On 06/02/2011 02:44 AM, Matt Clark wrote:
Dave,
Thanks for the questions/comments.
Ideally, as I did say, it would be desirable to have some
kind of relationship with the Fedora Project but we do need to
remain a 3rd party as we would also like to provide community
support and mediation services for several other projects.
Regarding your....comments....about donations, while SILO is
for all practical purposes a NPO it will be receiving donations,
and I don't see any problem with that. Neither I nor anyone on
behalf of SILO asked you or anyone else for donations though,
and we never will. That just never happened. We certainly will
be set up to receive donations finally within the next week or
so though and any money donated will only be spent on SILO
activities. I think that's a non-issue unless there's some
factor I'm just not aware of. If there are real issues with the
fact that we receive donations I'm certainly open to hearing
them-- I'm always looking to make this effort better.
IANAL, but I'm personally not comfortable referring disgruntled
users to a service which (fwics) is non-profit because...well, its
not making any yet. Its seems obvious to me that once the donation
level reached a point at which hosting was covered, it would cease
to be a NPO. I really can't see anyone else making such a referal. I
can't voice any "real issues" over the donations, because in doing
so, I would be trying to find a way for SILO to "fit", and I
can't/won't
About 'threats', I certainly did announce that I would
expose, without demands, the actions of an operator that
consistently abuses users in some of the fedora-related
projects' support channels
Actually you are incorrect, the user you are talking about is not
(and as far as I know has never been) an operator on a fedora
support channel.
and various administrative channels after being bullied
across several channels during the course of my networking
attempts for SILO. I'm familiar with the interaction you're
talking about and I can assure you that I was flamed pretty hard
before that little explosion,
Are mediators supposed to be exploding?
though I did over-react when I realized that it was being
overlooked by several other appointed operators.
Incorrect, I was present and certainly did not overlook the
situation.
It's no excuse, but, I take bullying very seriously, and I
care deeply about what members of the fedora community do when representing
it. I also believe that the operators who allow that person's
behavior have just as much a role in the bullying as the person
engaging in it.
The user in question was asking for evidence of an accusation you
made...to be honest, If you accused me of bad practise - I'd want to
see logs. You ignored these requests which inflamed the scenario.
"You did X, I have logs, but I'm not prepared to show them or
discuss it". You also claimed that silo had received 6 complains
about this user. Interestingly enough, I have no knowledge of SILO
"mediating" any of these 6 complaints, and you failed to provide any
evidence/details/logs of them. If this accusation was targeted at
myself, I know I would get *very* annoyed, *very* quickly if you
didn't provide me with details. From this perspective, I actually
think you inflamed the situation further than it needed to be.
You can also be very sure, that operators generally are not afraid
to challenge someone's behaviour, so if you are in a channel of 20
of them, I very much doubt that one user will be allowed to bully.
I do think that muddles the issue though, and if you'd like
more background information I'd be happy to clue you in on more
details where appropriate ( admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ).
I will say, though, that a common tactic in mitigation is to
antagonize an accuser until they react as this provides
ammunition for deflection.
Agreed, I think you successfully did antagonize the user with the
specific role of clouding the issue and potentially muddying his
efforts within the project. Although the context of the statement
above is to imply that the user in question was antagonizing you, I
find it ironic that (IMHO) the opposite happened.
You touched on an interesting point, though: If an abusive
"operator" (technicality in this case) can publicly wonton users
for literally years then won't the IRC-sig, who has existed all
this time and watched it happen, be of a mindset that is not
receptive to dealing with that behavior?
No, and again - you are being specific about one user, who is *not*
an operator of a support channel.
How can they not know? I don't know the answer to that, to
be honest, but, I will address those concerns with the CWG as an
aside from seeing what kind of relationship can be established
between SILO and the IRC sig for a more long term solution.
What I mean there is that mediation should be done by a neutral
3rd party to avoid just that kind of contamination of
values.
