[fedora-india] Ambassadors in India

[Ankur Sinha]

On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 09:09 +0530, Ashwin wrote:
> On 05/10/2010 09:31 PM, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> > A. Mani wrote:
> > 
> >> It seems very few of the new applicants from India were really interested.
> > 
> >> Should we try to broaden the scope of the program?
> > 
> > I don't see how you are judging the interest level?  The reports don't attempt to show that.  In India,  ambassador requests are processed via 
> > http://fedorahosted.org/fedora-india.  As I already indicated,  we have streamlined the process and assigned mentors to prospective ambassadors.  We get a  number of them. 
> > If you want to process the requests faster, it would require more ambassadors to perform the role of a mentor.  It would also require people to followup on their requests. 
> > 
> 
> Please come out of this self-denial mode.
> 
> Please appreciate, people here are putting in genuine feedback as what
> they see and understand.
> 
> with Regards,
> ASHWIN

hey,

I'll try and explain it from another point of view. 

Volunteering means taking responsibility. I'm sure you'll agree with
that. Now, if you volunteer as an Ambassador, who are:

> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors#Who_are_we.3F

and go inactive, you're not taking care of your responsibilities. This
is what is termed as an "inactive" Ambassador. No one is asking you to
share your life's status with the public or blog about it. We're asking
you to send us an email or let the community know when you're not going
to be around so that your responsibilities can be shared among those who
*are* available. 

You also don't have a clear understanding of the word "accountability". 

Accountability is not related to jobs/cash/incentives/returns. 

When you sign up for a project (voluntarily), you agree to take certain
responsibilities, i.e, you agree to share the total task burden that the
community has to do. In other words, you agree to provide a certain
amount of input to the community. The summation of all these individual
inputs , with some help from a *hand full* of red hat employees is what
has enabled the Fedora community to reach F 13 with such high standards
and success rates. 

Now, if I agree to take certain responsibility and go inactive, and lets
assume I ignore the need to write the community an email or blog "I
won't be around for 2 weeks". How is the community going to know that
I'm not around? At the end of two weeks? You see, the task that you were
to carry out goes delayed by two weeks. A project cannot function with
slips and delays of this nature. 

This is where accountability comes in. You have taken the responsibility
of completing a task. It is your responsibility to see that the task is
completed on time. Therefore, you have also taken up the responsibility
of informing the community when you can't contribute (even for 2 weeks)
so that someone else can take the task up and complete it on time. 
Therefore, *you* are accountable to the community. They have the right
to ask you "Whats the status of this task you had taken up?". It is not
judging. If one has taken up a task and is not working on it, one's
motivations are weak. If one's motivations are strong and one still
can't work, it's one's personal problem which should not affect the
working of the community.

In case of Ambassadors, there isn't a time limit. However, it's more
important as an Ambassador that one's there when someone tries to locate
him/her. She/He is the face of Fedora. If they doesn't respond, the
message that goes across is that Fedora didn't respond. The easier it is
for someone new to get in touch with the community, the better it is. If
a new person has to mail 5 different people because the first 4 failed
to respond, they lose interest. 

The Ambassadors' list is a place where we collect the active ambassadors
together so someone looking to get in touch with the Fedora community
can contact them. Therefore, the housekeeping and removal or inactive
ambassadors. 

Another thing that you must understand is that the mentors etc. have
been chosen fundamentally by the members of the community. You didn't
get to poll over it directly does not mean that "it was some
autocratic decision taken against the popular opinion." All the fedora
boards etc. are by the people, for the people , of the people of the
community. If you don't like the way a person in a board functions, you
vote another in the next election. Long threads like this don't help.
You voted for them knowing they are more capable than you are. If you
don't think that they are, please stand up in the next election yourself
and try to get elected. If people agree with your take, you will get
votes. 

Certain sections of the community has been structured and divided
according to people's experience and capabilities to handle different
tasks. These are the leaders that the community chose. These are the
tasks that the community chose that these leaders should carry out. Let
the concerned folks do their jobs. 

I'll repeat:

> > Lets not waste time on discussing this topic. The concerned people will
> > handle it in a way they seem fit.

I hope this lengthy explanation did some good. Since I see no
constructive input to the community being made by this thread, I will
not respond anymore. I see it as a waste of the community's resources
and everyone's time which could be put to much better use.

regards,
Ankur