Forums properties and methods

[rooster]

Surely the major part of a moderators role is moderating the form of discussions not their content?

I think that that is a good point to consider.

I am happy to read this thread, because the discussion is held cool, but nonetheless determined. I hope that this will help in further discussions and I hope that before posting everybody will use a calm brain and not post immediately with some hard feelings.

Today, after reading the Automatix-thread and other dependants , I lost some illusions about the forum and some of its members (moderators and "normal" users alike). After this thread I feel a little better and I hope, after a while, I'll feel comfortable like before again.

Have a peacefull Advent,

Rooster

[macgyver2]

Then the infighting starts... we tell the users to discuss in a civilized manner... or face the repercussions (as ANY staff on ANY form will)... but that makes us the villian...

Repercussions should not include personal attacks. Staff should no better. if they don't know better and keep it up they should not be staff.

That being said, I do realize the staff will be the target of harassment. But being a staff member has costs. I keep getting the vibe (not specifically from the post I'm responding to) that some staff members have the belief that because they devote so much time and effort and patience to the job they should be paid with unquestioning loyalty. Staff members are doing an extra service for the community, yes...but this extra service requires extra sacrifices, including a whole lotta patience. Staff members should realize that before accepting the position. If they can't or don't want to handle it then the job is not for them.

Why??? because the 'humanity to others' creedo does not allow for us to be respected as any other user... Because we are staff, there seems to be a general concencus from a certian group within the cc that we should only qualify as puppets... not as people...

How have you addressed this? If this is how the staff sees things then it is a valid issue and needs to be addressed. I have yet to see a list of issues like the above presented to the CC for open dialog. Maybe I missed that. I think that really, really needs to happen, and not just as something triggered by a situation on the forums, and not just as a bullet point that's part of a larger general agenda. The feeling I get is that the CC doesn't realize the situation as something more than just some isolated incident. That's just my observation. I could be wrong. I know there were plans for a separate forums-specific meeting in #ubuntu-meeting. Did that ever happen?

From the CC meetings I've seen, either attended or read the transcripts after, I don't get that feeling. I thought I remembered at one point that Sabdfl was pretty clear that the CC doesn't want to just move in and make you puppets...just that there should be a bit more integration. I thought the dispute team would have done very well to fill the gap. When disputes involving staff arise, but are handled (internally and out of view of the public) by staff it really casts a shadow of impropriety. That is not to say I'm accusing anyone of actual impropriety here. However, I've seen actual impropriety other places (including other distro forums...the same ones these forums say they want to be different from and better than) to blindly trust that there is none based only on assurances by the staff.

Thanks darkmatter.

Just so you know, I don't that deletion of threads ever goes on. The are moved to the jail or the backyard. A lot of my forum projects chill in the jail too.

I knew that. I suppose I could have been clearer. Instead of 'delete', from now on I'll make every attempt to use 'remove from public view'.

[macgyver2]

Note that as to the Wiki/Doc Storage issue, we DID try first to make it a part of the Ubuntu Wiki (as the Forum/Wiki Delta), but it was removed by the Doc team, and members of the doc team wrote slandering messages on our forum staff's Wiki pages.

We tried, but were not welcome. That's that.

I was unaware that happened. I remember talk of a forum-wiki team but I was under the impression it died in the discussion stage.

How was this alleged abuse by the doc-team members handled? After it occurred, did you take it up the proper channels to seek a resolution? I am incredibly doubtful that stuff like that would be sanctioned by Sabdfl and the CC.

[timczer]

I have used Ubuntu for several months now, and been a regular reader of this forum. I have found a tremendous amount of helpful information here and compared to other distro forums I have looked at, there is far more information and many more helpful people here.

My concern is that recently there seems to be more and more disharmony within the larger ubuntu community that I feel is threatening to reduce the ubuntu community to the level of many of the other "not so nice" forums. It is understandable as any organization grows larger (and I speak of the "organization" as being the whole Ubuntu community, not just Canonical) there is bound to be different groups with different objectives and they will come into conflict. There is the wiki verses wiki fight, the official against unoffical fight, the gpl verses non-gpl, free and not free, ubuntuguide against wiki guide, etc.


