[Ambassadors] mentorship, sponsorship, etc.

[David Nalley]

Inline reply follows

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 10:47 PM, inode0 <inode0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 4:18 AM, Max Spevack <mspevack at redhat.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I warn you in advance that this is a very long email.
>>
>> There's been a discussion on famsco-list for the last week and a half now,
>> and I volunteered to try to summarize some of that conversation, so that we
>> could move it to fedora-ambassadors-list.
>
> Wow! This took some serious effort Max and I really appreciate it.
> Helping the ambassador community understand the work that FAmSCo is
> undertaking and giving us the opportunity to contribute to the end
> result is really a great thing for the community.
>
> My response might be longer than yours so please bear with me. All
> comments below are intended to just let you know the way I'm thinking
> about these issues. I don't expect you to adopt them, just give them
> some consideration and make your best decision after suffering through
> what you are about to suffer through. :).

Hi John - I appreciate the thoughtful responses.

Due to the length of your responses I printed them out, read through
them a few times, and marked up my copies.

>
>> The main topics of the discussion center around these three points:
>>
>> * Purging of inactive Ambassadors
>> * Mentoring
>> * Raising the standard for membership
>>
>> ===
>>
>> The thread was started by David Nalley, and his initial email brought up the
>> following:
>>
>> The "probation" idea for Fedora Ambassadors is flawed, and can be improved.
>>  Improving it will help raise the overall quality and effectiveness of
>> Fedora Ambassadors.  In particular, David advocated for the following:
>>
>> 1) Fixed term for probation should go away, and be replaced with a specific
>> set of tasks that need to be achieved.
>>
>> 2) If someone makes no progress in X amount of time, we purge them from the
>> system.  If they are making progress, then give as much time as is needed.
>>
>> 3) New Ambassadors should immediately be given a mentor -- a specific name
>> of an Ambassador in their region.
>
> To help you understand my thoughts on all this I'd like to begin by
> describing the roles of mentor and sponsor as I'll be using them since
> I don't think everyone agrees on what these roles are currently. Oh,
> heck, let's just visit a dictionary for this.

Excellent idea - does us no good if we have a discussion but don't
have a common reference.

>
> Mentor:
> (1) A wise and trusted counselor or teacher.
>
> Sponsor:
> (1) One who assumes responsibility for another person or a group
> during a period of instruction, apprenticeship, or probation.
> (2) One who vouches for the suitability of a candidate for admission.
>
> Given these common definitions, I think in the early stages of
> membership we want to pair up in some fashion a new ambassador (or a
> new candidate to become an ambassador) with a sponsor. The role of the
> sponsor would be to help guide the candidate through the process and
> in my opinion should culminate in the sponsor recommending the
> candidate for admission to the group. There should be some at least
> loosely defined criteria for anyone recommended by a sponsor that
> should include basic grokking of free software and the philosophy of
> Fedora. This doesn't need to be a high bar but just some minimal
> understanding of key issues demonstrated by the candidate.


So my concern here is the shear number of applicants and thus
workload. Unfortunately due to some of the privacy concerns, people
outside of FAmSCo don't see the volumes of people we already reject.
based on their failure to follow directions and complete things like
User:foo pages. I don't have exact numbers though I am sure Joerg
could provide them, but my feeling is that for every approved
Ambassador there are four applicants. Immediately funneling them to a
sponsor will rapidly overload our sponsors I fear.


>
> kital has been performing the guidance function for all new
> ambassadors and we should relieve him of some of that burden.
>
> Once admitted to the group as an ambassador we should help the new
> ambassador find a mentor for longer term, deeper help. This often
> might end up being the same person as the sponsor if they hit it off
> well. But it could be anyone the ambassador trusts and is comfortable
> working with who can volunteer the time to help this ambassador. I'm
> not sure all sponsors would be able to provide deep mentoring to
> everyone they sponsor. That is asking a lot I think.
>
>> 4) Current restrictions on getting resources as an Ambassador while on
>> probation should go away, and be replaced with "at your mentor's
>> discretion".
>>
>> Max's note #1: This begins to lay out what looks like a more formal
>> sponsorship process for Ambassadors, which is similar to the sort of thing
>> that happens in the Fedora Package Maintainers community.
>>
>> Max's note #2: As Fedora Ambassadors continues to grow, a sponsorship
>> process becomes more and more critical, and Package Maintainers has set a
>> good example and precedent.
>
> I agree with this and think we should bite the bullet and just set up
> a sponsorship system now.

