Re: [gentoo-project] Representation of Gentoo on third-party platforms

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 4:56 PM, Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@g.o> wrote:
>
> Since council do not appear to monitor comrel, how does council know
> that they are doing a good job, or indeed that comrel is still active?
>

I'll agree that the current system relies on people who feel that
Comrel isn't doing a good job to appeal their cases to the Council.  I
completely support making changes to have more oversight of what is
going on.

However, it is probably worth noting that in the two cases that seem
to have stirred up the pot, the Council DID exercise direct oversight
on one of them, and in the other the person impacted has stated on the
list that they do not believe that the Council would reverse the
Comrel decisions, though they have not actually appealed.

So, while I think some steps to have a bit more oversight are
warranted, I'm really not expecting it to lead to any drastic
revelations.  It isn't like Comrel is detaining people in Gitmo.  If
there was some trend of inappropriate action I'm pretty sure those
impacted would find a way to make their concerns known.  In the last
month I've also heard expressed a desire both for Comrel to take more
action to enforce the CoC, and for Comrel to take less.  The obvious
pattern seems to be that when somebody is the one action is being
taken against they tend to argue for less, and when somebody feels
that somebody else is bothering them, they tend to call for more.  We
had a recent appeal by somebody who was concerned that Comrel wasn't
doing enough to take action against somebody, and the outcome at that
time was that the Council felt that not enough time had elapsed for
escalation to be warranted.  However, that brings up a fundamental
problem with this sort of function, as with any other part of Gentoo
it is volunteer based, and so people are going to be frustrated when
the process moves slowly.  Certainly we should expect Comrel cases to
be closed in an efficient manner just as we should expect package
stable requests to be handled in an efficient manner, but the
realities of having a volunteer-based system do collide with that.

Personally my sense is that some quick wins that could be taken to
increase Comrel oversight short of any huge structural changes would
be:
1.  Have the Comrel lead approved by Council in the same manner that
QA is, and the ability for Council to appoint interim leads when a
confirmed lead doesn't exist.
2.  Ask Comrel to continue to publish anonymous stats on their
activity level in general.

I'm not suggesting this will fix everything, but it would be a start.

-- 
Rich