avoid disappointment, think long-term – let’s not rush to fill all vacancies
it could be practical to have someone who has prior experience with administration of a Discourse instance … but not essential (there’s great support from the Discourse team)
it will be nice to have a group that’s not entirely male
for additional balance and inclusivity, I’d like there to be someone who’s not too entrenched in OSD traditions … someone who will be prepared to kindly but firmly bring an external perspective to staff matters if ever we take too introverted an approach.
We (staff) can keep exclusivity to a minimum by making best use of the private and public lounges:
I’d like there to be someone who’s not too entrenched in OSD traditions
If I understand your fourth point correctly, as an OSD newbie, I do not consider myself at all entrenched in OSD traditions and fit your description reasonably well. Anyway, I suspect there will be enough discussion in the Site Feedback and other channels.
Your criteria are a good start, but the big question for me is how to decide who to nominate.
Privately, some nominations were received. I have invited the nominees, all of whom are aware of the nominations, to gently make their own decisions in the private Lounge. Watch that space
It had been unclear to me (previously), but there is a technical limitation of “5 staff members” which seems to mean “moderators + admins” in total, I think.
While having new people join OSD and participate by “doing” things (such as setting up this forum) is very welcome it also makes me uncomfortable that two admin seats are (currently) being filled by @studiospring and @grahamperrin as both are new to OSD (less than 6 months of activity and have not met any of the core team in real life). I think this “newness” in addition to setting up this “new platform” is leading some of the confusion and misunderstandings of our approach and customs of our existing community and core team members.
I am not “rushing to fill vacancies” @grahamperrin we have existing community and stewards who have helped it grow for 3 years now- these are who we are referring to when we say “core” group. The core generally know each other in real life, we speak at conferences together, we meetup and work on OSD together (see our Twitter header picture).
We are welcoming to anyone to join the community and become part of this core, but this needs to happen slowly over months (or years) and gracefully. I apologize this is not more clear, as we are still in the process of defining what “core” is. For reference please see the existing discussion about this topic.
There is no rushing, we simply need to ensure that this platform follows the values of openness and collaboration we built the Open Source Design community on.
The admin team of this platform of Open Source Design should be filled by people from that core team. They all have a proven track record of being active in this community long-term, and also administrate other platforms like our Github, Twitter and Open Collective.
Other core and long-term members should be elevated to the highest trust level available (4 - leader), as @bnvk already did and stated above.
I value openness more than most people here can imagine.
Openness, in name or in spirit, should not become a license for any individual – or group – to repeatedly, publicly edge a troubled person towards public discussion of a trouble that she or he preferred to be private. That way lies danger; that way may be applauded as “open” but it certainly is not community-spirited.
To put it simply – please do not take this as offense:
If you take issue with discussing in public, then it might be best to refrain from being co-admin of a forum of a group which is all about openness and has acted that way for years.
While it would be cool to have you, we don’t push you to contribute. If we see blockers and discussions which prevent us from going forward, especially in private, we have to resolve it.
@jan you are totally fine that you removed me as an admin. I should have had a “Discourse Staff” label, but that is something I should have checked for, sorry about that. Our admin status should just be for us to provide any support that comes up and we don’t need to be permanent admins, but yes should be different from your core team. You could think about adding a Core team label for your core team members if that would help.
Let’s pick this up again to achieve clarity. We just kind of swept the whole admin question under the rug. However, I think it’s a very important question and since we want to use Discourse as one of our main communications platform it’s even more important.
We have some limitations and crucial information regarding admins:
We can only have 5 since the platform is graciously hosted by Discourse – thanks for that!
Admins can obviously change settings, close topics, change everything about the site …
I would suggest everyone nominates 5 people they absolutely trust to be admins of this forum, based on factors such as time of involvement, having met them in person or having had a call with them, history of good decisions, engagement in the community, organization of events, commitment to openness, etc.
My nominations are:
@evalica - long-term involvement, organization of the FOSDEM Open Source Design room 2017
@simonv3 - long-term involvement, website and overall organization work
@belenbarrospena - long-term involvement, organization of the first two FOSDEM Open Source Design rooms, job board submission form
@jdittrich - organization of the regular Berlin meetup, coordination work
@victoria-bondarchuk - organization of the FOSSASIA Design track, talks at different events
(I only did not nominate @bnvk because he specifically stated he does not want to be very involved in the forum.)
I didn’t know this and it unsettles me quite a bit. Can we add this to the initial introduction topic? Something like “Warning: Discourse allows admin to read all content - including “private messages” - of this forum. This is for abuse prevention and legal reasons. See this thread on the Discourse meta forum for more details. We trust our admin, and they won’t do this unless they absolutely have to, but we thought you should know up front.”
Thanks for bringing this up again @jan, and originally suggesting it @studiospring and @grahamperrin (and leading us here).
My vote goes for:
@evalica (generally organization awesomeness, pro-activeness and know-how) @belenbarrospena (osd know-how and organizational awesomeness) @jan (we wouldn’t be here without Jan) @jdittrich (in person meeting, knows and does great things) @ei8fdb (osd know-how and go-getter)
Thank you @jan for the trust, but I don’t think I’m qualified for such responsibility and to be honest I don’t want to be near any personal messages that are not addressed to me. And what is more important, I have missed most of discussions when Discource was created so I don’t know much of the history.
