Gentoo Archives: gentoo-proctors

From: Ferris McCormick <fmccor@g.o>
To: Developer Relations <devrel@g.o>
Cc: Developer Relations <gentoo-devrel@g.o>, gentoo-infra@g.o, gentoo-proctors@g.o, gentoo-qa@g.o, gentoo-userrel@g.o
Subject: [gentoo-proctors] [RFC] Staff (support) projects and IRC channels
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:29:38
Message-Id: 1182436168.8475.48.camel@liasis.inforead.com
1 I am floating this for comment.
2
3 Several Gentoo projects --- the ones CC on this note come to mind ---
4 are pure staff (or support) projects. As members of these projects we
5 do not develop anything; what we provide is support to Gentoo as a whole
6 and to individual developers, users, and projects. To do this
7 effectively, we must be known and visible.
8
9 Recently, however, we ran into a question of whether or not a particular
10 developer was or was not a member of one of these support projects, and
11 resolving this (if it is resolved) was not as easy as you would think.
12
13 Why not? First, it is just a fact of Gentoo that the home pages for our
14 projects are often out of date and thus unreliable indicators of who
15 does what (yes, devrel is guilty of this: slarti --- who is retired ---
16 is listed as a member of devrel). Second, the developer in question was
17 not marked present on the project's channel. Nonetheless, all these
18 projects do have IRC channels and their members are often online.
19
20 Thus, I propose as a devrel policy (and as a suggestion to the other
21 support channels) that (1) if you are a member of devrel, and (2) if you
22 are online in freenode, then (3) you must take the time to /join
23 #gentoo-devrel unless you can articulate a good reason not to.
24
25 Reasoning suggested above, but follows specifically thus:
26 (1) devrel (or whatever) is a support project (like juman resources for
27 Gentoo);
28 (2) You are a member of devrel;
29 (3) The only reason to be a member of devrel is to provide support of
30 some sort;
31 (4) To do this, you most likely have to be visible (there are a couple
32 exceptions, I think);
33 (5) The easiest way to be visible (to others on IRC who need immediate
34 support) is to be marked present on #gentoo-devrel (and marked as an
35 operator).
36 (6) And in the contrapositive, the person seeking support may conclude
37 that if you are not there, then either you are not online or you are not
38 a member of devrel (and so this person need not bother tracking you
39 down).
40
41 I just happen to think it is a reasonable to require that if a developer
42 wishes to be a member of a support group, then that developer should
43 care enough about that group to show up on the group's IRC channel.
44
45 For devrel, at least, I'm proposing it as one of the requirements of
46 membership. Others might have differing opinions; hence the designator
47 RFC.
48
49 As always, comments, criticisms, dissents, flames, etc. requested and
50 welcome.
51
52 Regards,
53 Ferris
54 --
55 Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@g.o>
56 Developer, Gentoo Linux (Devrel, Sparc)

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Re: [gentoo-proctors] [RFC] Staff (support) projects and IRC channels Ranjit Singh <ranjit@×××××××××.com>