attention only to this stuff (I can suggests resource to be used, but having a guide written in a not so good english is something that could be useless).
I think you have done a great job since now and I'm sure your abilities could make this initiative as active as usefull. The big problem is that there is the necessity to have a well-written content and that's a not easy stuff, I'm sure you'll be able to encourage contribution around the project.
If you need help feel free to ask :)
Regards
Francesco Ugolini
I started https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Quick_guide. As
of today little progress has been achieved...
I'm sorry if I can't work actviely on thas stuff now, but, due to language barrier, creating some interesting content require time, and, surely, a 99% attention only to this stuff (I can suggests resource to be used, but having a guide written in a not so good english is something that could be useless).
Francesco Ugolini
Same language barriers might have made my statement sound like an accusation. This is not the case. I was just trying to say that I think this project should not be abandoned.
I think the welcome message[1] contains a lot usefull informations you can
follow. We enhance this permanent as soon as someone makes a good suggestion. If you think we need more details - feel free to enhance the content behind the links!
The message makes perfect sense to me now. Back then was too much information to take in.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Quality of Ambassadors:
I think the best way to measure it is through a simple credit system.
1. a.) Ambassador /prospective ambassador reads *important* article (Only some articles may be eligible for credit) b.) Prospective ambassador answers related multiple choice questions c.) If a minimum score of 90% is not attained, then the candidate goes through the whole process again.
On successful completion, candidate gets 1 credit or some credit.
2. a.) Ambassador/prospective ambassador contributes X no of commits to a Fedora project.
We know plenty of inefficient code metrics. Based on a less inefficient one we give some credit to the candidate.
Only exceptionally hard working programmers should be able to become ambassadors based on their code contribution alone.
3. Ambassador /prospective ambassador writes a article in
This is getting long. Shall I make a wiki page for the evaluation system?
Best
A. Mani
-- A. Mani Member, Cal. Math. Soc
On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 6:08 PM, Mani A a.mani.cms@gmail.com wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Quality of Ambassadors:
I think the best way to measure it is through a simple credit system.
- a.) Ambassador /prospective ambassador reads *important* article (Only some articles may be eligible for credit) b.) Prospective ambassador answers related multiple choice questions c.) If a minimum score of 90% is not attained, then the candidate
goes through the whole process again.
On successful completion, candidate gets 1 credit or some credit.
- a.) Ambassador/prospective ambassador contributes X no of commits
to a Fedora project.
We know plenty of inefficient code metrics. Based on a less inefficient one we give some credit to the candidate.
Only exceptionally hard working programmers should be able to become ambassadors based on their code contribution alone.
- Ambassador /prospective ambassador writes a article in
This is getting long. Shall I make a wiki page for the evaluation system?
Best
A. Mani
-- A. Mani Member, Cal. Math. Soc
Ok, I have a problem with a ranking or evaluation system. It's one thing to have a mentee period, because I think we can all agree that the current program lacks an effective onboarding strategy for getting want-to-be Ambassadors involved.
The kind of system proposed above reminds me of why I quit playing World of Warcraft. For those of you who don't play Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) I apologize in advance if the analogy doesn't make sense. I was in a pretty decent sized guild but then they started a ranking system where points were awarded for participation in 5 hour long dungeon raids. I had other interests, and a job, and a myriad of other things that occupied my time. Before I knew it, I was so behind the points eight ball that it was pointless for me to play because I'd never be able to redeem enough points to get whatever it is one redeems points for.
Having a points or ranking system for Ambassadors will ultimately lead to the idea that one is a better Ambassador than another because they have more points, regardless of how passionate the Ambassador is. Having ranks is detrimental to the point that Fedora is a community, moving together forward, in an inharmonious cacophony to be sure, but forward none-the-less. Should an Ambassador be penalized because their job, family, other interests are requiring more time than they used to and they can't spend as much time with the community?
I've read this thread throughout and say ++ to a mentor system, ++ to having published milestones/events mentors encourage new ambassadors to complete. I am completely opposed to these milestones being required to be called an Ambassador. I am opposed to having different adjectives applied to Ambassadors like provisional, probational, prospect, etc. that would indicate to someone outside the community that the participant is anything less than what they are, a volunteer, a proponent, and a member of the Fedora community dedicated toward spreading the good tidings of Fedora.
