2010/12/14 María Leandro <tatica(a)fedoraproject.org>
Hello.
Several times we repeat ourselves "we must encourage people to join our
comunity" and also things like "we accept everyone, so everyone can be an
Ambassador" but I consider this a lie to them and to us.
I don't think this is quite true. If we, as Ambassadors, find people are
interested in promoting or helping Fedora, we encourage -- or should
encourage -- them to join us. Secondly, we don't accept everyone nor should
we accept everyone -- we reject a significant amount of applicants in NA
alone because, for some reason, they are in the determination of the mentor
not a good fit for the project.
Not everyone can be an ambassador, and this are some of the points I
have
consider to think like that:
we often receive request of applicants for the ambassadors team of users
that:
1.- Have never contribute to the project
2.- Have never been at any FOSS activity
3.- Have been rejected of X communities with a not-good record
This is really a separate issue. Many people who want to join are new to
Linux/FOSS and may not have contributed to a project before, or may not live
near an event or activity they can get to. This has to be handled on a
case-by-case basis, and the level of participation depends on what an
Ambassador can do
More times than not, people use the Ambassador program as a stepping stone
to go into other areas of the Fedora Project.
But we also have to face that, those who get the "Ambassadors
title" often:
1.- Dissapear without say anything
2.- Dissapear without help our community
3.- Claim to be "Fedora workers"
4.- Dissapear but keep using the @fedoraproject.org
So, Do we really have an obligation to accept everyone?
No, and in my opinion and experience, it has never been the case that we
have "an obligation to accept everyone."
if not... Should we keep telling people that we will accept everyone
to be
Ambassador if we will/won't do it?
We don't, and we shouldn't tell them -- this is where the candidate/mentor
relationship comes in. A mentor can tell whether someone will be a good,
average or bad ambassador, and we don't approve the bad ones. Sometimes, the
mentor gets duped -- and in this case there's nothing that can be done
unless the new ambassador does something the mentor deems against the rules
and the ambassador is expelled.
I think that the Ambassadors admission process need some rules besides the
one that has (without be too excesive) to make a filter that can help
us,
Mentor, to provide a better guidance to those contributors that really
deserve and want to be Fedora Ambassadors. So, I will write some few ideas
and if you guys/girls are interested on give some feedback would be nice.
(If you don't and the topic die here don't feel bad :) )
1.- Applicants must help to one of our 6 top teams [1]
2.- Applicants must help their local community, in case his/her city
doesn't have a local community, she/he should try to build it.
3.- Applicants should at least attend to one FOSS event per year. (right
now in all the country there are events, so this is not so crazy at all)
4.- Applicants should at least organize or help to organize a FOSS event.
This is an interesting list and I have no objection to any of them, although
if you have an ambassador in a country where there is no FOSS event, or no
FOSS event in their region (I'm specifically thinking Africa here), I think
number 3 is asking much for some who may want to promote Fedora/Linux/FOSS
but is not able to travel to an event. What I do want to say is that nearly
all ambassadors promote Fedora, Linux and FOSS at their own comfort level
and very few, if any, join with malicious intent.
Larry Cafiero