Just to ensure that we are all on the same page. The packaging
sponsorship process often takes months, esp for a newcomer who doesn't
know the people involved. Not saying that this is a bad thing, but
it's a marked difference from where we are today, and want to make
sure that people understand some of the shift we are talking about.


>
>> ===
>>
>> Francesco Ugolini commented that we want to continue to ensure that
>> resources are managed regionally (which is consistent with David's
>> proposal), and that one important task will be to ensure that *whatever* the
>> requirements are on new people who want to join Ambassadors, it be as clear,
>> and as internationalized, as possible.
>>
>> Max's note #3: In Ambassadors in particular, it's important for us to try to
>> simplify and clarify policy as much as possible.  The number of languages on
>> our list and in our sub-project is very large, even compared to other parts
>> of Fedora (perhaps with the exception of Localization).
>>
>> ===
>>
>> Thomas Canniot expressed concerns with the mentorship idea.  He was not
>> "against" it, but wanted more discussion and some "convincing".
>>
>> Now I'm going to list the three points that Thomas made, as well as some of
>> the conversation that came after each of these points in the email thread.
>>
>> (1) There are two types of Ambassadors -- the already-active Ambassadors
>> around the world who don't need any mentorship, and the Ambassadors who do
>> need mentorship and guidance.
>
> I don't feel like an old ambassador but some might classify as such
> and I still feel like I could use mentoring. We can all benefit from
> the wisdom of Max and others who understand our community far deeper
> than we do.
>
>> David Nalley responded to this point by saying that some of the older
>> Ambassadors didn't have anything like a mentor and had to figure out and
>> build the current structure by trial and error.  Now that we have a chance
>> to be more efficient with training and mentorship, shouldn't we take that
>> opportunity?
>>
>> David said that he'd categorize Ambassadors instead as "those who take
>> ownership of something" and "those who don't know that they *can* take
>> ownership of something", and that we want to move people from the second
>> group into the first group.
>>
>> He also went on to say (and I'm adding in a bit of my own thoughts here
>> also) that one of the goals of the Ambassadors project needs to be ensuring
>> that new Ambassadors realize quickly that they play a crucial role in
>> Fedora, and that they have tremendous power to represent Fedora, and that it
>> is also very important that Ambassadors understand and believe in the main
>> principles of Fedora -- the four foundations, for example, and what they
>> mean.
>
> And this is exactly the sort of thing I really want the sponsor to
> "sign off on" when recommending a new ambassador to the group.
>
>> (2) We don't need mentorship until the growth of Ambassadors slows down.
>>
>> Max's note #4: I think the rate at which we are getting new Ambassadors
>> clearly demonstrates that mentorship is needed now, because QUALITY is far
>> more important than QUANTITY.  I don't want to be signing up new Ambassadors
>> if only 1 in 10 is developing into true stars and leaders in the Ambassadors
>> community.
>>
>> (3) Adding in mentorship and sponsorship suggests that we don't believe
>> people can reach the same level of success as some of the older Ambassadors
>> without help, and that is disappointing.
>>
>> Max's note #5: Personally, I disagree with this.  The ability to have a
>> mentor or a sponsor (who serves as a mentor) is a luxury, not a sign of
>> lack-of-confidence.
>>
>> As David Nalley said: "The Ambassadors are representatives of the Fedora
>> Project; They are the spokespeople and the public face for Fedora. What
>> concerns me is that we essentially have these representatives that may know
>> precious little about Fedora and free software, and the penchant for
>> misrepresenting is high. I personally like our low barrier to entry. At the
>> same time I think that it is incumbent upon us (FAmSCo) to provide the
>> background education to the uninitiated if we are serious about our
>> responsibilities the Ambassadors project and plant to continue having a low
>> barrier to entry.
>
> I could not agree with this statement more. I think this is really the
> key to making sure we have quality ambassadors in the future.
>
>> As has been noted previously in this email, the Package Maintainers team
>> provides an excellent example of this, as does the Art team.
>
> The Art team does a stupendous job of reinforcing core values in their
> contributor base.
>
>> ===
>>
>> Joerg Simon responded with an email promoting the virtues of mentoring, with
>> specific examples from his own time in Fedora, both the people who helped to
>> mentor him (Chitlesh & Gerold) as well as the people who he has helped to
>> mentor (Mirlan & Thibault).  "Trust and Mentoring is the Key!", says Joerg,
>> and I agree with him.
>>