-Scott aka StabbyMc
Well, after reading the thread, I would like to give my supports to the ideas of mentor system and opposition to others. The mentor system will help enlarging our team, and more effective freshers. And other 2 will do harm to our goal, in my idea. Why we want to divide the people here into several groups, and puting a tag(idler, nobleman, etc) on their head? Maybe the start point of this advice is good. It's just like a online game, the guy starts as a cotton garments, and he wants to be a great man with his hard-working. But, But, this is a community, not a online game. Also the standards, it's too general to be used to rank a score. It's excepted that after the purging, then in short time, a noisy, disorderly fight or quarrel will start again about the ranking.
2009/3/28 scott mcbrien smcbrien@gmail.com
On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 6:08 PM, Mani A a.mani.cms@gmail.com wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Quality of Ambassadors:
I think the best way to measure it is through a simple credit system.
- a.) Ambassador /prospective ambassador reads *important* article (Only some articles may be eligible for credit) b.) Prospective ambassador answers related multiple choice questions c.) If a minimum score of 90% is not attained, then the candidate
goes through the whole process again.
On successful completion, candidate gets 1 credit or some credit.
- a.) Ambassador/prospective ambassador contributes X no of commits
to a Fedora project.
We know plenty of inefficient code metrics. Based on a less inefficient one we give some credit to the candidate.
Only exceptionally hard working programmers should be able to become ambassadors based on their code contribution alone.
- Ambassador /prospective ambassador writes a article in
This is getting long. Shall I make a wiki page for the evaluation system?
Best
A. Mani
-- A. Mani Member, Cal. Math. Soc
Ok, I have a problem with a ranking or evaluation system. It's one thing to have a mentee period, because I think we can all agree that the current program lacks an effective onboarding strategy for getting want-to-be Ambassadors involved.
The kind of system proposed above reminds me of why I quit playing World of Warcraft. For those of you who don't play Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) I apologize in advance if the analogy doesn't make sense. I was in a pretty decent sized guild but then they started a ranking system where points were awarded for participation in 5 hour long dungeon raids. I had other interests, and a job, and a myriad of other things that occupied my time. Before I knew it, I was so behind the points eight ball that it was pointless for me to play because I'd never be able to redeem enough points to get whatever it is one redeems points for.
Having a points or ranking system for Ambassadors will ultimately lead to the idea that one is a better Ambassador than another because they have more points, regardless of how passionate the Ambassador is. Having ranks is detrimental to the point that Fedora is a community, moving together forward, in an inharmonious cacophony to be sure, but forward none-the-less. Should an Ambassador be penalized because their job, family, other interests are requiring more time than they used to and they can't spend as much time with the community?
I've read this thread throughout and say ++ to a mentor system, ++ to having published milestones/events mentors encourage new ambassadors to complete. I am completely opposed to these milestones being required to be called an Ambassador. I am opposed to having different adjectives applied to Ambassadors like provisional, probational, prospect, etc. that would indicate to someone outside the community that the participant is anything less than what they are, a volunteer, a proponent, and a member of the Fedora community dedicated toward spreading the good tidings of Fedora.
-Scott aka StabbyMc
-- Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list Fedora-ambassadors-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 3:38 AM, Mani A a.mani.cms@gmail.com wrote:
I think the best way to measure it is through a simple credit system.
- a.) Ambassador /prospective ambassador reads *important* article
(Only some articles may be eligible for credit) b.) Prospective ambassador answers related multiple choice questions c.) If a minimum score of 90% is not attained, then the candidate goes through the whole process again.
On successful completion, candidate gets 1 credit or some credit.
Bad bad idea. As others said, Fedora is a community and not a corporate. So there should not be any rankings but only arying degree of responsibilities which is decided in the process itself.
- a.) Ambassador/prospective ambassador contributes X no of commits
to a Fedora project.
A lot of people I know who do not commit code, but are exceptionally good ambassadors (I don't want to start giving examples).
