Talk:Task:Community Council

Community Council

Mmm... It is probably benefitial for the maemo community and for the dialog with Nokia to have some structure. We are doing effective steps towards this: some people get admin rights, some people might become QA evaluators in the extras repositories, some people receive are more visible and push for certain things in a structured way... However, also with my community shirt I think that 10 days of brainstorm is not enough to define a proposal, and probably 100 days are not enough to implement it either. So, what about 100 Days for the community to discuss and agree on the way to be formally structured?--qgil 08:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Possibly true - however I'd want to avoid us getting into too long talking about a process which can be enhanced/refined at a later date, and get some of the structure in-place sooner. Perfectly happy to go with the consensus on this (since it's necessary for it to work ;-)) --jaffa 10:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Alright, you have the (obvious) pre-agreement on my side. Please discuss and once there is an agreed idea create page accordingly and move this content there. Thanks! --qgil 20:41, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

It's a good idea but I think it too early to do this. I suggest to do this after the 100 days when all maemo is well defined and everyone's on the same page with what maemo is and what's its direction. --Reggie 14:07, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps. But there's always something round the corner: it's like buying a computer (or gadget ;-)): if you wait, there's always something better. --jaffa 16:18, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Having a focusing agent like the council is more important now than in 100 days after everything has settled and there's nothing to do anymore. —GeneralAntilles 20:44, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

My point here is, Nokia hasn't officially announced anything yet with regards to all the plans suggested. I heard Ari and the maemo.org team are officially announcing something at the Maemo Summit 2008. If the decision is 100% (or a good percentage) community run, then it's all good. There are lots to do after the 100 Days - mainly implement, prioritize, and streamline the plans, and keep things organized, as what is defined in the 'Roles of the council' below. --Reggie 13:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Nokia aren't 'supposed' to be announcing anything official with regards to all the plans suggested: this is a community action plan, and has very little to do with Nokia (albeit lots to do with qgil's role of community manager). Unless Nokia are going to fundamentally change the purpose of maemo (and maemo.org), there will still be times when they ask for the "community"'s input. And for that we need a way of the community speaking with one voice. --jaffa 13:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Agree on the community voice. I would still like to hear qgil's thoughts on this though, mainly on how much say/control Nokia will have, and/or if the community can override Nokia. Maybe Nokia will just be in the sidelines and watch maemo.org takes its course. --Reggie 14:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Nokia likes the idea of maemo.org being really a community driven site, moving the official content and software releases to Forum Nokia or somewhere else under the nokia.com domain and control. Having a growing and engaged community willing to assume more responsibilities and power is part of the common success. In this sense the community council is helpful if it's representative and backed by the community. Note the difference between maemo.org activities and the planning, development and release of the official maemo software. There Nokia keeps the same control as now. The structured community might have more influence, power to lobby and to organize alternative maemo variants at their will, though. Personally I have no problems about starting this task now. My only personal concern as community member is to go so fast that the community doesn't follow and then we have a not-really representative council, unable to canalize the hundred voices and becoming at the end one source of feedback more to deal with. This risk is probably the same now and in 100 days, though. If you take a 'release soon & often' approach open to iterations until consolidating the model, then starting soon shouldn't be a problem per se.--qgil 19:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Monthly IRC meetings

We already have #maemo-meeting for IRC-discussion with Quim, should the Council IRC meetings be something separate and additional to that, or integrated with the #maemo-meetings? —GeneralAntilles 03:06, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Integrated, IMHO --dneary 13:00, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, perhaps the council members would be the only ones allowed to interact, and any questions would be sent via then --lardman 12:40, 13th June 2008 (GMT+1)

Or maybe just act as the moderators who give voice to others. Otherwise there is a big burden on any council member to fairly represent/ask on behalf of people, and if they cannot live to up that people will get disillusioned, and you will probably see participation wane, except for those people with the contacts to get their voice heard. My 2 cents --trickie 12:27, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Moderation was discussed after the last #maemo-meeting and I was very against it. So, here's the proposal:

New Proposal

#maemo-meeting IRC meetings will be held monthly as usual. Since the community issues likely to come up during these meetings are going to be issues the council will be working on, anyway, the council's job should be to help the community develop an agenda each month (to be done in the wiki) and help to the agenda during the meeting.