I have not witnessed any such contamination. In fact, when you
personally filed a complaint ticket I dealt with it as a third
party. After the discussion, you were happy with the result and
closed the ticket yourself...does this not demonstrate that we keep
our own house in order?
It creates an environment where automatically the user is
relaying their complaint to someone whose sole purpose is to
deal with their type of issue and won't feel an inherent need to
defend their fellow operators or staff. On the flipside,
operators would then be dealing with a mediator who is
level-headed and calm (too often after a heated scuffle of
words, neither party is calm or level headed, this removes that
from the mix).
Agreed....we don't need SILO for this
About the registration of ##fedora on Freenode, no, that's
not the case-- it's not registered to SILO, but the channel
owner there has invited SILO to participate and for the time
being it would be a great place to forward users that otherwise
would be banned. My preference would be that they are referred
to #slackhappy, but, I can certainly see why the Fedora project
would want their IRC channel to forward to a channel
appropriately titled. We could certainly see if it would be
possible to acquire it later in the context of your question.
Hrm, I'm not sure <excerpt from slackhappy.org> "#slackhappy on irc.freenode.org is back
online. we’re currently recruiting for operators. ##fedora on
irc.freenode.org has been donated for use by SILO."
I'm sure that no one associated with any fedora support
mediums would want users they ban to just not get help. There
are always alternative resources, but not usually on the same
network in the same medium to much of a degree of reliability.
We're all in the business of helping people, that's why these
operating systems exist in the first place.
Correct, we recently introduced a "quiet" plugin to the bot on
#fedora, whereby if a user is being particularly painful, we can set
mode +q but keep them in the channel so they can benefit from the
support being given.
This is the second time since we've discussed this that
you've assumed this is a commercial interest. It is not. I
hope that I've cleared that up for you.
No, you haven't...but I don't think its worth discussing it further.
You have said that you have a solution that works. I don't
believe that's accurate and that's why I'm here, typing this
email. The SIG ticket system is managed by the same people
engaging in the user abuse, and there are zero policies in place
that I'm aware of that describe penalties to operators who
engage in that abuse. Those are both problems that need
addressed, and I'd like your input on how best SILO can help
with that in a way that benefits the users as well as the
operators.
Can you actually provide evidence of operator abuse? Ops are
carefully selected and get trial periods.
I like that there are works in progress, I like that there's
a bit of oversight for the management of the IRC channels too as
that's a one-up in the bigger game of providing support to the
users, but these need to be offered by separate entities to
really be neutral, don't they?
No
There's an inherent conflict of interest (one that I've
personally seen manifested in several fedora channels) when a
person resolving a dispute is part of the same entity as one of
the people involved in it. I don't know if I can be much
clearer about why that's necessary.
If you can show me an example of a dispute with an operator that was
not resolved to the satisfaction of the user in question, I'll give
this more currency, until then - its a non-issue, because fwics it
hasn't happened yet.
We could argue line-by-line about context behind log entries
and deeper philosophies behind acting belligerently towards
users all day, and even about whether or not operator abuse is a
big issue in #fedora or not, but anyone who's been on IRC knows
that it's often a rough place to get tech support. It is.
That's universal. That said, we could go the extra mile and be
a little better than we're expected to be, just because we can
be. We're already on that road.
Cool, good luck to you.
I'm in it for the users and I'd like to invite you to help
me, Dave. I actually like to hear concerns about SILO while I'm
fleshing out how we're going to behave as an organization as it
lets me correct mistakes, or oversights that I didn't see
before. We're going to try to do this, and we'll keep trying
until we've got it right in a way that works for you, this
board, and the Fedora or SILO users. I hope you keep trying,
too.
Whew, that was alot to cover in one post, Dave :) Did you
have any other concerns? I'd like to get all of them out now so
that I can get it all panned out. I just want you clear on the
fact that SILO will be accomodating the Fedora administrative
needs with the users' needs as its focus.