Only exceptionally hard working programmers should be able to become ambassadors based on their code contribution alone.
What if the person is extremely smart and outgoing and diplomatic and has all those other qualities that makes him just perfect for te ob of an ambassador, only ting he lacks is that he is management student and knows noting about programming.Should he be denied the opportunity to contribute.
- Ambassador /prospective ambassador writes a article in
This is getting long. Shall I make a wiki page for the evaluation system?
IMHO you should wait for some more responses before you decide to invest your valuable time.
Please don't get the idea that I am against mentoring or sponsoring. I strongly support it. I only wanted to put forward to you my understanding of the matter in hand.
Regards
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 3:08 AM, Rangeen Basu sherry151@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 3:38 AM, Mani A a.mani.cms@gmail.com wrote:
I think the best way to measure it is through a simple credit system.
- a.) Ambassador /prospective ambassador reads *important* article
(Only some articles may be eligible for credit) b.) Prospective ambassador answers related multiple choice questions c.) If a minimum score of 90% is not attained, then the candidate goes through the whole process again.
On successful completion, candidate gets 1 credit or some credit.
Bad bad idea. As others said, Fedora is a community and not a corporate. So there should not be any rankings but only arying degree of responsibilities which is decided in the process itself.
The main goal is to ensure standards. So we can always put the end result in subjective terms. We should use as many technologies as is possible. Communities should know how to develop their own standards.
How do you propose to ensure that a prospective ambassador is sufficiently capable and understands things? Mentors can not find the time for all the spoon feeding.
- a.) Ambassador/prospective ambassador contributes X no of commits
to a Fedora project.
A lot of people I know who do not commit code, but are exceptionally good ambassadors (I don't want to start giving examples).
Only exceptionally hard working programmers should be able to become ambassadors based on their code contribution alone.
What if the person is extremely smart and outgoing and diplomatic and has all those other qualities that makes him just perfect for te ob of an ambassador, only ting he lacks is that he is management student and knows noting about programming.Should he be denied the opportunity to contribute.
You have misunderstood the point. The proposal is 'Code contribution alone should not sufficient'.
I have just started with the 'specs'.
Please don't get the idea that I am against mentoring or sponsoring. I strongly support it. I only wanted to put forward to you my understanding of the matter in hand.
I am also not against mentoring. This system can be useful in both situations.
It is difficult for mentors to ensure that 'prospective ambassador is sufficiently knowledgeable'. But mentors can be very useful in helping with organisation and implementation of programmes.
Best
A. Mani
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 4:18 AM, Max Spevack mspevack@redhat.com wrote:
Hi all,
I warn you in advance that this is a very long email.
There's been a discussion on famsco-list for the last week and a half now, and I volunteered to try to summarize some of that conversation, so that we could move it to fedora-ambassadors-list.
Wow! This took some serious effort Max and I really appreciate it. Helping the ambassador community understand the work that FAmSCo is undertaking and giving us the opportunity to contribute to the end result is really a great thing for the community.
My response might be longer than yours so please bear with me. All comments below are intended to just let you know the way I'm thinking about these issues. I don't expect you to adopt them, just give them some consideration and make your best decision after suffering through what you are about to suffer through. :).
The main topics of the discussion center around these three points:
- Purging of inactive Ambassadors
- Mentoring
- Raising the standard for membership
===
The thread was started by David Nalley, and his initial email brought up the following:
The "probation" idea for Fedora Ambassadors is flawed, and can be improved. Improving it will help raise the overall quality and effectiveness of Fedora Ambassadors. In particular, David advocated for the following:
- Fixed term for probation should go away, and be replaced with a specific
set of tasks that need to be achieved.
- If someone makes no progress in X amount of time, we purge them from the
system. If they are making progress, then give as much time as is needed.
- New Ambassadors should immediately be given a mentor -- a specific name
of an Ambassador in their region.
To help you understand my thoughts on all this I'd like to begin by describing the roles of mentor and sponsor as I'll be using them since I don't think everyone agrees on what these roles are currently. Oh, heck, let's just visit a dictionary for this.
