Factoids, their use and a review

[Alan Bell]

Hi all,

There have been quite a lot of discussions here and on IRC about how the 
channels are being run and various concerns have been raised about how 
we interact with each other and other users. Much of this was stated in 
fairly general terms, but there are a few specific items that have been 
identified. One was the over-use of factoids, particularly the ones 
which are used to tell someone they are doing something wrong. Sometimes 
using the !language command in response to someone being mildly rude is 
seen as not a very human way to deal with the situation, even if it 
saves you a few keystrokes. There are quite a few factoids along these 
lines so we thought it would be a good exercise to collaboratively 
review them, some we might remove if we don't want to use them, some we 
might re-word to alter the tone, others we might decide we really quite 
like and want to keep.

We are gathering an annotated list of the factoids here:

http://pad.ubuntu.com/factoids

All ops should have access to that, all loco team members should have 
access to that, if you somehow still don't then join 
https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-etherpad and I will approve you. You can 
edit the page any way you like, add factoids you would like to discuss, 
insert your comments and suggestions wherever you like, it is like a 
realtime wiki, it saves at every keystroke.

Please also feel free to discuss the factoids and the way that they are 
being used in the #ubuntu-irc channel, this list or any other suitable 
means.

On Wednesday 19th at 18:00 UTC there will be a team meeting (our new 
regular schedule, third Wednesday of the month in #ubuntu-meeting) and 
we will go through the list and make the changes there and then, 
following the general principal of discussing things asynchronously, but 
deciding things at a scheduled meeting.

This isn't "The Problem" that needs solving, it isn't the most important 
issue, it isn't the most pressing concern, but it is probably the most 
well defined issue with nothing blocking us from working together on it, 
so it is a good place to start. The meeting on the 19th would be a great 
opportunity to have a wider discussion on specific activities we could 
do, or changes we could make to the way we operate as a team to address 
some of the concerns that have been raised. We also welcome discussion 
in the #ubuntu-irc channel, there have been suggestions that as a team 
we should be more active in the #ubuntu-irc channel rather than the 
#ubuntu-ops-team channel as many of the conversations in -ops-team would 
benefit from wider participation.

Alan.

-- 
I work at http://libertus.co.uk