en/glep/glep-0038.txt

GLEP: 38
Title: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project
Version: $Revision: $
Last-Modified: $Date: $
Author: Christian Hartmann <christian.hartmann at email.de>,
        Wernfried Haas <w.haas at xover.htu.tuwien.ac.at>.
Status: Draft
Type: Informational
Content-Type: text/x-rst
Created: 06-May-2005
Post-History: 17-Jun-2005


Abstract
========

Global moderators and site admins should also go through the mentoring process
and become official Gentoo staff.

Motivation
==========

At the time of writing the forums are apart from the recruiting process and 
people helping out there are not made an official part of Gentoo. This GLEP
aims on creating and establishing a recruitment and mentoring process for
moderators and site admins of forums.gentoo.org. By doing this we hopefully
achieve a (even) better moderation quality and stop the complaints about
moderators not being staff. Moderators and site admins do not need cvs
access.

Moderators and site admins are doing a hard job for the community as well as all
the other projects do but they get no voice in the gentoo internals. Recent events
such as the election of trustees or the new metastructure poll are effectively
affecting the forums, so the wish to be part of the decision as an equal member 
is present among the moderators.

Moderators are often a contact person between users and developers, so we
should try to improve the communication between these two groups of people. As
moderators are pretty much exposed to the public (forums users, but also used
as contact person for requests that should go to the PR department or the
trustees) they need to have some knowledge about Gentoo's internal structure
as well as contact to the other developers.

The current training process for new moderators works pretty well even though
there are no official guidelines how to do it. As part of this proposal a more
detailed procedure for the training process will be established to make it
more reproducable. It also gives us the possibility to document the things
happening already today in the current training process.

The status of the Gentoo Forums has been undefined for quite some time. Since
it is using the gentoo.org domain it should be considered an official project.
People working on an official project should be developers or staff following Gentoo's
general policy. At the moment the persons with direct access to the database
are developers. Being moderator could be considered an improved forums rank
that does not have impact on Gentoo's infrastructure, but since moderators and
administrators are able to delete, move and edit posts on the forum willingly,
their level of access should be considered developer like. Many users may not
be aware of the difference between moderators and developers, so the actions of a
moderator may represent Gentoo Linux to them anyway.

Specification
=============

To obtain a certain kind of quality assurance and to (create and) ensure that
upcoming moderators know about the forums guidelines a document and processes
will have to be created and established that the recruits need to follow.
This document (called `Moderators handbook/FAQ`_) will include the moderation guidelines 
as they are currently available in the moderators forum plus a FAQ that was created as 
a possible candidate for a forums-quiz. The guidelines and the FAQ should help the 
moderator to get some general information about how to moderate the forums.

Suggested procedure for becoming global moderator:
Existing moderators can suggest a user to become a moderator. The ability of the new 
moderator to deal with people in a kind way and to detect misplaced posts, etc usually 
also has been reviewed by the other moderators already since they can read his
previous posts and suggestions in the forums feedback threads.
If he accepts, he will become moderator on the forums. A bug will be filed on b.g.o 
containing information about the new moderator. Afterwards he must answer the staff 
quiz that will be revisited by devrel. The quiz then will be send to recruiters@g.o for 
revision.

The first month is supposed to be a test period, if the moderator
does not do anything in that time or messes up in another way, he will be
restored to his old user status. The mentor(s) and everyone of the forums team
are encouraged to help the new moderator if he is unsure how to deal with a
situation.

Rationale
=========

The process of aquiring new developers seems to work for the rest of Gentoo
Linux quite well. A mentoring system has been chosen since new moderators were
mentored unofficially by the other moderators anyway. This means more or less
writing down things that have been done already.
It was discussed to add a forums-specific quiz to the process of aquiring new 
moderators. 
Devrel's standing on that is that it is up to the moderators how a new moderator is 
chosen. Since the old process worked fine so far and some people among the moderators
didn't exactly like the idea of a quiz, we chose not to make one. A document containing the 
questions collected for the quiz in form of a FAQ together with the moderation 
guidelines seems to be a more feasible approach. The new moderators are supposed to 
read the FAQ as well as they had to take a quiz, so they will learn the information 
given in this document.

