Introducing SILO to the Fedora Board

[Dave Riches]

On 06/01/2011 11:08 AM, Matt Clark wrote:
> Hello folks,
>
> I have been authorized to speak on behalf of Slackhappy International 
> Linux Organization (SILO) to explain a little about what we do and why 
> we're here.  I was bouncing around the various fedora-related channels 
> and it's been suggested to me that this would be the best place to get 
> a constructive discussion going about some plans SILO has in the works.
>
> We do have a website, www.slackhappy.org <http://www.slackhappy.org>, 
> but more directly, SILO is an organization dedicated to improving the 
> state of support in the various FOSS communities with a focus on 
> administrative behavior.  We believe that the profile for the general 
> linux user has changed over the last few years and that so must the 
> tools used to provide support to them.
>
> In short, what we're creating is a common 3rd party to act as a 
> mediator between the user and operators in IRC support channels, forum 
> administrators, and any other medium that users receive linux or FOSS 
> support.
Am I correct in thinking you want the Fedora Project to publicly endorse 
SILO, or just the channel operators?
>
> We do this for free.
When did this change? The other day on #fedora-ops you asked for us to 
solicit your organisation which received donations. When I asked where 
my donation would get spent, it turned out if you received enough it 
would be paid to the "reps"
>
> The ultimate goal is to give users a place to go to when they feel 
> that an operator is abusive and that no one is addressing the issue. 
>  I think we've all caught an operator on a bad day (or caught a bad 
> operator on a good day) and there's nothing more frustrating or 
> degrading to a project's image than the kinds of things that happen in 
> those situations.  I see it as a 'win-win' for everyone that it's 
> addressed.
Not really, I see this as an unqualified "mediation" service which 
addresses a non-issue. During my contribution to the project as an 
operator on #fedora, I am yet to see an issue (including your own) that 
was not resolved by the irc-support-sig...If it ain't broke, don't fix it?
>
> Since it was decided to take on this task, the most difficult part has 
> been finding out what we as an organization need to do to be able to 
> work closely with operators and users in a community so that we can do 
> what we set out to do.
So far, you actually managed to alienate a large proportion of #fedora 
channel operators by threatening them publicly and giving 
unsubstantiated report statistics for bad practise despite numerous 
requests to provide the information so we can act on it. I'm not sure 
how effective a mediation service that doesn't share its complains/logs 
would be in the real world as resolving issues.
>  In order for this to work we would need policies that are universally 
> easy for operators in those channels to work with, and for users to 
> remedy situations where they feel like they've been treated unfairly.
the irc-support-sig works hard to put policies and 
standard-operating-procedures in place, and publicly available. Perhaps 
you could take a look at https://fedorahosted.org/irc-support-sig/
>  While we're user-oriented, it's also important to work with the 
> administrators of the projects we try to help if we would expect any 
> cooperative efforts.
>
> Currently, we're paying alot of attention to #fedora on the freenode 
> network
possibly a side issue, but you have also obtained ##fedora for your own 
purposes?
> where some ongoing problems seem to need addressed.
I don't see any ongoing, un-addressed issues, perhaps you could point me 
to them/provide reports/logs?
>  I think this is the perfect opportunity to start figuring out how 
> SILO will work.
I'm personally not interested in anyone else's business opportunities 
apart from my own, Fedora for me is about freedom, and I love 
contributing to fedora in as many ways as I can..I for one won't 
contribute to someone else's seemingly commercial project.
>  What kind of policies or arrangements would we need to have banned 
> users in fedora irc channels be referred to our channel, and what kind 
> of policies or arrangements would we need to have to get operators in 
> freenode projects to work with our staff to mediate problems?
Again, I think this is a non-issue, as we already have a solution that 
works...when a user has an issue that cannot be addressed by the support 
sig, CWG or board..I would perhaps then consider your proposals
>
> I'm aware that there is an IRC sig, and I was referred here by several 
> when this was discussed.  I have quite a few ideas about 
> implementation of all of this but I didn't want to flood our 
> introduction with information.
>
> Thanks for your time, and I look forward to working with/for you,
No worries!, and although you won't be working with me personally, I 
wish you all the best with your venture :-)
>
> Matt Clark
> Slackhappy International Linux Organization
> www.slackhappy.org <http://www.slackhappy.org>

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