Mentor: (1) A wise and trusted counselor or teacher.
Sponsor: (1) One who assumes responsibility for another person or a group during a period of instruction, apprenticeship, or probation. (2) One who vouches for the suitability of a candidate for admission.
Given these common definitions, I think in the early stages of membership we want to pair up in some fashion a new ambassador (or a new candidate to become an ambassador) with a sponsor. The role of the sponsor would be to help guide the candidate through the process and in my opinion should culminate in the sponsor recommending the candidate for admission to the group. There should be some at least loosely defined criteria for anyone recommended by a sponsor that should include basic grokking of free software and the philosophy of Fedora. This doesn't need to be a high bar but just some minimal understanding of key issues demonstrated by the candidate.
kital has been performing the guidance function for all new ambassadors and we should relieve him of some of that burden.
Once admitted to the group as an ambassador we should help the new ambassador find a mentor for longer term, deeper help. This often might end up being the same person as the sponsor if they hit it off well. But it could be anyone the ambassador trusts and is comfortable working with who can volunteer the time to help this ambassador. I'm not sure all sponsors would be able to provide deep mentoring to everyone they sponsor. That is asking a lot I think.
- Current restrictions on getting resources as an Ambassador while on
probation should go away, and be replaced with "at your mentor's discretion".
Max's note #1: This begins to lay out what looks like a more formal sponsorship process for Ambassadors, which is similar to the sort of thing that happens in the Fedora Package Maintainers community.
Max's note #2: As Fedora Ambassadors continues to grow, a sponsorship process becomes more and more critical, and Package Maintainers has set a good example and precedent.
I agree with this and think we should bite the bullet and just set up a sponsorship system now.
===
Francesco Ugolini commented that we want to continue to ensure that resources are managed regionally (which is consistent with David's proposal), and that one important task will be to ensure that *whatever* the requirements are on new people who want to join Ambassadors, it be as clear, and as internationalized, as possible.
Max's note #3: In Ambassadors in particular, it's important for us to try to simplify and clarify policy as much as possible. The number of languages on our list and in our sub-project is very large, even compared to other parts of Fedora (perhaps with the exception of Localization).
===
Thomas Canniot expressed concerns with the mentorship idea. He was not "against" it, but wanted more discussion and some "convincing".
Now I'm going to list the three points that Thomas made, as well as some of the conversation that came after each of these points in the email thread.
(1) There are two types of Ambassadors -- the already-active Ambassadors around the world who don't need any mentorship, and the Ambassadors who do need mentorship and guidance.
I don't feel like an old ambassador but some might classify as such and I still feel like I could use mentoring. We can all benefit from the wisdom of Max and others who understand our community far deeper than we do.
David Nalley responded to this point by saying that some of the older Ambassadors didn't have anything like a mentor and had to figure out and build the current structure by trial and error. Now that we have a chance to be more efficient with training and mentorship, shouldn't we take that opportunity?
David said that he'd categorize Ambassadors instead as "those who take ownership of something" and "those who don't know that they *can* take ownership of something", and that we want to move people from the second group into the first group.
He also went on to say (and I'm adding in a bit of my own thoughts here also) that one of the goals of the Ambassadors project needs to be ensuring that new Ambassadors realize quickly that they play a crucial role in Fedora, and that they have tremendous power to represent Fedora, and that it is also very important that Ambassadors understand and believe in the main principles of Fedora -- the four foundations, for example, and what they mean.
And this is exactly the sort of thing I really want the sponsor to "sign off on" when recommending a new ambassador to the group.
(2) We don't need mentorship until the growth of Ambassadors slows down.
Max's note #4: I think the rate at which we are getting new Ambassadors clearly demonstrates that mentorship is needed now, because QUALITY is far more important than QUANTITY. I don't want to be signing up new Ambassadors if only 1 in 10 is developing into true stars and leaders in the Ambassadors community.
(3) Adding in mentorship and sponsorship suggests that we don't believe people can reach the same level of success as some of the older Ambassadors without help, and that is disappointing.
Max's note #5: Personally, I disagree with this. The ability to have a mentor or a sponsor (who serves as a mentor) is a luxury, not a sign of lack-of-confidence.
