SEC=UNCLASSIFIED - RE: Community Council meeting 6 dec 2005

[Stoffers, Robert LAC]

On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 08:53 +1000, Stoffers, Robert LAC wrote:
> > 
> > > It is clear that the CC has little knowledge of how the forums work and
> > > that this needs to change.
> > 
> > That certainly is part of th problem. Another part is that some people,
> > who may or may not be Forum admins, seem to think that the CoC does
> > not apply to them.
> 
> >Some extremely good progress is being made on this issue, in fact it
> >seems to me that a CC meeting is unlikely to be necessary to resolve it.
> >
> >http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=100069
> 
> 
> I like the proposal of a "resolution centre" in the first instance then escalated to the CC if needed. It is also a good thing to see that deleting posts will be frond upon, but is there a link to the forum guidelines? I think a link to the guidelines needs to be placed in the top or bottom banner so it is easily accessible for all, but other then that I am happy with this outcome. I hope they choose to base the new guidelines off the Ubuntu CoC and use the CoC as a fall back in the wording of them.
> 
> I still maintain my position that the forum administrators need to be an official team, and that at least the core people responsible for the forums need to have at least signed the CoC. I would also like to see the forums moved to an open source solution (but I understand the difficulties in doing such a thing), and I would like to see forums.ubuntu.com pointing to the forums.

>Some of it has been done for ages: there is a link at the top of the forums to the
guidelines (just look at the page dude!), 

Oops, sorry missed it!


> and the forum administrators
are all Ubuntu members, and have therefore signed the Code of Conduct.
> The code has been reflected in the forum guidelines for users and staff
for some time.
> The tricky part is getting everyone to comply with it: some of the ideas
on that thread should go a long way to ensuring that, in my opinion.

Ok good, but they are still not an official team which I think needs to change. Also, getting people to comply with anything is always tricky (heck even in the military people still don't comply with things), but as long as the administrators act professionally then there won't be a problem. What has been happening is the opposite of this, where some administrators have been abusing their power as has been pointed out. I'm happy to wait and see how this all goes, the ideas are good however I fear that some of the administrators may eventually go back to their old ways.

I also think that it is a poor excuse (or as us Aussies say "cop out") that the forum administrators are "only human and are unpaid volunteers". The majority of the open source community is exactly that yet most of us do not act in this way, and we expect others to do the same. Perhaps what is happening is that some of these administrators are suffering from "support burn-out" and they need to be released from their duties of an admin for a period of time to allow them to recover. 

Rob

rob1 AT ubuntu.com



Robert Stoffers
LAC
IT OPS
CSI-NQ
(07)477 18646