2016-03-10 10:30 GMT+01:00 Jona Azizaj <jonaazizaj@gmail.com>:
Hi there,

Jona here, Fedora Ambassador from Albania. I saw it fit to write to the mailing list after being looped in one of the meetings FAmSCo had yesterday on 9th March. 

I try to regularly check the logs of the meetings which feel important to me, so the last FAmSCo meeting was no exception here. Somewhere down the line in the meeting, around 15:43 in the log [1] a discussion around the definition of "community" in Albania and Greece sparked, specifically initiated by Robert Scheck, which on behalf of the community I represent, we find troubling:    
    
  • "Sorry, but you can not treat Albania as a real community so far. We had the same "community" in Greece some years ago - and after 2 years, most of them went away...to Mozilla."
  • "a community is something that exists for really a lot of years and is healthy"

Although initially a surprising statement, I went on to read further clarification, however there was no resolution found, with the suggestion coming up that this should be taken to the mailing list, which I am doing so hereby. 

So, since there has been a discussion taking place where Albania's contributions (and so also my contributions) have been mentioned without me being present, I would hate to keep silent about this. As someone who led grassroots efforts to start up the Fedora  community in Albania, dedicating more time to the Fedora project than anything else in my free time, seeing comments like these from a fellow Fedora Ambassador (let alone mentor) is insulting to the hundreds of hours of work put in by fellow community members in Albania, including myself. Seeing myself in this position, I also doubt that any contributor from Greece feels comfortable in a similar fashion with these comments.

I didn't want this topic to sink in the meeting logs, so I brought it up here in the mailing list to gather your general feedback and thoughts on this matter (and to avoid this in the future ideally). 

I am deeply concerned with comments like this out of nowhere, and think that there are others sharing my concerns.

On behalf of the Albanian Fedora community.
Jona Azizaj


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Hi Jona,
I followed this meeting yesterday and also saw the comment regarding your community. Before adding my personal thoughts, let me add e few informations. Robert is a "long term" contributor in EMEA and probably is one of the most correct persons I know within in the community. Every ambassador who got mentored by him gets a very good overview about what it means to be a good contributor. Nobody, and I did not understand his statement like that, wants to judge the work of other people, of other countries or cultures. We are all contributors, and we all do Fedora stuff in our spare time. Nobody gets forced to do anything, and that means you won't be never classified as first or second class contributors.

Going down the log you will have noticed Remy who wanted to clarify Robert's statement, and I feel all parts clarified quite clearly the unlucky use of the word "real". Me, you, and most of the EMEA contributors are not english native speakers, and also Robert clarified it saying what he meant. His thought was about *long term* contributors, which still is relative IMO. 2 years for me or you could be long term, while for other people could be just the beginning of contributing. And I don't think our greek friends understood it wrong, we know that many of them in the past found it more interesting to contribute to Mozilla, but we have still many Fedora contributors in Greece. Unfortunately the number of contributors goes up and down, I see it in Italy too, the only thing we can do as ambassadors is to involve as many people as we are able to, right?

Please don't understand my reply wrong, Remy already jumped in during the meeting to clarify this unlucky statement (thx Remy). I would just add that writing fast in a meeting, where you can sort of "feel" what people are thinking (maybe because you know them personally), and reading logs is different.
We have put many efforts to try to make grow the community in countries like Albania, but also Serbia and many others. I also mentored people of those countries and we all want to have many many strong communities. So please continue in what you are doing, we all appreciate your hard work as we appreciate it of any other Fedora contributor.

Just my two cents to the topic, thanks for bringing it up to avoid misunderstandings in the future.
Looking forward to see you soon in a Fedora event.

Kind regards

--
Robert Mayr
(robyduck)