Developments on Ubuntu Governance

[Aveem Ashfaq]

Dear people of the community,

Firstly, a question. Are these mails archived manually because I was trying
to find the thread for the conversation at the time of writing and I did
not find Elizabeth's mail in the archive. The mail I did not find at the
time of writing is below.

Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 13:29:53 -0800

> From: "Elizabeth K. Joseph" <lyz at ubuntu.com>
> To: ubuntu-community-team <ubuntu-community-team at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Subject: Re: Developments on the Ubuntu governance
> Message-ID:
>         <CABesOu2S_mXMK-DDNrvFWKWVFzvgtFNeSchgGmYVSOM0YA=
> 2XQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 6:51 PM, Ian Weisser <ian-weisser at ubuntu.com>
> wrote:
> > The problem Aveem's example highlights is not Ubuntu's complexity, it is
> > not developers-don't-pay-attention-to-social-media, it is not
> > documentation. The problem is that we do not engage new participants
> > immediately, mentor them, and train them. We let new participants get
> > frustrated and walk away.
>

That is bang on. I guess this discussion has been completed a few days ago.
I thought that there was a fair bit of conversation and we moved on because
people did not like the direction or were not convinced. There is a big
misinterpretation going on by me and the new people entering the mailing
list (i guess i am the only newbie at the moment). There should be a
mechanism to set expiry to the conversation so that people who propose do
not just assume that people walked away and move on. Or, use google plus
because this is just confusing.



> > This is extracted from an old leader planning checklist I dug out from
> > perhaps 20 years ago when I was volunteering in an entirely different
> > field:
> >
> >   - When a new volunteer appears, who greets them?
> >   - Who mentors them to explain the organization, and to match their
> > skills and expectations with your needs?
> >   - Who shows them how to get training, and tracks their training
> > progress?
> >   - Who offers them greater challenges and responsibility as they
> > progress?
> >   - Who periodically mentors them to ensure they are happy with their
> > direction? How often?
> >   - When a volunteer drops away, who notices? How soon? Who contacts
> > them?
> >   - Who does the exit interview to learn the reason for leaving? When?
>
> I think this is a wonderful checklist, but while it's easy to welcome
> someone who walks through the physical door, it's difficult for an
> online project where people frequently silently attempt to join and
> silently leave. If someone views the Documentation wiki, thinks it's
> too complicated and immediately closes their browser, we have no
> record of that and no way to contact them. As a long-time member of
> the project, I thought "the docs are accurate, we give you all the
> steps so you don't need to learn about all these tools, no problem!"
> but in reality based on feedback on this list this week, it's still
> overwhelming and people do believe they need to learn a lot. But we
> simply don't have a feedback mechanism to tell us these things so I
> had no idea.
>
> You will notice that as soon as the Documentation topic came up here,
> two of us were eager to jump in and welcome them, that's pretty common
> for the Docs team these days, if people come to talk to us, but they
> often don't.


I am here to give you a feedback. I voiced my opinion in UOS-1411 and I got
is a new work item for me by Daniel Holbach. The discussion about this is
here.

http://aveemashfaq.blogspot.in/2014/11/my-design-ubuntu-community-website.html


> The "exit interview" idea is also great for real life
> interactions, but in our community people sometimes just leave, they
> don't tell us they're leaving, they just disappear and though many of
> us do have a habit of following-up with folks who drop off, it's most
> commonly personal/work life issues that have come up and they don't
> wish to talk about it (if I get a reply from them at all).
>

>From my perspective, there are two reasons for that. Firstly, they come
here to show off so that Canonical can recruit them and then leave for
getting no job offer or they get frustrated.

Or secondly, they get frustrated because of your assumptions that
everything is simple. Let me explain. After UOS-1411 and my involvement
which is explained here

http://aveemashfaq.blogspot.in/2014/11/bridging-gaps-in-ubuntu-user-base.html

 I started writing a blog post, making mockups, learning new things about
Ubuntu and made several posts. And I get a few replies and then people are
discussing about a new topic. How am I supposed to know whether people are
with me or against me. Is there a voting system where people exercise their
votes so that people like me know things for sure. I do not even know if
are ignoring this post and moving on. How am I supposed to know whether
this discussion is going on. So, at that stage, people just quit to never
come back again.


>
> I'd be happy to hear any thoughts on how to translate these things for
> an online community.
>
> Some of these tips do apply, like taking a more proactive approach to
> training, mentoring and checking in with contributors, but that all
> takes volunteer power that we're sorely lacking in many of the
> community-driven projects. It would be great to see this as more of a
> priority in many teams, but it's a long road and I'm not sure how to
> promote that when our current volunteers are already overwhelmed with
> the straight workload and aren't particularly talented at
> mentoring/training/etc. The Beginners Team was mentioned elsewhere in
> this thread, but even that languished due to lack of volunteers who
> were keen on mentoring and had a firm enough grasp on the material to
> be a mentor.
>

In the work culture of Ubuntu where everything runs in a workcycle,  it is
hard to formulate a plan where teams like beginner's teams run forever.
And, even if we put them alive, there is always the daunting question. No
new feature has been added, everything is the same. So, what is the motive
of this team etc.

I guess the solution is my post above.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-community-team/2014-November/000154.html


-- 
Aveem Ashfaq
B.Tech, Mechanical Engineering,
NIT, Nagpur.
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