Agenda

The council should serve only to help direct the organization of the topic and agenda for #maemo-meetings and to assist in keeping the meetings on-track.

• An agenda for the next month will be set up on the wiki after the end up of the current month's meeting.
  • A topic will be decided upon within one week of the opening of next month's agenda
  • The agenda for the next meeting will be finalized at least a week in advance of the next meeting (which gives time for Quim to prepare for the topic and possibly bring guests appropriate to it).
• The council should make attendees aware of both the meeting and the topic and agenda for the next meeting.

Meeting management

Any attendee should be allowed to talk during the meeting, but attendees are asked to keep questions on-topic and stick to the agenda. Any chatter during the meeting should be held in #maemo and kept out of #maemo-meeting.

• The room will be set moderated.
• Council members, Quim and any guests, and X-Fade (others?) will be granted operator status for each meeting.
• Meeting attendees will all be granted voice by default on joining (this may actually be more difficult than it previously was with Freenode's new services—will have to test this one)
  • Attendees all have the right to speak by default (voice), but they can lose this right for the duration of the meeting after 3 warnings (de-voiced).
  • Warnings will be issued by those with operator status for asking off-topic questions or participating in chatter in #maemo-meeting instead of #maemo, 3 strikes and you're out (well, muted).

This plan should prevent any feelings of disenfranchisement and help keep the discussions on-topic and on-agenda.

Council member karma requirements

The current proposal says 100 karma points. Should this be reduced or this requirement lifted or revised pending improvements to the maemo.org karma system? It currently does not include edits from the new wiki, only includes bugs submitted from bugzilla, etc. —GeneralAntilles 03:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

If that's to be a precondition, then the problems with karma need to be fixed first. Notably: bug #2481 and bug #3240, but really there are a bunch of karma-related problems, if the measure actually becomes important for community participation. Here's a list. --dneary 13:04, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

We should be careful setting arbitrary thresholds. If someone with experience of community work came along and wanted to join, there should be the option somehow, despite the initial lack of karma --lardman 12:42, 13 June 2008

Call it "a clear track record with the community" instead? Or maybe just let the voting take care of it? If a nominee really doesn't have what it takes to be a part of the council, then they wont get elected anyway. —GeneralAntilles 04:35, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

The point of an arbitrary threshold is to stop subjective decisions as to "clear track records" (and who gets to decide?). Also, to be blunt, I wouldn't want to be represented by someone who had no prior contact with maemo.org and - at best - was "just" active on ITT. ITT "thanks" should be included in the karma count, but isn't this supposed to be what karma is for?! An arbitrary limit will mean some people would be excluded, but if they're that eager can't they then do the work to get the karma? The council members have to represent the community - how can they do that if they've not been active in it to date. --jaffa 19:06, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Council voting karma requirements

The karma requirement for voting has the same issues with the current limitations of the karma system. I also am concerned that if the council is going to represent the community, then we shouldn't be setting a high a barrier to voting, otherwise it will only be representing a certain part of the community. Perhaps alternative requirements such as being registered on maemo.org for at least 6 months (for example) could be used in addition to ensure voters have sufficient experience of maemo. --pepitoe 14:07, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

At the moment the proposal says 50 karma points are the minimum for voting for a candidate. I prefer the "usenet style" where everybody (with an valid mail adress and real name) is allow to vote for e.g. a new newsgroup name. It should be a small problem to vote vor 50 maemo.org applications to get enough karma for the vote. I think it should be enough to have a valid maemo.org account. No minimum karma points are needed. Maybe for the council itself but not for the right to vote.

