Goodbye Cody Somerville

[Anthony Yarusso]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Corey Burger wrote:
> keeping cody cc-ed so he knows what is going on.
>
> On 1/24/07, Dennis Kaarsemaker <dennis at kaarsemaker.net> wrote:
>> On wo, 2007-01-24 at 23:03 -0800, Corey Burger wrote:
>>
>>> It is very clear to me that his punishment was because he took things
>>> to the Community Council, not for any other offence.
>> That most definitely is not true. The false accusations were merely the
>> proverbial straw that broke the camels back.
>
> Regardless if they were false or not, at the point he raised the issue
> with the CC it became partly their issue, unless they choose to kick
> it back down. Punishing Cody after he complained, looks like, in my
> opinion, punishment for complaining to the CC. I cannot tell you how
> bad that looks, regardless of the merit of his complaints.
>
>> Rest assured that noone will be punished for raising issues with the CC.
>> This would have happened real soon anyway. I've been waiting for weeks
>> in the hope that his behaviour would improve. Apparently that's not
>> going to happen.
>>
>> This decision is not a rushed one, I've been thinking about it for
>> weeks...
>> --
>> Dennis K.
>
> Regardless if you have been thinking about it for weeks, don't we have
> an IRC council for this? Wherein yourself, Dennis, and Cody could
> plead their case and we could hear the evidence? Quick actions only
> inflame the issue, as has happened here. In addition, the action by a
> single person, especially yourself, looks like the "retribution" cody
> was so concerned about in his email to the CC. In retrospect
> (hindsight being 20/20), somebody else should have done the actual
> removing of Cody as then it would not have looked like (regardless of
> what it actually was), a personal dispute between Dennis and Cody.
>
> One of the issues that we need to bring before the CC is how ops are
> made and unmade. I thought there was an IRC Council now, who has the
> power to do this (barring exceptional circumstances). If there isn't,
> I think we need one, as any decisions about op/de-oping people must be
> made by consensus or we will end up here again.
>
> Corey
>
I'm essentially inclined to say "yeah, what Corey said", for the record.

Meanwhile, I think there's a broader thing happening here, which is
painful, but good.  Along with Ubuntu's growing popularity, and
subsequently the growing size of this team (including myself, still a
quite recent addition relatively speaking), this team is transforming
from a fairly informal collection of users to a more organized sort of
operation, which of course has growing pains, but oh well.  Anyway,
the main point I'd like to make with that is that there are some
processes which we are beginning to see the need for which I think
would be helpful.  I don't want anyone to confuse this with overly
formulaic things for everything (which I don't find helpful), but
merely the following:

1. Yes, I think we should have an IRC Council.  This has been decided
already, but is still working on really becoming the reality.  Getting
the rest of that setup (member election, scheduling policy, etc.)
worked out should be a high priority right now.  We also should have
and make use of the Community Council where appropriate.

2. Corey mentioned meetings.  I think our last (first?) meeting was
very productive and nice, and would like to see more of those.  We
discussed scheduling largely on a basis of necessity previously, and
I'm fine with that in principle.  However, my personal preference is
for regular meetings (of any sort of team/organization), even if
there's not much to say.  In some of the other organizations I've been
involved with, we often had a monthly meeting that consisted largely
of everyone shows up, says where they are on the latest thing they've
been working on, notes that it's on target with no problems, someone
asks if there are new issues followed by some silence, and then we
have snacks.  Awesome.  I think that sort of thing helps connect
people, makes everyone comfortable that they do have an outlet to ask
for help if needed, and occasionally someone remembers a point in a
meeting that is fairly minor, so might not have been brought up in
order to have a meeting about, but is useful to discuss.  This could
also be done with a monthly post to this list saying "Hey - how are
y'all?"  and grabbing a few !botsnacks.

I hope we can continue to use the slew of issues that have cropped up
since my joining the team to grow as a team, rather than only become
upset and breed further issues.  I thought what happened last time in
our meeting did that surprisingly well, and walked away pleased.  I
look forward to seeing more of that sort of intelligent, fair, and
open dialogue in the future so that we can best continue to make this
particular form of contribution to Ubuntu.

I volunteer to bring the e-snacks to the meeting on Tuesday, although
I won't be there until about a half hour in most likely.  :)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFFuHAG6iO+5ByUi/QRAgDrAJwNC/4MoXJJQqVrdVgEL36bes+f3ACfZc+G
e6FEdg2Ni2mq+kZiPgAc2v4=
=qcaL
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----