Re: community managers

[Fabiana Simões <fabianapsimoes gmail com>]

I'm not really sure about the effectiveness of this approach. I think addressing these external problems in such a micro level - as in, answering comments and pieces of news - is very likely to create more noise and, possibly, more misunderstanding about the project. 

What I think might be a better solution is to, as much as possible, have one proper, well-thought and cohesive piece of feedback per issue we want to address. I think it's really important to allow us to take some time to, given a 
certain issue, strengthen our position within the community, before 
getting ourselves out there in the wild. Maybe it could be good to have those volunteers mostly "listening" to the buzz and logging it, in order to more easily measure feedbacks/identify problems, and then properly craft an "official" answer to them, establishing one "official" communication channel and, therefore, lessening the noise. 

The matter of how to build this understanding within the community (so that we can turn it into those "official" answers) could also be addressed from this log, using it as a starting point for analysis and then turning the main critical points into internal discussions, before giving any feedback to the external community.

Anyway, this might not be the best solution, but it's just an alternative to addressing problems in a micro level, what I think might generate more noise and misunderstandings.

Best,
Fabiana

On 14 November 2012 18:59, Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me> wrote:

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 12:23 PM, Mathias Hasselmann <mathias hasselmann gmx de> wrote:

Am Montag, den 12.11.2012, 15:17 -0800 schrieb Sriram Ramkrishna:

> Greetings!
>
> I know that we have a bunch of new people who joined the list.  We
> haven't done any thing to use you people.  Sadly, an epic failure on
> our part.
>
> But I am looking for some good people who can fill the role of
> community manager.  Clearly, we have a problem relating to our user
> base and some of the decisions have become more controversial than it
> needs to be.

As you point out, community managers basically work on improving
communication in projects with separated circles of participants,
like silently working in-house developers, and a wider community
of outsiders. Do we really have such situation in GNOME?

We mostly have a problem externally.  But I think we have a situation internally.  Resolving the situation will help the community to scale up.
 

What would be the inner circle then?

The inner circle would likely be module maintainers.  They are the core team, followed by the release team,  designers, translators and everyone.  I would like community enthusiastic to be  on equal level with this second circle.

How did it happen?

I think it's a natural organization.  There is nothing wrong with this model.  We're just trying to get the communication right.
 

Do we really want to consolidate such unfortunate situation, or should
that inner circle rather be broken again?

There is no issue with core team or anything else.  In fact, thanks to World of GNOME, I know more of what's going on with design and modules than I ever have.  Our contacts with the general populace needs work.

Do people feel there is a looming issue with how team members communicate internally?  I never felt that.

sri
 

Ciao,
Mathias

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