Matt Clark
Slackhappy International Linux Organization
On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 9:21 AM, Dave
Riches <david.r@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 06/01/2011 11:08 AM, Matt Clark wrote:
Hello folks,
I have been authorized to speak on behalf of
Slackhappy International Linux Organization (SILO) to
explain a little about what we do and why we're here.
I was bouncing around the various fedora-related
channels and it's been suggested to me that this would
be the best place to get a constructive discussion
going about some plans SILO has in the works.
We do have a website, www.slackhappy.org,
but more directly, SILO is an organization dedicated
to improving the state of support in the various FOSS
communities with a focus on administrative behavior.
We believe that the profile for the general linux
user has changed over the last few years and that so
must the tools used to provide support to them.
In short, what we're creating is a common 3rd party
to act as a mediator between the user and operators in
IRC support channels, forum administrators, and any
other medium that users receive linux or FOSS support.
Am I correct in thinking you want the Fedora Project to
publicly endorse SILO, or just the channel operators?
When did this change? The other day on #fedora-ops you asked
for us to solicit your organisation which received
donations. When I asked where my donation would get spent,
it turned out if you received enough it would be paid to the
"reps"
The ultimate goal is to give users a place to go to
when they feel that an operator is abusive and that no
one is addressing the issue. I think we've all caught
an operator on a bad day (or caught a bad operator on
a good day) and there's nothing more frustrating or
degrading to a project's image than the kinds of
things that happen in those situations. I see it as a
'win-win' for everyone that it's addressed.
Not really, I see this as an unqualified "mediation" service
which addresses a non-issue. During my contribution to the
project as an operator on #fedora, I am yet to see an issue
(including your own) that was not resolved by the
irc-support-sig...If it ain't broke, don't fix it?
Since it was decided to take on this task, the most
difficult part has been finding out what we as an
organization need to do to be able to work closely
with operators and users in a community so that we can
do what we set out to do.
So far, you actually managed to alienate a large proportion
of #fedora channel operators by threatening them publicly
and giving unsubstantiated report statistics for bad
practise despite numerous requests to provide the
information so we can act on it. I'm not sure how effective
a mediation service that doesn't share its complains/logs
would be in the real world as resolving issues.
In order for this to work we would need policies
that are universally easy for operators in those
channels to work with, and for users to remedy
situations where they feel like they've been treated
unfairly.
the irc-support-sig works hard to put policies and
standard-operating-procedures in place, and publicly
available. Perhaps you could take a look at https://fedorahosted.org/irc-support-sig/
While we're user-oriented, it's also important to
work with the administrators of the projects we try to
help if we would expect any cooperative efforts.
Currently, we're paying alot of attention to
#fedora on the freenode network
possibly a side issue, but you have also obtained ##fedora
for your own purposes?
where some ongoing problems seem to need addressed.
I don't see any ongoing, un-addressed issues, perhaps you
could point me to them/provide reports/logs?
I think this is the perfect opportunity to start
figuring out how SILO will work.
I'm personally not interested in anyone else's business
opportunities apart from my own, Fedora for me is about
freedom, and I love contributing to fedora in as many ways
as I can..I for one won't contribute to someone else's
seemingly commercial project.
What kind of policies or arrangements would we
need to have banned users in fedora irc channels be
referred to our channel, and what kind of policies or
arrangements would we need to have to get operators in
freenode projects to work with our staff to mediate
problems?
Again, I think this is a non-issue, as we already have a
solution that works...when a user has an issue that cannot
be addressed by the support sig, CWG or board..I would
perhaps then consider your proposals
I'm aware that there is an IRC sig, and I was
referred here by several when this was discussed. I
have quite a few ideas about implementation of all of
this but I didn't want to flood our introduction with
information.
Thanks for your time, and I look forward to working
with/for you,
No worries!, and although you won't be working with me
personally, I wish you all the best with your venture :-)
Matt Clark
Slackhappy International Linux Organization
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