As David Nalley said: "The Ambassadors are representatives of the Fedora Project; They are the spokespeople and the public face for Fedora. What concerns me is that we essentially have these representatives that may know precious little about Fedora and free software, and the penchant for misrepresenting is high. I personally like our low barrier to entry. At the same time I think that it is incumbent upon us (FAmSCo) to provide the background education to the uninitiated if we are serious about our responsibilities the Ambassadors project and plant to continue having a low barrier to entry.
I could not agree with this statement more. I think this is really the key to making sure we have quality ambassadors in the future.
As has been noted previously in this email, the Package Maintainers team provides an excellent example of this, as does the Art team.
The Art team does a stupendous job of reinforcing core values in their contributor base.
===
Joerg Simon responded with an email promoting the virtues of mentoring, with specific examples from his own time in Fedora, both the people who helped to mentor him (Chitlesh & Gerold) as well as the people who he has helped to mentor (Mirlan & Thibault). "Trust and Mentoring is the Key!", says Joerg, and I agree with him.
David Nalley notes that we don't want to devalue what it means to be a Fedora Ambassador by not having enough structure. Max adds that it is not simply enough to say "I think Fedora is great!" but rather that Ambassadors serve a specific, and crucial role in our community. We give our Ambassadors tremendous amounts of freedom and trust to be the public face of Fedora, and therefore there is a requirement to provide some level of "quality control" and oversight.
In short, Fedora Ambassadors is not a social club.
===
A specific proposed action by Joerg is to clean up the FAS group for Fedora Ambassadors.
David Nalley agreed, saying:
"This is an ideal time to do so - with the recent password reset I'd guess that 30% or more of the people in the Ambassador fas group have their fas account inactive due to failing to change their password. I'd argue that we should give them 30 days (~April 6th iirc) and if their account is still inactive in FAS we should jettison them. They clearly aren't active if they haven't had to use their fedora account (or missing the fedora email addy) over a period of 30 days. That's a better indication IMO than any 'I'm here' message."
Susmit and Francesco both gave a +1 to this, as did Rodrigo, who went a step further and said that in LATAM, he plans to have a personal conversation with all people who want to be Ambassadors.
The only thing that continues to bother me about this is the nagging feeling that we are changing the rules on ambassadors without giving them reasonable warning. Some people probably very seldom log into FAS and figure they will change it when they next have a reason to login. Even I had no idea that by not changing it (I did change it but probably read the warnings with about the same level of care as most people) my account would be flagged as inactive.
===
A specific proposal for a FAmSCo vote was suggested by David:
""That FAmSCo direct the Ambassador Membership Service to request from Infrastructure a list of all users who are Ambassadors and whose account has remained inactive for a period of greater than 30 days after a password reset, and further that FAmSCo direct the Membership Service to purge said users from the Ambassadors list"
Fedora Infrastructure ran a query for us, which showed that of the 772 Ambassadors in FAS, 300 were inactive based on the statement above.
Max's note #6: For me, this sets off major alarm bells, and goes back to the idea of quantity versus quality. The Ambassadors numbers grow, but they are inflated because most of the people are joining the group because they want to basically join the Fedora Fan Club, and this is the closest thing that we have to that, but the purpose of Ambassadors is not to be a Fan Club.
Thomas Canniot agreed that this set off alarm bells for him to, and conceded that some cleanup of the FAS group is clearly necessary. Susmit notes that a mixture of automated and manual cleanup processes would be the best, to prevent false positives or other mistakes that could lead to hurting the feelings of an important community member.
Joerg states that he is in favor of cleaning up inactive accounts, and coupling that with a higher barrier to entry for the Ambassadors project. David agrees, and wonders why we are taking so long to make what seems like an obviously right decision.
Francesco notes that a decision is made, but that another opportunity for full discussion among Ambassadors is required, which is what this email that I have been writing attempts to lay out and summarize.
Wasn't this voted on and settled today?