The issue with all of this, is that for the average and more importantly, new user we become more and more confused about who and what to believe ("automatix will mess up your system", "no it won't"). Members of the forums and Ubuntu staff who have gained a well deserved reputation of knowledge and expertise and who most of us on these forums trust when they post information are starting to spend that reputation capital on these arguements. When the experts of this forum fight, it reduces the positive reputation of this forum and reduces our confidence in it. A new member of the forum, or one who has been around for a while (me) become confused about all of the fighting and disagreement going on. We begin to feel like the children of a couple heading for divorce, they fight and we sit in our rooms under the covers wondering what is going to happen to us.

So after my long-winded preamble, those involved in these disagreements need to find away to resolve them in a way that is best for the community at-large. All involved need to see the bigger picture and work towards cooperative solutions that will aid the growth of Ubuntu as the best supported linux distro instead of making it like so many others. Do all of these disagreements need to be laid out in the forums for all to see? Does this really serve anybody? Is there a way for these issues to be resolved outside of the forums as I don't know that any one outside of the disagreements is able to have any affect on it any way (many of the long threads on these issues seem to be a lot of back and forth between a few people).

As a brief comment on the role of the moderators. It is clearly a difficult position to do, for free, with your own time. Certainly, with the growth of the Ubuntu community, there are far more posts now than there were just a few months ago which makes the job of moderating that much more difficult. As a possible solution, is there a way for the moderators to have two names, avatars, accounts, whatever you want to distinguish them in two different ways. One, for them to use as an official moderator, correcting improper posts, closing threads,etc. and one for when they are acting as a regular forum user, offering suggestions, getting involved in discussions and/or arguments. This might alleviate some of the issue when the mods get involved in disputes and it looks like they are using their position to manage the discussion. The mods could ensure that if they are acting as mods and as members of a discussion, they do it in two different posts, one as a moderator, one as a forum member.

[macgyver2]

I was unaware that happened. I remember talk of a forum-wiki team but I was under the impression it died in the discussion stage.

As an addendum to this...

Here is an instance where I feel that more openness would benefit you as well as the regular user.

I had no idea that the forum-wiki team was being undertaken (noting also that I posted an interest in helping such a team out). I've looked in the forum announcements section and don't see anything about it there. The first announcement of a wiki nature anytime recently is the announcement of doc.gwos.org. Had there been more openness, regular users might have been far more likely to notice any sort of impropriety. I'm certain some of them (myself included) would have stood up and backed you in any complaint taken to the CC regarding the tampering. Not only would you have had a complaint registered in the proper channels, but you would have had a large body of Ubuntu users, and beyond users Ubuntu supporters, behind you.

These forums are approaching 60,000 members. That's a large resource in and of itself. Alienating users by maintaining closed policies is not a very effective way to tap that resource.

[macgyver2]

Thank you, timczer. Your entire post is excellent and I'm glad to see some newer users joining in this thread.

As a brief comment on the role of the moderators. It is clearly a difficult position to do, for free, with your own time. Certainly, with the growth of the Ubuntu community, there are far more posts now than there were just a few months ago which makes the job of moderating that much more difficult. As a possible solution, is there a way for the moderators to have two names, avatars, accounts, whatever you want to distinguish them in two different ways. One, for them to use as an official moderator, correcting improper posts, closing threads,etc. and one for when they are acting as a regular forum user, offering suggestions, getting involved in discussions and/or arguments. This might alleviate some of the issue when the mods get involved in disputes and it looks like they are using their position to manage the discussion. The mods could ensure that if they are acting as mods and as members of a discussion, they do it in two different posts, one as a moderator, one as a forum member.

I think that this is a really good suggestion. Not perfect, as some of the staff may grumble about it being a bit more of a hassle, but I really think it deserves good consideration.

Thanks again!

