Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[hasufell]

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On 06/16/2013 11:21 PM, Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> (Please reply on the gentoo-project list, I have set the Reply-To
> header for this mail appropriately).
>
> === TL;DR: - Does GLEP39 still serve all the needs of Gentoo?
> Devrel useful? - How to improve ourselves as a distribution
> (technical) and as people (personal interactions)? - Would EVERY
> developer please start acting professionally in all fora? ===
>


Please keep in mind that these are just raw ideas.


- - all? no.
A tiny idea to improve the council just came to my mind: 1-2
representatives of the user community should be voted in. IMO there
are a enough well known personalities in #gentoo, #gentoo-chat, from
the forums or elsewhere.
Also: those guys are not already involved in gentoo development and
(warning: assumption) might have more time to spend on their council duty.
Maybe developers joining the council should even (partly) step back
from their regular ebuild maintenance work, so they have more time for
council work, interacting with user community, dev community, the
whole community and even other communities and come up with some ideas
every few months to be voted on by _us_.

What this is about is actually shifting the duties of the council from
a decision making to a more idea shaping, representative and
arbitrating duty. It should be the first contact point of
inter-projects problems, track opinions and trends in the community,
give recommendations and maybe even advertise gentoo in some
non-intrusive way, in interviews whatever.

We can establish direct democracy very easily through technology via
scripts on woodpecker, a new public mailing list (read only for
non-devs) and a time frame of 4 weeks to vote on a subject for example.

Devrel in it's current form is useless. They should just be
butt-kickers and do that not just on request, but because they listen
to the stuff that happens. And do that consequently. No matter if it's
short- or longterm intervention.

Trolls are still condoned on our mailing lists, even if they are known
for that behavior for years. That conflicts even with our current CoC.
But no one does anything about that.

Devrel should be elected like the council is, not just by a handful of
devs.

However, putting distro-wide decisions in the hands of a few is just
random.

- - Sometimes I think less personal interactions could help in some
situations (I do NOT mean ignoring people when they address you about
a problem). That's part of being professional imo. In other cases we
just need stricter butt-kicking.
On the technical level... well, if the council role is redefined like
I explained above, then we have some people more explicitly working on
improving the very concept of gentoo in general, how we are perceived
by other user communities and so on. Recruiting is still a big issue.
And as I explained in numerous other threads... I was unable to
convince any1 in real life to even TRY gentoo, although I got lots of
arguments. Our documentation is great, but not consistent.
Anyway, our image is not that good and the situation on the ML does
not improve it.
But... being polite does not help, being professional and awesome does.

- - There is always someone silly, trolling or whatever now and then.
The problem is, when it's regular behavior for that person. But people
seem to accommodate to that, especially when those people are
technically adept.
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