Developments on Ubuntu Governance

Scott Kitterman ubuntu at kitterman.com
Sat Nov 22 18:16:48 UTC 2014


On Saturday, November 22, 2014 07:29:30 PM Aveem Ashfaq wrote:
> Dear people of the community,
> 
> Firstly, a question. Are these mails archived manually because I was trying
> to find the thread for the conversation at the time of writing and I did
> not find Elizabeth's mail in the archive. The mail I did not find at the
> time of writing is below.

As I guess you discovered (based on the link below) it can be found:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-community-team/2014-November/

> Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 13:29:53 -0800
> 
> > From: "Elizabeth K. Joseph" <lyz at ubuntu.com>
> > To: ubuntu-community-team <ubuntu-community-team at lists.ubuntu.com>
> > Subject: Re: Developments on the Ubuntu governance
> > 
> > Message-ID:
> >         <CABesOu2S_mXMK-DDNrvFWKWVFzvgtFNeSchgGmYVSOM0YA=
> > 
> > 2XQ at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> > 
> > On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 6:51 PM, Ian Weisser <ian-weisser at ubuntu.com>
> > 
> > wrote:
> > > The problem Aveem's example highlights is not Ubuntu's complexity, it is
> > > not developers-don't-pay-attention-to-social-media, it is not
> > > documentation. The problem is that we do not engage new participants
> > > immediately, mentor them, and train them. We let new participants get
> > > frustrated and walk away.
> 
> That is bang on. I guess this discussion has been completed a few days ago.
> I thought that there was a fair bit of conversation and we moved on because
> people did not like the direction or were not convinced. There is a big
> misinterpretation going on by me and the new people entering the mailing
> list (i guess i am the only newbie at the moment). There should be a
> mechanism to set expiry to the conversation so that people who propose do
> not just assume that people walked away and move on. Or, use google plus
> because this is just confusing.

I may be wrong, but this suggests to me that you are still thinking you need 
approval/permission before doing stuff.  Governance in Ubuntu is not about 
providing guidance/direction/control.  It's about facilitating/coordinating/ 
assisting.  Assuming the discussion dying out means people think you shouldn't 
do something is backwards.  No one told you to stop, so keep going.

> > > This is extracted from an old leader planning checklist I dug out from
> > > perhaps 20 years ago when I was volunteering in an entirely different
> > > 
> > > field:
> > >   - When a new volunteer appears, who greets them?
> > >   - Who mentors them to explain the organization, and to match their
> > > skills and expectations with your needs?
> > > 
> > >   - Who shows them how to get training, and tracks their training
> > > progress?
> > > 
> > >   - Who offers them greater challenges and responsibility as they
> > > progress?
> > > 
> > >   - Who periodically mentors them to ensure they are happy with their
> > > direction? How often?
> > > 
> > >   - When a volunteer drops away, who notices? How soon? Who contacts
> > > them?
> > > 
> > >   - Who does the exit interview to learn the reason for leaving? When?
> > 
> > I think this is a wonderful checklist, but while it's easy to welcome
> > someone who walks through the physical door, it's difficult for an
> > online project where people frequently silently attempt to join and
> > silently leave. If someone views the Documentation wiki, thinks it's
> > too complicated and immediately closes their browser, we have no
> > record of that and no way to contact them. As a long-time member of
> > the project, I thought "the docs are accurate, we give you all the
> > steps so you don't need to learn about all these tools, no problem!"
> > but in reality based on feedback on this list this week, it's still
> > overwhelming and people do believe they need to learn a lot. But we
> > simply don't have a feedback mechanism to tell us these things so I
> > had no idea.
> > 
> > You will notice that as soon as the Documentation topic came up here,
> > two of us were eager to jump in and welcome them, that's pretty common
> > for the Docs team these days, if people come to talk to us, but they
> > often don't.
> 
> I am here to give you a feedback. I voiced my opinion in UOS-1411 and I got
> is a new work item for me by Daniel Holbach. The discussion about this is
> here.
> 
> http://aveemashfaq.blogspot.in/2014/11/my-design-ubuntu-community-website.ht
> ml

It can be difficult.  In the area of development (which is where most of my time 
is) it's very hard to give most people just a little help so they can be 
productive.  It takes a fair commitment of time that I often don't have.  As a 
result, I tend to be reluctant to offer help because I know I can't really help 
a new person enough.

I'm thrilled when I see other people do it.  I also do it some myself, I'm 
just careful about it due to lack of time.

> > The "exit interview" idea is also great for real life
> > interactions, but in our community people sometimes just leave, they
> > don't tell us they're leaving, they just disappear and though many of
> > us do have a habit of following-up with folks who drop off, it's most
> > commonly personal/work life issues that have come up and they don't
> > wish to talk about it (if I get a reply from them at all).
> 
> From my perspective, there are two reasons for that. Firstly, they come
> here to show off so that Canonical can recruit them and then leave for
> getting no job offer or they get frustrated.
> 
> Or secondly, they get frustrated because of your assumptions that
> everything is simple. Let me explain. After UOS-1411 and my involvement
> which is explained here
> 
> http://aveemashfaq.blogspot.in/2014/11/bridging-gaps-in-ubuntu-user-base.htm
> l
> 
>  I started writing a blog post, making mockups, learning new things about
> Ubuntu and made several posts. And I get a few replies and then people are
> discussing about a new topic. How am I supposed to know whether people are
> with me or against me. Is there a voting system where people exercise their
> votes so that people like me know things for sure. I do not even know if
> are ignoring this post and moving on. How am I supposed to know whether
> this discussion is going on. So, at that stage, people just quit to never
> come back again.

In Ubuntu, except in a few, very narrow cases, we don't vote.  It's up to the 
person doing the work to decide.  Keep going and do your best.

> > I'd be happy to hear any thoughts on how to translate these things for
> > an online community.
> > 
> > Some of these tips do apply, like taking a more proactive approach to
> > training, mentoring and checking in with contributors, but that all
> > takes volunteer power that we're sorely lacking in many of the
> > community-driven projects. It would be great to see this as more of a
> > priority in many teams, but it's a long road and I'm not sure how to
> > promote that when our current volunteers are already overwhelmed with
> > the straight workload and aren't particularly talented at
> > mentoring/training/etc. The Beginners Team was mentioned elsewhere in
> > this thread, but even that languished due to lack of volunteers who
> > were keen on mentoring and had a firm enough grasp on the material to
> > be a mentor.
> 
> In the work culture of Ubuntu where everything runs in a workcycle,  it is
> hard to formulate a plan where teams like beginner's teams run forever.
> And, even if we put them alive, there is always the daunting question. No
> new feature has been added, everything is the same. So, what is the motive
> of this team etc.
> 
> I guess the solution is my post above.
> 
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-community-team/2014-November/000154
> .html

I'd say don't get overwhelmed by the semi-annual development cycle.  At first, 
that seems like a real driver around everything.  Once you've been here for 
awhile (I've been involved in Ubuntu development for almost 7 years), the 
cycles run together and they don't actually even mean that much anymore.  From 
the perspective of a longer view, they are all essentially the same too.

The trick is to figure out what motivates you.  Figure out what motivates other 
people.  Metrics like number of new people trained are interesting for 
managers, but we don't have any of those.  Figure out what will drive you and 
focus on that.

Scott K



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