Request for MOTU Council to consider Marco Rodrigues (Kmos) not potentially suitable for MOTU

[Scott Kitterman]

On Tuesday 11 December 2007 07:19, Marco Rodrigues wrote:
> Jordan Mantha wrote:
> > [CCing Kmos so he has a chance to respond]
> >
> > On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 02:32 -0500, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> >> This has been a difficult mail to try and write.  I've struggled with it
> >> for a long time and not come up with a completely satisfactory way to
> >> deal with this issue.
> >
> > Thanks for bringing this up for consideration of the MOTU Council. I
> > think an open and honest dialog is much more useful in solving the
> > problem than IRC rants (even justified ones) and festering attitudes.
>
> I agree!
>
> >> I've decided to just go ahead and send this as good as I can make it
> >> right now because we are getting close to Debian Import Freeze and the
> >> potential for him to be disruptive to the MOTU work flow is about to go
> >> up again.
> >>
> >> This is an excerpt from a discussion explaining what is the trouble that
> >> happened recently on #ubuntu-motu.  Link to the full log is below.
> >>
> >> <Hobbsee>  Kmos is probably the most disruptive motu-hopeful we've ever
> >> had. <Hobbsee>  he's gone from closing bugs at random, to mass filing
> >> sync requests, to mass filing removal requests, to then making promises
> >> that he has no right to make.
> >> <Hobbsee>  each time, he says he wont do it again, and then finds
> >> something more disruptive to do
> >> <Hobbsee>  he manages to remember information for short periods of time.
> >>  i've had him forget (willfully, or otherwise) information in just under
> >> an hour. He then claims that he was never told the information.
> >> <Hobbsee>  he's also one of the few to have been thrown out of
> >> debian-games too, and attempted to be thrown out of ubuntu.
> >> <Hobbsee>  each time, he appears to have little-to-no consideration of
> >> others, and also likes randomly pinging people so they can action
> >> whatever he wants done - even though it's far from urgent.
> >> <Hobbsee>  yes, he's still around somewhat, but much quieter.
> >> <Hobbsee>  and various people have stepped down from the sponsorship
> >> queue due to him.
> >>
> >> http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2007/11/28/%23ubuntu-motu.txt starting at
> >> [10:51]
> >
> > These are some serious charges indeed, especially concerning continuing
> > incorrect behavior after being told what not to do. Marco, please do
> > respond to these accusations. Do you feel Hobbsee is misrepresenting
> > your work, or is she correct? One of the biggest issues that people are
> > having is that you are doing things on a mass scale before checking with
> > MOTUs to see if what you are doing is correct. Would you be willing to
> > stop doing mass changes and ask for help before making changes to bugs
> > for a while?
>
> Maybe some people consider she's correct about that, but I've another point
> of view.. in that time, I was really newbie at these things about
> bugs/packaging/syncs/merges and I've learned from that as anyone can see
> today, I'm more carefull when reporting something and try to explain why
> things can be dropped, for example at sync requests. I test everything, and
> sometimes I also need to look at the code and check if the modification is
> at upstream, as everyones knows, the changelogs don't have everything.
>
> She's right in some things I've done in the Gutsy development, some syncs I
> think they're good and they aren't and filled a lot of them, I remember 10
> syncs in a day. I think to avoid these type of problems, a person who fills
> requestsyncs or merges, or something related, first need to get a mentor
> and only that mentor can check his bugs, syncs, merges, whatever and only
> comment to the bug report, so he can learn more easily. So everything
> related to motu, he needs to subscribe he's mentor to the bug.
>
> The mentor should be choosen by the mentee (person who wants to become a
> MOTU), because for example, I personally like so much Daniel Holbach
> because of the way he talks to me when I've done something bad, and that
> way I want to learn more and don't do that bad things next time. If he
> talked to me in an arrogant way, I won't learned anything and maybe stopped
> from contributing.

Well Daniel (at least he told me) has asked you in the past to run everything 
by him and I understand you agreed to do it and then did not.  I held off on 
this request for some time due to this understanding, but it seems to have 
been for nothing.  It seems to me that all you are asking for here is 
something you've already been offered and then not followed.

> >> Additionally, I think that frustration with him and the lack of anyone
> >> doing anything about it is the major source of the declining
> >> friendliness of #ubuntu-motu and the MOTU ML in recent months.
> >
> > These seems quite odd to me but I'll take your word for it.
> >
> >> I started going through all the IRC logs and bug filings on Launchpad to
> >> present a detailed accounting of the scale of the negativity caused by
> >> Marco, but it was to depressing.  I'd invite you who are unfamiliar with
> >> his work to grep the online IRC logs and look at his track record on
> >> bugs.  At one point in the Gutsy development cycle it was taking 3 or 4
> >> MOTUs to keep up with undoing the damage this one person was doing.
> >
> > That's not good at all, we can't and shouldn't have that sort of
> > resource drain. What was done at the time to deal with the issue?
>
> I've done some bad things to bug reports that I thought they're fixed, but
> they're not, and I've been alerted by cjwatson for that, and he fixed my
> problems (thanks). I've caused some problems, but today I'm a member of
> Ubuntu BugSquad, that needs approval of cjwatson, because he's bdmurray
> superior and he won't approve me without talkting first to cjwatson. One
> more time, I've learned from that things and now I help on bug triaging
> everyday. I've waited two or three months to slow down and do things right,
> to after get the bugsquad status.