The karma thing could be (not 'is' ) a nice indicator for the number of community activities. And not more... --jukey 14:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I like this plan. So, the maemo.org account must exist for at least 6 months (maybe set something of an amnesty and make it 1 month for the first elections, since I know a lot of people don't yet have maemo.org accounts), exceptions will be made for new accounts less than 6 months old (or 1 month for the first election?) with more than 25 (?) karma points. —GeneralAntilles 04:30, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

For me the proposal "after X month having a maemo account" everybody should be able to vote sounds much better than "after collecting x karma points people are allowed to vote". Because of the 6 month phase between two elections 3 month should be enough. So people have to wait 3 to 9 month to wait for the next election, what seems time enough to me.

But all in all the best way I think would be: Everybody with a maemo account should be able to vote - no minimum for acount-having-time or karma.--jukey 11:09, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

That's a logical OR, so users with young accounts who do participate and contribute can still vote. The idea with these requirements is to avoid having people open fake accounts to skew the votes. While it may seem harsh, I don't think the dubious advantage of letting zero-participation users vote outweighs this. Besides, it's not difficult to get together 25 karma points. --GeneralAntilles 14:41, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Good points. Have we got the account age information, though? (Certainly not in any current UI, IIRC - will have to ask X-Fade or ferenc or someone if it's in the DB). This is related to the minimum-karma points required for nominees: we don't need minimum-karma thresholds for nominees if the community can be "trusted" to vote "sensibly" (IYSWIM). However, how can the community as a whole trust it's voice if there's no minimum threshold for the "quality" of the people voting. One of the aims of the council is to streamline and co-ordinate the community's response when Nokia want to know "what the community thinks", a lot of that is representing all of the people who are currently contributing and marshalling that response. Obviously, a wider aim is to increase participance and represent the people who are currently unheard; but I think these aims may have slightly different requirements in terms of council rules. --jaffa 21:58, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

According to http://maemo.org/profile/list/ today there are about 250 users with +50 karma points and around 425 with +25. Getting 25 points is not very difficult: rate some news and apps and after some time you are there. Account age alone doesn't help much avoiding fake accounts, eve if it requires a more patient faker. Accummulate points for several accounts is a more tedious job, though. I think 3 months + 25 points is a reasonable requirement. You don't get rights in most clubs with less than an equivalent to that (and if you do you could quote Groucho Marx on "I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member.") On the other side, having the Council no budget and very relative power at least in the initial elections we can probably relax the terms and tighten only if it's needed.--qgil 19:03, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

X-Fade has confirmed that the midgard database contains account creation date. Do we have a consensus on 25 points + 3 months? It doesn't go *all* the way back, pre-midgard, but since that was more than 3 months ago, it doesn't matter :-) --Jaffa 10:55, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. --dneary 16:17, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

It's okay for me too. --jukey 16:29, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Right, I've edited the original proposal and we should try and get the election on the agenda for Sprint3 --Jaffa 19:33, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Merging with Task:Community Council

Hi, what about mergin this page and Task:Community Council. Until now I'm indetifying as "Task:" those pages to wormk on something, to avoid people getting confused with the Something (if you know what I mean).--qgil 11:21, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Done —GeneralAntilles 11:43, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! (The "Task:" practice wasn't strong enough to avoid the confusion about the logo contest though)  :)

Company affiliation

Now it says: "Nokia employees who reach the minimum karma level are eligible to stand as nominees. However, this should be noted by them when advertising their nomination." I agree, but I think it would be good to make always explicit your affiliation if you are working professionally for any organization with a remote relation to Maemo, software development, etc. This practice has been useful at least in the context of the GNOME Foundation.--qgil 19:15, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, it's not just Nokians who may have a vested interest. I'll update the wording. --Jaffa 19:23, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Included in Sprint2?

Hi, yesterday we forgot about discussing this task. It is clear that is an "accepted" task and therefore should be at least at Maemo.org_backlog. If you want to commit it (or part of) to the current sprint, feel free listing it at 100Days/Sprint2#New_in_this_sprint. All this reminds us that the sprint planning meetings should be open to anybody handling a task ongoing/accepted/proposed. (In fact if we are not many people there is not reason to moderate it at all, but this is another topic)  :) --qgil 12:52, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Answering to myself: it's still in the backlog and hopefully everything will be ready to be part of the Sprint4.--qgil 20:50, 25 July 2008 (UTC)