Wiki Team Launchpad permissions (was Re: Proposal: Create product for each derivative's documentation)

[Matthew East]

Hi,

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 12:18 AM, Connor Imes <rocket2dmn at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> That's fine by me, I am just trying to avoid being vague.  I share
> Emma's concern with phrases like "a number" being a bit ambiguous.
> Maybe we should just avoid addressing the issue of patch quantity
> altogether as part of the "requirements" (or whatever you want to call
> them).  This might approached with something like
>    * "contributed patches that demonstrate a good and clear writing
> style to the satisfaction of the reviewer."

Well, that's even vaguer than saying "a number". :)

But vague is good, in this instance. It's because we can easily get
applicants who need a bit more guidance about style, and therefore go
through a few patches before we are happy to grant them unrestricted
access; or applicants who demonstrate it in a single awe-inspiring
patch, or applicants who have already demonstrated it through
contributions on the wiki and just need to show us that they are
familiar with bzr and Launchpad, and so on. As Nathan said, it's just
like asking how many packages you need to prepare before you are ready
to become an MOTU: it's different in *every* case. Where something is
different in every case, finding a common denominator becomes a bit of
a waste of time, and you end up having more exceptions to the rule
than followers.

I genuinely think that introducing the page will grant a lot more
clarity to our processes than currently exists, and that keeping the
number of patches needed open is a more honest reflection of what we
actually do.

I've reworked the page a bit, so it's ready for any other comments:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam/Organisation

I'm grateful that no one has yet pointed out that the name of the page
doesn't comply with the style guide, *cough*. I'll rename it before it
is finalized.

One issue that hasn't been discussed to date is duration of membership.

I think that in order to maintain a healthy ubuntu-doc-contributors
team, we should have an expiry from the team of 6 months, with the
ability for the member to auto-renew when the membership expires. That
way, if they are still interested in contributing, they can renew, and
if not, we get a more or less up to date view of who is interested. I
think joining the ubuntu-core-doc or ubuntu-doc-wiki-admin team will
demonstrate some continuity so the duration of that membership could
be something like 2 years, again auto-renewable. Currently members of
ubuntu-core-doc don't expire, but I think that a long-ish duration is
quite healthy just so that members no longer interested in
contributing can gracefully allow their membership to lapse.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF