Hello Jona,
On Thu, 10 Mar 2016, Jona Azizaj wrote:
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.
thank you very much for picking this up. I wanted to do this anyway, I also
was in touch yesterday with Remy during the meeting in /query shortly.
First of all: My word "real" wasn't perfectly choosen, I am sorry for this.
Please let me try to clarify my strange sounding statement: When comparing
a community with a baby, there is a point where a lot of help is needed;
even the baby can breath for its own, but needs to be feeded. After some
years, the baby has grown to a child and is able to eat on its own. From my
point of view, mostly by looking back over the years, a "young community"
has IMHO still after 2 years the risk to fall down (even I do not hope that
at all). I might be wrong here, but most of the activity in Albania started
in 2014, thus it's from my point of view a "young community".
Further on, if you compare a community with a democracy, a country is able
to declare itself as democracy at any time, but it is a "real democracy" if
after the first period of governance really democratic minded elections are
happing. Turning that back to the community means for me, that a community
has simply ups and downs (no matter where they are from). But the important
point is, that during or after a "down" a "up" needs to come again
(maybe
not the same strength immediately like before, but an "up") to proof that
there still is a community (even it might be a weak one).
Related to that I see the point that most regional communities are started
with something I would call a "hype", where everybody is over-enthusiastic
but the most hard point is to turn the enthusiasm from the beginning into
something permanently and lasting. Even such a "hype" is great and helps at
the beginning, if it doesn't get something more permanent (but maybe a bit
more settled like in the beginning), it doesn't help on the long term and
bears from my point of view the risk that the "community" could disappear
again. Views might be different indeed, but longevity starts from my mind
not after a year, but maybe after 3-4 years once regular events have come
up multiple times and not everything upcoming is totally new to the people.
Something else which has influence for a community is, that life of people
participating in that community are changing - which is normal. Some end
their studies, other get a family or become parents, a new job, whatever.
While this might have no influence it all, it practically usually has a lot
of impact (from what I e.g. figured out on my own). But, what happens if an
ambassador, thus a part of a community steps down or is less active than
before for whatever reason? Another contributor maybe steps up (or a group
of), but maybe nobody steps up. Last of it bears a risk that a community
slowly dies.
So like a baby is envolving over the time, I see a community evolving as
well, but especially in the beginning I'm seeing the turnover from a "hype"
in the very first beginning to a healthy long-time existing community that
can also deal with important people leaving and others joining.
Given I mentioned Greece as well: I'm not absolutely sure without digging
through old mails, but around 2008-2010, there was really a lot of activity
in Greece regarding Fedora; I'm tempted to say maybe even more than now.
Very sad thing is that there was a "down" after that, because quite a lot
of the Fedora ambassadors went to Mozilla (I don't want to blame Mozilla
here for anything) and a fair part to openSUSE. And if I'm not completely
wrong for what I looked up and noticed, most of the currently active Greek
ambassadors started after that "down". Again, while leaving and joining is
part of the community life, it was sad at that time to see that Mozilla was
more attractive or fascinating or whatever for contributing. It's important
to learn from the past - I would like to avoid such a thing for the future.
Finally, I am not sure if I was clearly able to express what I really mean,
but I hope you get at least an idea of what my thoughts are and also what I
fear about. Maybe I should have written something like this during the IRC
meeting:
Albania has a young community and thus we should try to ensure a longevity
to avoid a sad situation like we saw in Greece a few years ago, where after
a very active "short up" a heavy "down" followed, because a lot of
Fedora
contributors switched to another community project.
I apologize for my bad wording during the IRC meeting and I am sorry for
insulting you - this was definately not my intention. I hope, I was able to
clarify the "real" hereby a bit - and I will try to avoid using that word
in such a context in the future...
Greetings,
Robert