[IAEP] Sugar Labs Membership proposal

[Bernie Innocenti]

El Sun, 23-08-2009 a las 10:59 -0400, Luke Faraone escribió:
> Hi,
> 
> There was a recent discussion on IAEP with regards to the management
> of the upcoming election. Here is the proposed policy for this cycle:
> 
> Before September 1st, 2009, new member requests can be sent to members
> at sugarlabs dot org if they are not listed on
> [[Sugar_Labs/Initial_Members_List]] already. It should contain the
> following:
>       * Wiki/dev/irc username
>       * Explanation of their contribution
> I am currently on vacation, and as such will probably not tend to
> existing requests until the above date. I (along with Sebastian, who
> has also agreed to volunteer) should have a current-election-cycle
> list out by September 12, 2009. (if either of the dates above should
> be adjusted, that's fine with me, later is better)
> 
> Does this seem sensible?

I like the general idea, but let me offer the following criticism:

 * We need to state clearly what the criteria for selection is.
   Our current membership policy [1] is located in an obscure place.
   It could be moved to a separate page and linked from relevant
   pages (members list, etc)

   [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Governance#Sugar_Labs_Membership

 * Can we state that anyone who writes to members at sugarlabs.org
   will receive an answer within X days?  I'm concerned that potential
   members might be frustrated by silence.

 * Since two people (you and Sebastian) are volunteering for
   membership screening, how are they going to coordinate to avoid
   answering twice (or not at all)?  Something like an RT queue would
   seem useful, but installing an RT instancy only for this purpose
   seems overkill.

 * I'm looking at last year's membership list and I'm seeing a
   lot of people who disappeared a long time ago.  How are we
   going to clear old memberships?  Wouldn't it be better if we
   asked people to confirm their membership every year?  (asking
   for a small amount of money for membership would make the
   latter step more natural, but I'm not sure we want to do that
   at this time)

 * Is our wiki good enough as a membership management tool? Shouldn't
   we look at some specific application?  I could ask the FSF what
   they're using to manage their members.

 * We're only giving one week of advance notice to potential
   contributors in a period when people are generally on vacation
   Why couldn't we extend the deadline for submission closer
   to Sep 12?

I understand that there might be not enough time to address many of
these suggestions, and the current lightweight process you have proposed
might still be a good enough process for the present election.
Certainly better than last year's bootstrap.

BTW, thanks to you and Sebastian for coordinating this.

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/