>> David Nalley notes that we don't want to devalue what it means to be a
>> Fedora Ambassador by not having enough structure.  Max adds that it is not
>> simply enough to say "I think Fedora is great!" but rather that Ambassadors
>> serve a specific, and crucial role in our community.  We give our
>> Ambassadors tremendous amounts of freedom and trust to be the public face of
>> Fedora, and therefore there is a requirement to provide some level of
>> "quality control" and oversight.
>>
>> In short, Fedora Ambassadors is not a social club.
>>
>> ===
>>
>> A specific proposed action by Joerg is to clean up the FAS group for Fedora
>> Ambassadors.
>>
>> David Nalley agreed, saying:
>>
>> "This is an ideal time to do so - with the recent password reset I'd guess
>> that 30% or more of the people in the Ambassador fas group have their fas
>> account inactive due to failing to change their password. I'd argue that we
>> should give them 30 days (~April 6th iirc) and if their account is still
>> inactive in FAS we should jettison them. They clearly aren't active if they
>> haven't had to use their fedora account (or missing the fedora email addy)
>> over a period of 30 days. That's a better indication IMO than any 'I'm here'
>> message."
>>
>> Susmit and Francesco both gave a +1 to this, as did Rodrigo, who went a step
>> further and said that in LATAM, he plans to have a personal conversation
>> with all people who want to be Ambassadors.
>
> The only thing that continues to bother me about this is the nagging
> feeling that we are changing the rules on ambassadors without giving
> them reasonable warning. Some people probably very seldom log into FAS
> and figure they will change it when they next have a reason to login.
> Even I had no idea that by not changing it (I did change it but
> probably read the warnings with about the same level of care as most
> people) my account would be flagged as inactive.
>
>> ===
>>
>> A specific proposal for a FAmSCo vote was suggested by David:
>>
>> ""That FAmSCo direct the Ambassador Membership Service to request from
>> Infrastructure a list of all users who are Ambassadors and whose account has
>> remained inactive for a period of greater than 30 days after a password
>> reset, and further that FAmSCo direct the Membership Service to purge said
>> users from the Ambassadors list"
>>
>> Fedora Infrastructure ran a query for us, which showed that of the 772
>> Ambassadors in FAS, 300 were inactive based on the statement above.
>>
>> Max's note #6: For me, this sets off major alarm bells, and goes back to the
>> idea of quantity versus quality.  The Ambassadors numbers grow, but they are
>> inflated because most of the people are joining the group because they want
>> to basically join the Fedora Fan Club, and this is the closest thing that we
>> have to that, but the purpose of Ambassadors is not to be a Fan Club.
>>
>> Thomas Canniot agreed that this set off alarm bells for him to, and conceded
>> that some cleanup of the FAS group is clearly necessary. Susmit notes that a
>> mixture of automated and manual cleanup processes would be the best, to
>> prevent false positives or other mistakes that could lead to hurting the
>> feelings of an important community member.
>>
>> Joerg states that he is in favor of cleaning up inactive accounts, and
>> coupling that with a higher barrier to entry for the Ambassadors project.
>>  David agrees, and wonders why we are taking so long to make what seems like
>> an obviously right decision.
>>
>> Francesco notes that a decision is made, but that another opportunity for
>> full discussion among Ambassadors is required, which is what this email that
>> I have been writing attempts to lay out and summarize.
>
> Wasn't this voted on and settled today?
>
>> ===
>>
>> David Nalley notes that Fedora Infrastructure might already be planning some
>> sort of action for people whose accounts remain inactive past a password
>> reset, because there is a potential security issue for having dormant
>> accounts, with various permissions, just sitting around. Perhaps our problem
>> of inactivity will be solved by a larger problem of inactivity across Fedora
>> that needs to be addressed.
>>
>> Max's note #7: Solving the inactivity problem and the mentorship problem are
>> two different things!!!
>>
>> ===
>>
>> Max's note #8: It seems to me that the actions on the table for FAmSCo to
>> ultimately deal with are:
>>
>> (1) Dealing with inactive accounts, either within our sub-project itself or
>> within the whole of Fedora Infrastructure.
>>
>> (2) Reforming our barriers-to-entry and sponsorship process to remove time
>> limits, but to require specific actions and a show of progress.
>>
>> (3) Putting together a mentorship/sponsorship system similar to that of
>> Package Maintainers.
>
> Thanks again for this great summary Max. And thanks to everyone on
> FAmSCo who takes the time to read and consider the ideas that
> percolate up from the community.
>
> John
>
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