===
David Nalley notes that Fedora Infrastructure might already be planning some sort of action for people whose accounts remain inactive past a password reset, because there is a potential security issue for having dormant accounts, with various permissions, just sitting around. Perhaps our problem of inactivity will be solved by a larger problem of inactivity across Fedora that needs to be addressed.
Max's note #7: Solving the inactivity problem and the mentorship problem are two different things!!!
===
Max's note #8: It seems to me that the actions on the table for FAmSCo to ultimately deal with are:
(1) Dealing with inactive accounts, either within our sub-project itself or within the whole of Fedora Infrastructure.
(2) Reforming our barriers-to-entry and sponsorship process to remove time limits, but to require specific actions and a show of progress.
(3) Putting together a mentorship/sponsorship system similar to that of Package Maintainers.
Thanks again for this great summary Max. And thanks to everyone on FAmSCo who takes the time to read and consider the ideas that percolate up from the community.
John
Inline reply follows
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 10:47 PM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 4:18 AM, Max Spevack mspevack@redhat.com wrote:
Hi all,
I warn you in advance that this is a very long email.
There's been a discussion on famsco-list for the last week and a half now, and I volunteered to try to summarize some of that conversation, so that we could move it to fedora-ambassadors-list.
Wow! This took some serious effort Max and I really appreciate it. Helping the ambassador community understand the work that FAmSCo is undertaking and giving us the opportunity to contribute to the end result is really a great thing for the community.
My response might be longer than yours so please bear with me. All comments below are intended to just let you know the way I'm thinking about these issues. I don't expect you to adopt them, just give them some consideration and make your best decision after suffering through what you are about to suffer through. :).
Hi John - I appreciate the thoughtful responses.
Due to the length of your responses I printed them out, read through them a few times, and marked up my copies.
The main topics of the discussion center around these three points:
- Purging of inactive Ambassadors
- Mentoring
- Raising the standard for membership
===
The thread was started by David Nalley, and his initial email brought up the following:
The "probation" idea for Fedora Ambassadors is flawed, and can be improved. Improving it will help raise the overall quality and effectiveness of Fedora Ambassadors. In particular, David advocated for the following:
- Fixed term for probation should go away, and be replaced with a specific
set of tasks that need to be achieved.
- If someone makes no progress in X amount of time, we purge them from the
system. If they are making progress, then give as much time as is needed.
- New Ambassadors should immediately be given a mentor -- a specific name
of an Ambassador in their region.
To help you understand my thoughts on all this I'd like to begin by describing the roles of mentor and sponsor as I'll be using them since I don't think everyone agrees on what these roles are currently. Oh, heck, let's just visit a dictionary for this.
Excellent idea - does us no good if we have a discussion but don't have a common reference.
Mentor: (1) A wise and trusted counselor or teacher.
Sponsor: (1) One who assumes responsibility for another person or a group during a period of instruction, apprenticeship, or probation. (2) One who vouches for the suitability of a candidate for admission.
Given these common definitions, I think in the early stages of membership we want to pair up in some fashion a new ambassador (or a new candidate to become an ambassador) with a sponsor. The role of the sponsor would be to help guide the candidate through the process and in my opinion should culminate in the sponsor recommending the candidate for admission to the group. There should be some at least loosely defined criteria for anyone recommended by a sponsor that should include basic grokking of free software and the philosophy of Fedora. This doesn't need to be a high bar but just some minimal understanding of key issues demonstrated by the candidate.
So my concern here is the shear number of applicants and thus workload. Unfortunately due to some of the privacy concerns, people outside of FAmSCo don't see the volumes of people we already reject. based on their failure to follow directions and complete things like User:foo pages. I don't have exact numbers though I am sure Joerg could provide them, but my feeling is that for every approved Ambassador there are four applicants. Immediately funneling them to a sponsor will rapidly overload our sponsors I fear.
kital has been performing the guidance function for all new ambassadors and we should relieve him of some of that burden.
Once admitted to the group as an ambassador we should help the new ambassador find a mentor for longer term, deeper help. This often might end up being the same person as the sponsor if they hit it off well. But it could be anyone the ambassador trusts and is comfortable working with who can volunteer the time to help this ambassador. I'm not sure all sponsors would be able to provide deep mentoring to everyone they sponsor. That is asking a lot I think.
