Re: [gentoo-project] Comrel Improvements: Expectations of Privacy

[Matthew Thode]

On 10/04/2016 08:24 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 1:20 AM, NP-Hardass <NP-Hardass@g.o> wrote:
>> Per the previous statement in this thread about whether reporting is
>> mandatory, is there a way for an individual to ensure that their inquiry
>> to ComRel is being forwarded to the body itself rather than handled and
>> potentially dismissed without official reporting/escalation?  For
>> example, if I message a member of ComRel because I'm having some issue,
>> do I have any guarantee of it reaching ComRel, itself?  Additionally
>> (and probably more critically) is there a way for me to check on the
>> status (both initial and as a case is progressing)?  I would imagine
>> without some feedback mechanism, a person experiencing conflict that
>> warrants ComRel intervention might feel that their situation is being
>> ignored or not handled with an appropriate speed.
>
> I think that this could probably be best handled with better
> documentation/formalization of the engagement model, combined with
> tracking.
>
> My sense is that if you need to engage Comrel you email comrel@ (which
> may not be how they're always engaged).  The question of how Council
> appeals work also came up recently as we haven't had many, and we
> would like to document this as well.
>
> As far as things not falling through the cracks goes, an obvious
> solution is bugzilla.  As soon as any inquiry comes in, create a bug
> to track it.  By all means close it the next day if it needs to be
> dismissed, but this creates some kind of record of the engagement and
> makes it clear that the situation is considered resolved.  My sense is
> that we're not creating bugs until situations become fairly severe,
> which will of course make it easier for things to fall through the
> cracks.
>
> However, as we've seen on numerous other projects, simply creating
> bugs doesn't make things actually happen.  I could easily see this
> turning the Comrel queue into something resembling the amd64 stable
> queue.  It would let people know where their complaints stand, but a
> lot of the minor stuff would probably still end up in limbo.  This is
> just my personal speculation based on what I'm hearing, Comrel could
> probably comment further.
>
> I'm not sure if having people complaining that Comrel is too
> heavy-handed and also having people complain that Comrel isn't doing
> enough means that we're in the Goldilocks zone.  It really seems like
> one of those roles that is both vital and thankless, because people
> are going to want them to take their side, and will naturally be
> disappointed when they don't.  And, when people complain they really
> can't publicly defend themselves because they need to maintain
> privacy, avoid defamation, etc.  Hence I'm trying to frame this
> discussion at a high level in terms of what the policies ought to be.
> Whether Comrel is following policy is a different matter (which I'm
> sure will end up in a thread at some point, but in the end people are
> probably going to have to trust that somebody is doing their job
> right).  The idea of anonymous stats was a good one though.
>

This brings up the subject of auditablility, which I think is a great
idea, but needs to be in another thread (this is about privacy).

-- 
-- Matthew Thode (prometheanfire)