[Ambassadors] mentorship, sponsorship, etc.

[Roy Ong]

On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 13:27 +0300, Ewan Luca wrote:
> 
>                         sorry if i don't understand about this big
>                         fuss of "Ambassador" ? I see for years Fedora
>                         is running better and better not only the
>                         Fedora Core OS but as the whole in community. 
>                 
>                 + 1
>         +1 from me too
> 
>  
> -10e1000
> So, with this, problem solved. Everything it's "just fine". Despite
> the fact this is the longest thread I saw until now on this mailing
> list (apart from the useless "me too"). 
> If we can't agree on a solution to the problem it doesn't mean the
> problem isn't there! Let's just stick out heads on the sand. "Fedora
> it's going great!" There is no such thing of Ubuntu (it seems to be
> tabu to talk about this), there is no such thing as 40% of the
> registered ambassadors (this is almost 1 in 2 of them!) inactive. The
> activity of the rest of them consists mainly on asking in vain "what
> can I do?". I'm sorry but it doesn't seems to me that things are ok at
> all. 
> We have every week a few new ambassadors registred. This is really a
> good thing. But how many of them will end up being real contributors?
> If we continue like this, we'll have next year 2000 ambassadors (wich
> looks great on paper) and the next survey will prove that 90% of them
> are inactive. We might as well create 10000 fictive accounts on Fedora
> ambassadors list and be proud of our "strenght".
> I whant to know that this thread will be closed in N days and the
> decisions are XYand Z. Whatever decisions will come up it will be
> better that ignoring the problem.
> 
> Ewan Luca

The idea about it is that it takes too much effort to "police" the
system. You can set the bar really high and make it "difficult" to
achieve the Ambassador status or set it lower and make it all inclusive.

Quantity or Quality? I know we all want Quality ... but how does one
quantify ambassador behavior that is worthwhile for the community? 

FOR EXAMPLE, imagine if we set up a scoring system that only renews your
ambassador status for the next month only if you score 500 or higher
(you will be automatically de-registered from the ambassador system if
you end the month with less than 500 points)

->  all ambassadors start with 500 points 
->  there is an auto-write down of 100 points every month
->  +100 for finishing and completing new ambassador briefing/training
->  +100 for successfully initiating and driving a community event
->  +100 for delivering an address at an approved event
->  -100 for not participating actively/effectively on mailing lists
->  -200 for not attending meetings
->  -200 for not responding to your fedora emails in a timely fashion 

This system ensures that we will have "active" ambassadors but just how
many ambassadors will be left at the end of the year? 10? 15? 

Its a tough balancing act. Too many ambassadors and we are seen to be
ineffective. Too few ambassadors and others may feel that its only an
"exclusive" few that get to "promote" Fedora.

While I definitely agree that "772 Ambassadors in FAS, 300 were
inactive" as shown in Max's initial email on 26 Mar 2009 is high, at
this time, we just need a simple mechanism to "remove" these inactive
accounts and keep going. No point spending too much time and effort to
monitor these inactive accounts. Let's spend time on the core efforts
instead. 

My personal 2cents ...

(a) if you do not have valid contact information on your wiki page, it
tells the world that you are not willing to have others contact you

(b) if you do not keep a valid email address on the FAS system, it shows
that you don't want the administrator to contact you

(c) if you don't want the world to contact you and you don't want the
administrator to contact you ... then shouldn't you be excused from the
ambassador list?

If this (a) + (b) + (c) brings the list down to a reasonable size, then
we would have achieve the objective. Its simple and shouldn't annoy
anyone ....... or at least, that's what I hope :)