Backwards Compatibility
=======================

Most moderators are currently not staff members. Becoming a staff member is not mandatory
for existing moderators. If they want to become a staff member they need to take the
staff quiz. If they don't they just stay in their position as moderator without
becoming a staff member. 

Moderators who are currently inactive (Bodhisattva status) should be
considered as old moderators in case they come back. New moderators should
have to go through the mentoring process in any case as stated above.

Moderators in national forums: In our internal discussion it turned out that not
all moderators in the national forums are able to speak english well, which
would be a requirement to become a staff member. We decided that it would
counter productive to make it mandatory for them. Becoming a staff member is
optional for these moderators.

As a side effect of the discussion about the glep among the moderators 
as well as in discussions with other developers and devrel, it turned
out that the forums have never been assigned to a toplevel project in the 
general organization of the Gentoo project. Forums don't really seem to fit 
into one of the current categories as they are related to the infrastructure
and the documentation project. We suggest putting it in the other category 
or making a separate one for the forums. 

Reference Implementation
========================

- `Moderators handbook/FAQ`_
- `Becoming a developer`_
- `Staff quiz`_
- `Thread on gentoo-dev`_

..  _Moderators handbook/FAQ: http://curtis119.no-ip.org/forum-guide.xml
..  _Becoming a developer: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=1&chap=2
..  _Staff quiz: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/quiz/staff-quiz.txt
..  _Thread on gentoo-dev: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/28985

Copyright
=========

This document has been placed in the public domain.