- Current restrictions on getting resources as an Ambassador while on
probation should go away, and be replaced with "at your mentor's discretion".
Max's note #1: This begins to lay out what looks like a more formal sponsorship process for Ambassadors, which is similar to the sort of thing that happens in the Fedora Package Maintainers community.
Max's note #2: As Fedora Ambassadors continues to grow, a sponsorship process becomes more and more critical, and Package Maintainers has set a good example and precedent.
I agree with this and think we should bite the bullet and just set up a sponsorship system now.
Just to ensure that we are all on the same page. The packaging sponsorship process often takes months, esp for a newcomer who doesn't know the people involved. Not saying that this is a bad thing, but it's a marked difference from where we are today, and want to make sure that people understand some of the shift we are talking about.
===
Francesco Ugolini commented that we want to continue to ensure that resources are managed regionally (which is consistent with David's proposal), and that one important task will be to ensure that *whatever* the requirements are on new people who want to join Ambassadors, it be as clear, and as internationalized, as possible.
Max's note #3: In Ambassadors in particular, it's important for us to try to simplify and clarify policy as much as possible. The number of languages on our list and in our sub-project is very large, even compared to other parts of Fedora (perhaps with the exception of Localization).
===
Thomas Canniot expressed concerns with the mentorship idea. He was not "against" it, but wanted more discussion and some "convincing".
Now I'm going to list the three points that Thomas made, as well as some of the conversation that came after each of these points in the email thread.
(1) There are two types of Ambassadors -- the already-active Ambassadors around the world who don't need any mentorship, and the Ambassadors who do need mentorship and guidance.
I don't feel like an old ambassador but some might classify as such and I still feel like I could use mentoring. We can all benefit from the wisdom of Max and others who understand our community far deeper than we do.
David Nalley responded to this point by saying that some of the older Ambassadors didn't have anything like a mentor and had to figure out and build the current structure by trial and error. Now that we have a chance to be more efficient with training and mentorship, shouldn't we take that opportunity?
David said that he'd categorize Ambassadors instead as "those who take ownership of something" and "those who don't know that they *can* take ownership of something", and that we want to move people from the second group into the first group.
He also went on to say (and I'm adding in a bit of my own thoughts here also) that one of the goals of the Ambassadors project needs to be ensuring that new Ambassadors realize quickly that they play a crucial role in Fedora, and that they have tremendous power to represent Fedora, and that it is also very important that Ambassadors understand and believe in the main principles of Fedora -- the four foundations, for example, and what they mean.
And this is exactly the sort of thing I really want the sponsor to "sign off on" when recommending a new ambassador to the group.
(2) We don't need mentorship until the growth of Ambassadors slows down.
Max's note #4: I think the rate at which we are getting new Ambassadors clearly demonstrates that mentorship is needed now, because QUALITY is far more important than QUANTITY. I don't want to be signing up new Ambassadors if only 1 in 10 is developing into true stars and leaders in the Ambassadors community.
(3) Adding in mentorship and sponsorship suggests that we don't believe people can reach the same level of success as some of the older Ambassadors without help, and that is disappointing.
Max's note #5: Personally, I disagree with this. The ability to have a mentor or a sponsor (who serves as a mentor) is a luxury, not a sign of lack-of-confidence.
As David Nalley said: "The Ambassadors are representatives of the Fedora Project; They are the spokespeople and the public face for Fedora. What concerns me is that we essentially have these representatives that may know precious little about Fedora and free software, and the penchant for misrepresenting is high. I personally like our low barrier to entry. At the same time I think that it is incumbent upon us (FAmSCo) to provide the background education to the uninitiated if we are serious about our responsibilities the Ambassadors project and plant to continue having a low barrier to entry.
I could not agree with this statement more. I think this is really the key to making sure we have quality ambassadors in the future.
As has been noted previously in this email, the Package Maintainers team provides an excellent example of this, as does the Art team.
The Art team does a stupendous job of reinforcing core values in their contributor base.
