community team participation in the ARB

[Jono Bacon]

On 8 February 2012 14:07, Allison Randal <allison at lohutok.net> wrote:
> Dear Community Council,
>
> The Application Review Board is a relatively young team, and has
> recently gone through a substantial change in process when we adopted
> the new developer.ubuntu.com app submission portal. We are a bit behind
> in processing submissions, but we're actively working on catching up.
> And, the rate of new submissions is low enough that once we catch up, we
> anticipate no difficulty keeping on top of it.
>
> Canonical's community team, who we know are only trying to be helpful,
> have been sending us email messages asking for status updates, and with
> various new ideas for how to do things completely differently, on an
> increasingly frequent basis since last October. It's gotten to the point
> that the ARB members are spending all available volunteer time answering
> their messages, rather than actually working on app submissions. Even
> worse, the time demands of their requests have started eating into
> workitems for Precise.
>
> I note that Daniel Holbach was incredibly helpful in recruiting new
> members for the ARB last year, and that David Planella has been very
> helpful in shepherding our feature requests for the submission portal
> website. We greatly appreciate their desire to help, and the
> contributions they've made. It's really only one area of involvement
> that's been problematic.
>
> Or current request is that the Canonical's community team drop
> communication with the ARB on status updates or suggestions for changes
> until the end of February, at which point we will reassess if there is a
> way they can effectively help, instead of disrupting our work. Is this a
> reasonable request? If not, can you offer other suggestions on how to
> resolve this?
>
> This is not a crisis, we're just seeking a channel and a structure for
> Canonical's community team to participate effectively.

I am a little surprised, Allison, that you feel the need to make this
a CC/TB issue. As I mentioned in the thread, we have seen little
output from the ARB in terms of getting apps through the queue and I
am concerned that this is presenting a disappointing experience for
app developers. Getting a handful of apps through the process since
the boards inception a few years ago signals to me that the board has
problems that we need to resolve.

My team is here to help our governance bodies to be successful. I
agree this has meant a lot of process discussion to refine the process
and us asking a lot of tough questions. I have committed my team to
help refine these bits of the process as well as supporting the ARB to
provide visibility on the queue and get things fixed in MyApps to
support the ARB's work.

Our intention is certainly not to force our will on the ARB and I have
already expressed that I am happy to coordinate where appropriate, but
I also feel uncomfortable that you have asked us to "leave the board
alone"; given the challenges, I feel this would leave us reneging in
our responsibilities somewhat.

On IRC today you said that you feel the board just got behind in the
onrush on the queue and just needs to straighten that out and will
then be able to respond to the flow of items coming in in a timely
manner. With respect to the board's wishes, I am going to pull my team
out of ARB until the end of March to provide the breathing space you
desire to clear the queue out and get back on track.

Thanks,

  Jono

-- 
Jono Bacon
Ubuntu Community Manager
www.ubuntu.com / www.jonobacon.org
www.identi.ca/jonobacon www.twitter.com/jonobacon