1	g2boojum	1.1	GLEP: 38
2			Title: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project
3			Version: $Revision: $
4			Last-Modified: $Date: $
5			Author: Christian Hartmann <christian.hartmann at email.de>,
6			Wernfried Haas <w.haas at xover.htu.tuwien.ac.at>.
7			Status: Draft
8			Type: Informational
9			Content-Type: text/x-rst
10			Created: 06-May-2005
11			Post-History: 17-Jun-2005
12
13
14			Abstract
15			========
16
17			Global moderators and site admins should also go through the mentoring process
18			and become official Gentoo staff.
19
20			Motivation
21			==========
22
23			At the time of writing the forums are apart from the recruiting process and
24			people helping out there are not made an official part of Gentoo. This GLEP
25			aims on creating and establishing a recruitment and mentoring process for
26			moderators and site admins of forums.gentoo.org. By doing this we hopefully
27			achieve a (even) better moderation quality and stop the complaints about
28			moderators not being staff. Moderators and site admins do not need cvs
29			access.
30
31			Moderators and site admins are doing a hard job for the community as well as all
32			the other projects do but they get no voice in the gentoo internals. Recent events
33			such as the election of trustees or the new metastructure poll are effectively
34			affecting the forums, so the wish to be part of the decision as an equal member
35			is present among the moderators.
36
37			Moderators are often a contact person between users and developers, so we
38			should try to improve the communication between these two groups of people. As
39			moderators are pretty much exposed to the public (forums users, but also used
40			as contact person for requests that should go to the PR department or the
41			trustees) they need to have some knowledge about Gentoo's internal structure
42			as well as contact to the other developers.
43
44			The current training process for new moderators works pretty well even though
45			there are no official guidelines how to do it. As part of this proposal a more
46			detailed procedure for the training process will be established to make it
47			more reproducable. It also gives us the possibility to document the things
48			happening already today in the current training process.
49
50			The status of the Gentoo Forums has been undefined for quite some time. Since
51			it is using the gentoo.org domain it should be considered an official project.
52			People working on an official project should be developers or staff following Gentoo's
53			general policy. At the moment the persons with direct access to the database
54			are developers. Being moderator could be considered an improved forums rank
55			that does not have impact on Gentoo's infrastructure, but since moderators and
56			administrators are able to delete, move and edit posts on the forum willingly,
57			their level of access should be considered developer like. Many users may not
58			be aware of the difference between moderators and developers, so the actions of a
59			moderator may represent Gentoo Linux to them anyway.
60
61			Specification
62			=============
63
64			To obtain a certain kind of quality assurance and to (create and) ensure that
65			upcoming moderators know about the forums guidelines a document and processes
66			will have to be created and established that the recruits need to follow.
67			This document (called `Moderators handbook/FAQ`_) will include the moderation guidelines
68			as they are currently available in the moderators forum plus a FAQ that was created as
69			a possible candidate for a forums-quiz. The guidelines and the FAQ should help the
70			moderator to get some general information about how to moderate the forums.
71
72			Suggested procedure for becoming global moderator:
73			Existing moderators can suggest a user to become a moderator. The ability of the new
74			moderator to deal with people in a kind way and to detect misplaced posts, etc usually
75			also has been reviewed by the other moderators already since they can read his
76			previous posts and suggestions in the forums feedback threads.
77			If he accepts, he will become moderator on the forums. A bug will be filed on b.g.o
78			containing information about the new moderator. Afterwards he must answer the staff
79			quiz that will be revisited by devrel. The quiz then will be send to recruiters@g.o for
80			revision.
81
82			The first month is supposed to be a test period, if the moderator
83			does not do anything in that time or messes up in another way, he will be
84			restored to his old user status. The mentor(s) and everyone of the forums team
85			are encouraged to help the new moderator if he is unsure how to deal with a
86			situation.
87
88			Rationale
89			=========
90
91			The process of aquiring new developers seems to work for the rest of Gentoo
92			Linux quite well. A mentoring system has been chosen since new moderators were
93			mentored unofficially by the other moderators anyway. This means more or less
94			writing down things that have been done already.
95			It was discussed to add a forums-specific quiz to the process of aquiring new
96			moderators.
97			Devrel's standing on that is that it is up to the moderators how a new moderator is
98			chosen. Since the old process worked fine so far and some people among the moderators
99			didn't exactly like the idea of a quiz, we chose not to make one. A document containing the
100			questions collected for the quiz in form of a FAQ together with the moderation
101			guidelines seems to be a more feasible approach. The new moderators are supposed to
102			read the FAQ as well as they had to take a quiz, so they will learn the information
103			given in this document.
104
105			Backwards Compatibility
106			=======================
107
108			Most moderators are currently not staff members. Becoming a staff member is not mandatory
109			for existing moderators. If they want to become a staff member they need to take the
110			staff quiz. If they don't they just stay in their position as moderator without
111			becoming a staff member.
112
113			Moderators who are currently inactive (Bodhisattva status) should be
114			considered as old moderators in case they come back. New moderators should
115			have to go through the mentoring process in any case as stated above.
116
117			Moderators in national forums: In our internal discussion it turned out that not
118			all moderators in the national forums are able to speak english well, which
119			would be a requirement to become a staff member. We decided that it would
120			counter productive to make it mandatory for them. Becoming a staff member is
121			optional for these moderators.
122
123			As a side effect of the discussion about the glep among the moderators
124			as well as in discussions with other developers and devrel, it turned
125			out that the forums have never been assigned to a toplevel project in the
126			general organization of the Gentoo project. Forums don't really seem to fit
127			into one of the current categories as they are related to the infrastructure
128			and the documentation project. We suggest putting it in the other category
129			or making a separate one for the forums.
130
131			Reference Implementation
132			========================
133
134			- `Moderators handbook/FAQ`_
135			- `Becoming a developer`_
136			- `Staff quiz`_
137			- `Thread on gentoo-dev`_
138
139			.. _Moderators handbook/FAQ: http://curtis119.no-ip.org/forum-guide.xml
140			.. _Becoming a developer: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=1&chap=2
141			.. _Staff quiz: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/quiz/staff-quiz.txt
142			.. _Thread on gentoo-dev: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/28985
143
144			Copyright
145			=========
146
147			This document has been placed in the public domain.
148