On Thu, Feb 17, 2005 at 02:03:04AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> martin f krafft wrote:
>
> > If you are not busy with sarge, tell us what you are doing for
> > Debian that makes you have no time for the above tasks!
>
> My apologies, Sir, it appears I must have mislaid my employment
> contract; I wonder if I might perchance obtain a new copy? It also seems
> that my salary has been misplaced, I wonder if you would be so kind as
> to inform the HR department and request they look into the matter?
>
> Or, wait, perhaps you aren't my boss, and you've got absolutely no
> business demanding that I account for my time?
The only business anyone has desiring an accounting of your time is when
it appears to be relevant to the question of whether any of that time is
being spent on the duties of a volunteer position you hold. You may, of
course, choose not to answer, but please don't be suprised if people assume
that means "no time", or possibly "no willingness to fufill the expected
duties", and decide to take issue with letting you continue in the position
in question.
Nobody can demand a volunteer do anything - but likewise, nobody can demand
they be given, or keep, a position within the project (though the procedure
for recalling various positions varies depending on whether they are
delegates or elected positions, of course).
I, personally, have asked several times in the past for some indication of
just what is going on under the veil of the "ftpmasters" role, and I have
never received a satisfactory answer. The current execution of the duties
of that role is, in my opinion, substandard at best, and I see only three
ways to resolve that:
1) Find out, from someone with the answers (which as far as I can tell
means "one or more members of the ftpmaster team"), what is causing the
problems, and then try to find a useful and meaningful resolution of them.
Maybe that's "train new helpers", maybe that's "give everyone a rubber
duckie", but without knowing what the problem is, it is rather difficult
to make any useful suggestion. Asserting, or implying, that there is no
problem is rather disingenous.
2) Get rid of any and all people who are obstructing #1, and let someone
new have a shot at it. Maybe they'll fix the problems, or maybe they'll
expose enough about it to let others figure out a good solution. Since
this will involve unhappy feelings on many parts, as well as a great deal
of wasted time and effort (equivalent to training up at least 1-2 new
ftpmasters, and then some, for learning from scratch), it is in no fashion
to be preferred over option 1. But if option 1 is not available, this one
still is.
3) Sit on our thumbs and pray something changes. Given both history, and my
lack of belief in an omnibenevolent deity, this one doesn't seem likely to
do much good.
So, just to be exceptionally clear, I will ask again, intending no insult
and no mockery:
What is going on within the ftpmaster team to cause the observed symptoms,
and if you have any thoughts on what would be helpful in terms of
alleviating those problems, would you please share them? If this is already
documented somewhere, and I have missed it, a pointer to the discussion or
documentation would suffice, of course. I'm happy to RTFM, if there is a
TFM to R.
--
Joel Aelwyn <fenton@debian.org> ,''`.
: :' :
`. `'
`-
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