Understanding the definitions and expectations of our membership processes

[Jorge O. Castro]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 2:01 PM, Michael Bienia <michael at bienia.de> wrote:
> This leads to the next question: how much do you trust the person
> writing the endorsement?

I  would think that most people who are entrusted with membership
understand the responsibilities involved when writing an endorsement
based on their area of responsibility. When I write endorsements I
specifically don't endorse based on areas I'm not familiar with, I
usually fill in the community-contributed work the person has done.
This helps "round out" the person's application. I suspect the
membership councils take this into account given their specific area;
I would expect my endorsement of someone's technical work for core-dev
would be out of character and questioned, for example.

> Of course I trust endorsements from long-standing dev members with a
> great reputation where I trust their ability to judge the packaging
> skills and trustworthiness of the applicant. But should I apply the same
> trust to e.g. a dev member who got accepted himself a month ago?

This is also why having multiple endorsements is a good idea. If
someone was just started excessively writing +1's (or -1's) then the
community would quickly recognize that and adjust accordingly. We have
multiple people writing endorsements, so I don't think this is really
an issue. From my observations people who attain membership in a
certain team are more keen to get the work done that previously
required more work (yay!) than they are to start writing endorsements.
I also think that by the time someone is ready to apply that it's the
applicant seeking out endorsements, I don't suspect that new members
are trudging through applications just to write endorsements.

> In most cases all I've got are a couple lines in a endorsement from
> persons I've worked with to different degrees and who have a different
> amount of reputation. As I've never met anyone from the dev community in
> person till now, it makes it harder to build up a trust relationship to
> them.

Yeah this can be tricky but in the end it's a judgement call. I've
endorsed people I've never met personally based on not only my
experience with them but also how they interact with their peers. I
try not to look /too/ much into it, ideally the person's work stands
on its own.