No.  Please see https://launchpad.net/~bugsquad

It says, "Open Team: Any user can join and no approval is required."

[further comment ommitted due to CoC]

> >> It appears to me that nothing of any significance has changed about the
> >> work that he is doing.  It is overall of negative value and disruptive
> >> to Ubuntu development.  The only change is that he's been less active
> >> lately.  When he's active, things appear to me to be of the same low
> >> quality that we've been seeing for months.
> >>
> >> This is an unprecendented request, but this is an unprecendently
> >> distruptive 'contributor'.  Before making this request, I consulted with
> >> Jono as the Ubuntu community leader to determine the appropriate forum
> >> to resolve our concerns.  He told me that MOTU Council should evaluate
> >> this for Ubuntu (I had thought it would be the Community Council, but he
> >> said MOTU Council had the authority to decide this).
> >>
> >> This is what I believe is necessary to resolve my concerns:
> >>
> >> 1.  That the MOTU Council make a statement that it does not believe that
> >> in the near term he has the potential to be a MOTU.
> >
> > How is this relevant? What are you wanting to achieve with such a
> > statement? I'm not being critical, just unsure.
> >
> >> 2.  That the MOTU Council make a provision for reconsideration at a
> >> later date so that this is not a permanent decision (my though is if he
> >> can privately convince two MC members he's deserving of another chance
> >> then they can bring it to the community and we can decide).
> >
> > Reconsideration of what? The item below? Besides his LP account he
> > doesn't really have anything relevant but membership in ~ubuntu-bugsquad
> > and ~ubuntu-bugcontrol.
> >
> >> 3.  That the MC ask for all of his Ubuntu related Launchpad priviledges
> >> be revoked (he is involved in at least one other project that uses LP,
> >> so it's more complicated than just suspending his accoung).
> >
> > I'm fairly sure this is impossible to do in Launchpad. You can't prevent
> > somebody with a Launchpad account from filing bugs and doing quite a bit
> > of the bug work Kmos has been doing. Removing his ~ubuntu-bugcontrol
> > membership would be the closest.
>
> I think this is not the way, I talked to Jono in that time to solve some
> issues, I tried to ask things but are rarelly someone answer me and
> continue to talk in the channel, but that's not important, they don't need
> to help anyone as an obligation. A person who wants to continue to mass
> flood the launchpad, can create another account.. that's not the way and
> because we can have others things, like I've project "ustouch".

Right.  This is why I asked for just the Ubuntu pieces of LP to be restricted.  
It's not an Ubuntu issue for other projects.  You could create another 
account, but if you're banned, all we need to do is identify that you're 
working around the ban and get the account deleted.  

> >> 4.  That the MC tell him he is invited to read the MOTU mailing list and
> >> the IRC channel so that he can continue to attempt to learn, but that he
> >> is not to give advice/answers or disrupt the activities of developers
> >> (asking the channel generically for an answer wouldn't count, but
> >> bothering specific developers would).  That the MC authorize IRC
> >> operators and mailing list admins to enforce this if he does not
> >> restrain himself.
> >
> > This makes sense but I'm afraid it could be too subjective. Some people
> > will have a much different threshold of what's disruptive. The number of
> > people having to "police" in this scheme is fairly large.
>
> I've asked sometimes seb128, pitti, and riddel about sync bugs, but not
> now.. I just wait for them to get in the archive and for each archive admin
> day.

Well I found it in the IRC logs where you were cautioned about Debian Import 
Freeze and not filing mass sync bugs before even the first wave of bugs.

> > Overall, I think we need to hear from Marcos. I want to know what he's
> > willing to do in order to cause minimal disruption. Is he willing to not
> > mass file bugs and ask before closing bugs? If he is then I think we can
> > work with that. If he is not or is not able to do that then I think we
> > have no alternative but to do something drastic which may take some work
> > from Launchpad administrators.
>
> I've been doing that, and re-think about the things I'm doing. That's
> really from my past of newbie.

You've agreed to do these things in the past and then not followed what you 
said you would do.

> > In all cases we need to resolve this quickly. This has been going on for
> > months and is doing neither Marcos nor Ubuntu any good by dragging it
> > around.
>
> I hope this will be solved this time, I really don't like to have problems
> with anyone and we've already our life problems to take care, we're here to
> participate in a community to give us and others our work and get Ubuntu
> better every day.
>
> > -Jordan
>
> I wish I've done so much bad things to learn from that. People are
> different, and can take much more time to learn than others. The procedure
> I talked about in this mail to next future MOTU's he's the best of to avoid
> problems with a lot of MOTU's. Only our mentor can be in our head to
> improve, and only approve things when they're 100% :-) Probably he can
> consult another MOTU if more experience in some area, but only him comments
> mentee's bugs/things.

I think what I proposed gives you an appropriate opportunity to observe and 
learn so that maybe in the future things can be different.

Scott K