[Ambassadors] inactive ambassadors, a proposed solution

[Max Spevack]

The purpose of this email is to try to lay out a roadmap for solving, 
once and for all, the question of inactive Fedora Ambassadors.

GOALS OF IDENTIFYING INACTIVE AMBASSADORS:

(1) Housekeeping.  All projects need to have their membership rosters 
pruned from time to time.  In Ambassadors, this is particularly 
important because non-Fedora people might get in touch with Ambassadors, 
and if they don't receive a response, it looks like Fedora is ignorning 
them.  Other sub-projects for which identifying inactive ambassadors are 
crucial is packaging.  If someone drops off the face of the earth, their 
packages need to be given to a new owner.

Pages that need to a "refresh" policy:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/CountryList <-- I argue that 
CountryList is the wrong name for this page, and it should be called 
Directory.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/MembershipService/Verification

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Count <-- why do we even need 
this page?  Doesn't the CountryList page serve the same purpose?

How often are these pages currently updated?  Is the process manual or 
automated, or a mixture of both?


(2) Give a more prominent location to the "list of ambassadors per 
country".  That page should be the most visited page in all of Fedora 
Ambassadors.  People who are trying to find out about Fedora should be 
visiting it, and Ambassadors who are looking for other Fedora folks near 
them should be visiting it.

We should have something on fedoraproject.org that says "are you 
interested in Fedora?  Find a Fedora Ambassador near you to give you 
some information" and you type in your location, and it spits back a 
list of Ambassadors near you.


(3) In order for any of (2) to be successful, we need to make sure that 
the people who are listed as Ambassadors are actually paying attention 
to the Ambassadors part of Fedora.  If someone is not, it doesn't mean 
that they are a bad person -- it just means that they don't want to have 
to deal with organizing events or asking questions from newbies to the 
project.

I wouldn't be offended if someone removed me from the Fedora 
Infrastructure group in FAS, because *I DON'T DO ANYTHING WITH FEDORA 
INFRASTRUCTURE*.  It doesn't mean I'm a bad person or not a Fedora 
contributor, it just means that I don't participate in that part of 
Fedora.


HOW DO WE IDENTIFY ACTIVE AMBASSADORS?

We come up with a policy that is simple, and fair.

An active ambassador is someone who:

1) Has joined the group in FAS.
2) Reads and/or posts on fedora-ambassadors-list.
3) Has a useful, up-to-date personal page on the Fedora wiki.

And does one or more of:

* Attends or organizes an event once in a release cycle.
* Maintains a blog on Planet Fedora, with about one post per month.
* Participates on fedora-list or fedoraforum.org to help people w/ 
questions.
* Indicates their willingness to mentor and guide new contributors or 
new users.


WHAT DO WE DO WITH INACTIVE AMBASSADORS?

If someone is inactive, we *DO NOT* kick them out of the ambassadors 
group in FAS, and we *DO NOT* remove them from fedora-ambassadors list.

But we should remove them from the "directory of Ambassadors sorted by 
country", which I argue again needs to be much more visible and useful, 
so that those inactive Ambassadors aren't being asked to do 
public-facing things.

When someone re-surfaces or has more time for Ambassadors, we put them 
back on the directory.

==================

Flame me.

--Max