===
Joerg Simon responded with an email promoting the virtues of mentoring, with specific examples from his own time in Fedora, both the people who helped to mentor him (Chitlesh & Gerold) as well as the people who he has helped to mentor (Mirlan & Thibault). "Trust and Mentoring is the Key!", says Joerg, and I agree with him.
David Nalley notes that we don't want to devalue what it means to be a Fedora Ambassador by not having enough structure. Max adds that it is not simply enough to say "I think Fedora is great!" but rather that Ambassadors serve a specific, and crucial role in our community. We give our Ambassadors tremendous amounts of freedom and trust to be the public face of Fedora, and therefore there is a requirement to provide some level of "quality control" and oversight.
In short, Fedora Ambassadors is not a social club.
===
A specific proposed action by Joerg is to clean up the FAS group for Fedora Ambassadors.
David Nalley agreed, saying:
"This is an ideal time to do so - with the recent password reset I'd guess that 30% or more of the people in the Ambassador fas group have their fas account inactive due to failing to change their password. I'd argue that we should give them 30 days (~April 6th iirc) and if their account is still inactive in FAS we should jettison them. They clearly aren't active if they haven't had to use their fedora account (or missing the fedora email addy) over a period of 30 days. That's a better indication IMO than any 'I'm here' message."
Susmit and Francesco both gave a +1 to this, as did Rodrigo, who went a step further and said that in LATAM, he plans to have a personal conversation with all people who want to be Ambassadors.
The only thing that continues to bother me about this is the nagging feeling that we are changing the rules on ambassadors without giving them reasonable warning. Some people probably very seldom log into FAS and figure they will change it when they next have a reason to login. Even I had no idea that by not changing it (I did change it but probably read the warnings with about the same level of care as most people) my account would be flagged as inactive.
===
A specific proposal for a FAmSCo vote was suggested by David:
""That FAmSCo direct the Ambassador Membership Service to request from Infrastructure a list of all users who are Ambassadors and whose account has remained inactive for a period of greater than 30 days after a password reset, and further that FAmSCo direct the Membership Service to purge said users from the Ambassadors list"
Fedora Infrastructure ran a query for us, which showed that of the 772 Ambassadors in FAS, 300 were inactive based on the statement above.
Max's note #6: For me, this sets off major alarm bells, and goes back to the idea of quantity versus quality. The Ambassadors numbers grow, but they are inflated because most of the people are joining the group because they want to basically join the Fedora Fan Club, and this is the closest thing that we have to that, but the purpose of Ambassadors is not to be a Fan Club.
Thomas Canniot agreed that this set off alarm bells for him to, and conceded that some cleanup of the FAS group is clearly necessary. Susmit notes that a mixture of automated and manual cleanup processes would be the best, to prevent false positives or other mistakes that could lead to hurting the feelings of an important community member.
Joerg states that he is in favor of cleaning up inactive accounts, and coupling that with a higher barrier to entry for the Ambassadors project. David agrees, and wonders why we are taking so long to make what seems like an obviously right decision.
Francesco notes that a decision is made, but that another opportunity for full discussion among Ambassadors is required, which is what this email that I have been writing attempts to lay out and summarize.
Wasn't this voted on and settled today?
===
David Nalley notes that Fedora Infrastructure might already be planning some sort of action for people whose accounts remain inactive past a password reset, because there is a potential security issue for having dormant accounts, with various permissions, just sitting around. Perhaps our problem of inactivity will be solved by a larger problem of inactivity across Fedora that needs to be addressed.
Max's note #7: Solving the inactivity problem and the mentorship problem are two different things!!!
===
Max's note #8: It seems to me that the actions on the table for FAmSCo to ultimately deal with are:
(1) Dealing with inactive accounts, either within our sub-project itself or within the whole of Fedora Infrastructure.
(2) Reforming our barriers-to-entry and sponsorship process to remove time limits, but to require specific actions and a show of progress.
(3) Putting together a mentorship/sponsorship system similar to that of Package Maintainers.
Thanks again for this great summary Max. And thanks to everyone on FAmSCo who takes the time to read and consider the ideas that percolate up from the community.
John
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