[mattheweast]

Note that as to the Wiki/Doc Storage issue, we DID try first to make it a part of the Ubuntu Wiki (as the Forum/Wiki Delta), but it was removed by the Doc team, and members of the doc team wrote slandering messages on our forum staff's Wiki pages.

We tried, but were not welcome. That's that.

I won't express an opinion on the main subject matter of this thread, but I want to quickly clarify this, because I am AMAZED that it has come up again.

The Forum/Wiki Delta was _created_ for the purpose of incorporating forum material into the wiki in an easy way. The whole purpose of it was to build bridges between the forum and the wiki.

So, as to the specific issue (which has been discussed with the person involved personally and resolved), the problem was that articles were being inserted into the main body of the wiki (and the index) without being finished (i.e. the formatting was incomplete and the style of the articles had not yet been perfected). The "slandering messages" were these (don't forget that the wiki is a revision control system so everything is logged):

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SteveMyers?a...&rev2=7&rev1=6
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SteveMyers?a...&rev2=8&rev1=7

Apart from those, I wrote an email to Steve in very polite terms: I didn't receive a reply.

I hardly believe that they constitute defamatory statements.

More importantly: the misunderstanding was put to bed some time ago by a private chat on irc between myself and Steve. It was a simple misunderstanding, and took 10 minutes to resolve. It is totally unacceptable to exagerrate what was a pure misunderstanding.

It is not correct that the forum members were not welcome on the wiki: everyone is welcome. In fact, forum members are more welcome than most, I have repeatedly posted messages (see the sticky in the howto section) about how forum members can contribute.

The GWOS doc storage facility is, as I understand it, and as Kassetra pointed out, intended to collect material from the forums as a knowledge base, and Kassetra said clearly that it has a different function from the wiki. Therefore, this whole business has absolutely nothing to do with forum members "not being welcome" on the wiki, and I hope that this will be the final post necessary to clear up the misunderstanding.

Please refrain from throwing any more wood on this particular fire.

Thanks,

Matt

[az]

I dissagree with a lot of the things said here. I fear, however that bringing it up will make it look like I am trolling. That is a symptom of the problem. We should not have to appologetically ask to discuss these issues.

"Note that as to the Wiki/Doc Storage issue, we DID try first to make it a part of the Ubuntu Wiki (as the Forum/Wiki Delta), but it was removed by the Doc team, and members of the doc team wrote slandering messages on our forum staff's Wiki pages."

Not true.

If anything, there was one conflict between one forum member who since left the forums. The Doc team has been supportive of helping a foum knowledgebase. They drew up guidelines and have offered to bend over backwards to accommodate the forum folks who want to contribute.

As for the Backyard, there needs to be guidelines on it's use. The fact that all the arniboy-related issues were hard deleted instead of moved there is an example of that.

As for the forums never being a part of the community, I think that is a top-down issue. The title of "official" should come with certain stipulations that priority is given to being part of the greater ubuntu community. A given forum should have to prove itself in that respect before becoming official.

See the attached logs of yesterday's CC meeting for an example of the attitude to which I refer. (logaf.txt, 11:47)

As for the staff being volunteer, well all the users volunteer their time and effort. It is wrong to disrespect those users by deleting their posts. You can moderate without deteling and supressing ideas. It *can* be done. There are a lot of people who would be willing to put in the (very little) extra effort to moderate that way. I suggest you use them.

As for the GPL issue. Arnieboy forked a GPL project. He cannot change the licence unless he removes all the original code - which he did not do. End of story.

(The full logs of the meeting were too big to include. I will make the beginning parts available, too. logaa.txt and logab.txt)

[frodon]

It's an interesting log ...

Thanks

[bonzodog]

Just so you know, the ENTIRE logs of the Community Council meeting can be found here:
http://people.ubuntu.com/~fabbione/i...005-12-06.html

I'm not going to express any personal opinions on this whole stupid argument, suffice to say that I am in full agreement with Kass, and the Doc Storage Facility team