New roles in the Ubuntu IRC team

[Chris Oattes]

On 28 Oct 2011, at 14:55, Juha Siltala <juha at siltala.net> wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 16:41, Chris Oattes <mailinglist at cjo20.net> wrote:
>> 
>> On 28 Oct 2011, at 14:32, Juha Siltala <topyli at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> 
>>> Sounds like you are advocating *two* IRC Councils instead of one. Are
>>> you quite sure we want this?
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> How on earth do you get from what I said to that?
>> 
>> Its simple. The community makes decisions / does all the jobs you want them to do anyway. The GC team relays these decisions to freenode where appropriate. The conflict resolution team deals only with conflict resolution. I'm not sure how that equates to two IRC councils.
>> 
>> This would be far more open, and easier to trace at what point breakdowns are occurring, rather than somewhere inside the black box that is the IRCC at the moment.
> 
> That's two teams instead of one (which is perfectly capable of doing
> these core duties as it is). I also fail to see what makes your
> proposed system more open than the current one. Conflict resolution
> will never be public, especially when it involves users. freenode
> stuff just isn't very interesting to the team anyway, unless there are
> policy changes on their side, which need to be communicated.
> 

It would be better because the teams would report to the community and driven by their decisions, rather than the community being 'under' the teams. The GC team would literally be an interface to freenode, the community would make a decision and the GCs would act on it if required. If information comes from freenode, they would report it to the community. The GC group would not be responsible for making decisions themselves as GC, only in their capacity as members of the community, the same as everyone else. 

The details of individual cases in conflict resolution would not need to be made public, and I understand the requirement for the details to be kept private, which Is why the conflict resolution team would exist. If policy changes are required, they would report this back to the community as a whole to be implemented. 

By having the community as the central body that the other teams report back to, rather than the community reporting to the teams, it would be far more obvious to everyone involved what is going on and where tasks are getting stalled. Items couldn't disappear in to the black hole that is the IRCC because everyone would be able to see who has what task, be able to question them directly and do something to take it over if something stops progressing. It also reduces on reliance on a specific few people within the community. As it is now, if one person on the IRCC is away for a long time, then two members of the council can hold up and essentially dismiss an issue, no matter how much of the community disagrees. When the entire community is involved, this isn't an issue. 

Chris (Seeker`)