Re: Proposal for a team of admins

[Julien Bect]

Le 19/01/2017 à 20:30, Olaf Till a écrit :
> On Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 12:20:14PM +0100, Olaf Till wrote:
> > Given the vote result (scope of OF), and given that so many are
> > willing to help with the whole scope of OF, my taking part in
> > administration would be obsolete, since I would only help with
> > managing the controlled packages, not the external ones.
> Well, I don't quite stand to this anymore, as you see below.
>
> > But how should we proceed now? Should we first fix some list of
> > responsibilities and then choose the respective persons (would be
> > logical, but more tedious)? Or should we choose some persons and leave
> > it to them to define the responsibilities?
> Considering the vote result, and combining the suggestions of Oliver
> (wiki), Carnë, and myself into a short list of 5 'shares' for
> administration, the rough result is here:
>
> 1. organizing election based decisions, anything which is not item
>     1., and decisions on:
>
> -- access issues
>
> -- categorizing packages (accepted/removed to/from controlled
>     'section' of OF? maintained or unmaintained?)
>
> 2. (assistance with) reviewing contributions of new controlled
>     packages,
>
> 3. at least formally reviewing releases of controlled packages
>
> 4. formally reviewing releases of externally hosted packages
>     (licenses, copied repository up-to-date)
>
> 5. website managing, including backups
>
>
> Something of my only partially informed opinion regarding persons (out
> of those who volunteered) is:
>
> share 1.: Julien has shown the most initiative to take it (maybe with
> others, but I'm not so sure anymore that more than 1 person is good)
>
> share 2.: I'd offer my help here (together with others?)
>
> share 5.: Oliver seems very suitable, maybe others want to help (also
> Julien?)
>
> shares 3 and 4?
>
> Thoughts?

First a thought on shares 3 + 4 : I wouldn't treat these two as separate 
tasks.  I believe that both Octave Forge hosted- and externally 
hosted-packages must be judged according to the same set of rules at 
release time.

Another possible "share" would be the coordination of effort towards the 
creation of a database of "fully external" resources, which don't 
necessarily comply with the rules for being distributed as OF packages 
(as proposed in various forms by Carlo, Sebastian, Oliver...).  Even 
though I understand that such a database might become a separate project 
at some point, some initial impulsion would have to be given in the 
context of OF, I think.


Now, I have to clarify my position and opinion in light of the recent 
discussions :

* First, I would like to thank Olaf for his efforts to make some sense 
out of this mess.  It is easy to say that this is "the most inefficient 
discussion ever", but much harder to make it more efficient.

* I have offered (as some point...) to be part of a *team* of admins, 
composed of at least three people, perhaps five, that would handle 
collectively all these tasks (possibly with the help of larger groups of 
people on some specific tasks, if the permission system allows it).  My 
position about this has not changed.

* I have no intention of taking on my own a task such as "share 1" 
above.  I see this "share" as some sort of replacement for the role of 
"benevolent leader", which would have among other things to organize 
discussions on controversial issues and do this "community management" 
that Carnë talked about.  I am not volunteer for that.

* It is not clear to me if this idea of a "team of admins" has any 
chance of happening.  Is there support for it in the OF community ? It's 
not clear to me.  Given the current "decisional model", it seems to me 
that the current leader would either to decide it (he is the leader, 
after all) or to set up some sort of vote for it.

* Given the participation in recent discussions, I would suggest as a 
possible team of five: Olaf Till, Nik Krakauer, Juan Pablo Carbajal, 
Oliver Heimlich and myself.  With Carnë as a "special advisor" for some 
time, since most of the experience and knowledge that he has accumulated 
over the past years is not written anywhere.

* I understand that the people in this proposed team have not been in 
full agreement on all topics in the recent discussions.  But I see this 
as a strength.  Anyway, any one would be free to leave the team if at 
some points his disagreements with the others put him in a position 
where he cannot contribute as he wishes to any longer...

* If a different structure is proposed and adopted (for instance, along 
the line of what Olaf suggests), I will see then how I can contribute.  
Perhaps as part of shares 3+4 and/or share 5.


Sorry for another long email in the "most inefficient discussion ever".

@++
Julien