New roles in the Ubuntu IRC team

[chris at cjo20.net]

It seems that the list of duties is basically a list of things that the
IRCC should be doing themselves already. If they are saying 'we do not
have enough time to be doing the things we should be doing', then there
either needs to be

a) A different set of people on the IRCC
b) More people on the IRCC
or
c) No IRCC.

If you need / want an extra 6 people to actually get the jobs done that
need doing, why make them dependant on the IRCC to rubber stamp / put off
decisions about these areas.

Instead, get rid of the IRCC and make all ops responsible for the
decisions that need to be taken. That way individuals cannot block
progress on specific items (It was, quite frankly, amazing just how many
meetings Jussi couldn't make when there was a topic of discussion on the
agenda which disagreed with his viewpoint, yet "couldn't" be discussed
without him present as he was interested in the matter).

If less experienced ops being heavily involved in making decisions is an
issue, you could mark ops who have been on the team for more than, say, 2
years as 'senior' ops, and require N senior ops to be present at a meeting
for it to be quorate (Where N is chosen based on the number of senior ops,
and the number of ops in total).

AFAICT, the only part of the IRCC's processes that explicitly require
private discussion are the ones involving conflict resolution, in which
case you could form a new team with the sole purpose of carrying out this
task, with the privacy required. All of the other activities that the IRCC
carries out should be done so publicly, with full public access to
discussions.

There doesn't seem to have been much change (if any) in the IRCC since I
stepped down from my op position and that was quite a while ago, and I
don't see how this change will change the attitudes within/about the IRCC.
Perhaps it is time to label the IRCC for what it really is, an ineffective
bureaucratic mess which only seems to add delays to required decisions,
and try to come up with a new solution which actually empowers the IRC
team to make progress rather than hinder it.

Chris (Seeker`)


On Tue, October 25, 2011 13:23, Juha Siltala wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 15:11, Melissa Draper <melissa at meldraweb.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Actually this is not my greatest "fear". My concern is that it's
>> adding another layer of bureaucracy which people will need to
>> navigate.
>>
>> Before:
>>
>> Op has thoughts/concerns -> op raises thoughts/concerns with Entire
>> IRC Team/IRCC.
>>
>> After:
>>
>> Op has thoughts/concerns -> op raises thoughts/concerns with
>> "champion" -> champion essentially decides whether the issue is taken
>> to The Entire Team/IRCC
>
> That would be very inconvenient for sure. But that is not what Jussi
> is suggesting. Ops can of course come and talk to the Council just as
> before. The "champions" would simply be people who keep an extra good
> eye on their area of choice and make sure that things are getting
> done. Nowhere has anybody suggested that they should stand in the way
> of communication between the IRCC and the Team.
>
> --
> Juha Siltala
> http://ubuntu.com
>
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