Are the #fedora OPs supposed to have jurisdiction over any #fedora-* channels? Because
that really doesn't jibe with how we work, yet gnokii has gotten banned from (amongst
others) #fedora-meeting-* because of a #fedora policy that I don't think should apply
to other Fedora channels. The ban isn't because of any misbehavior - it's because
he doesn't have access to an IRC proxy so he has frequent joins/parts because the
internet in his country is really unreliable.
Certainly if, as a project we're interested in increasing our diversity, we should be
more understanding of those folks who stay up until 3 AM their time and deal with awful
internet service to contribute to Fedora, and not ban them from being able to get their
jobs done! To ban someone based on the fact they come from a third world country is
problematic on multiple levels, I hope you'd agree.
The thing is, gnokii is a senior, extremely productive member of the design team, and I
needed him in a meeting that was held in a #fedora-meeting channel recently and after
struggling to get him in there I came to find he had been banned by a #fedora OP. To me,
this is completely unacceptable.
Here's a proposal:
#fedora-* channels affiliated with a team should be opped by the admins of the
corresponding FAS groups in charge of those teams. Folks who are not active members of
those teams should *not* have OP status in those channels. I kind of thought this was how
things operated, but apparently not based on how gnokii has been banned. Certainly, if
such a ban were instituted in #fedora-design we'd have no designers - #fedora-design
is the very first IRC experience most of the designers we recruit have ever had - they
don't know anything about nickserv, ops, join/part messages, proxys/bouncers, etc. And
they shouldn't have to!
#fedora-meeting-* and other project-wide channels (eg the flock channels) should be OPed
by commops. There is no reason #fedora ops should have de facto ops in those channels
unless they are engaged in the comm ops team, and sorry to say, I haven't seen any
involved in comm ops (please correct me if I'm wrong.)
#fedora - i have no idea what to do about, but let's contain the problem and not let
it spread to other parts of the project.
Some suggestions for #fedora:
- My suggestion here would be that if any OP has had multiple complaints filed against
them in the ticket system - there's probably been many other CoC violations the
victims didn't bother to file - and they really should retire and recover from their
burnout before trying again.
- Op status is *not* a status symbol, it's a responsibility, and it seems like a lot
of people wield IRC ops not due to any actual personal responsibility but rather because
they were around when the Fedora project was in its early days and have held on to it
since then - not really a good reason to keep them. It should be more like a relay race
baton, not a certificate you hang on your wall forever.
- A suggestion would be to offer ops to top-rated helpers on ask.fpo and make them
rotating positions as any other parts of the project (fesco, council, famsco, etc.) are.
This would also hopefully help combat burnout by giving overwhelmed ops a e asy way to
gracefully bow out without drama or feeling like a quitter or leaving the other opers high
and dry without a replacement - just don't run for re-election and let someone else
step up.
We do get very positive feedback about users' interactions on ask.fpo and use it as
the main support channel we point people to on our websites. The system has built in
moderation that allows to keep things more civil than IRC affords.
~m