Hi Michael, members, community!
Sharing my answers, thanks for the questions!
On 04.09.2020 08:17, Michael Meeks wrote:
...
* many MC members say they want to expand the membership.
Given that LibreOffice is rather static in terms of its
number of those involved in development: coding, UX,
translation, documentation etc.
+ how do you plan to gain lots of new contributors ?
Let me clarify what I think about "gain new contributors" and "expand
the membership".
About "gain new contributors", my perspective is regional. Years ago,
some Latin American members agreed we should do a step ahead to growing
our local community. In that moment, we saw we had many difficulties in
Brazil (including losing contributors), but many potential in the other
Latin American countries. Jumping to now, after a great first Latin
American Conference and also a great Conference in Spain (which was too
important for us too), we can say that our regional community (nowadays
we have said Ibero-American) is much better than before.
About "expand the membership", I think it's a natural result of the
"gain new contributors". Get *more* members is important (new people,
new ideas, new goals...) but, as I told in my candidacy statement, my
main personal focus as a candidate will be continue to work with the
mcm-script to provide better support to our members.
+ Do you think we expand the membership by accpting
more marginal contributions for membership cf.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Membership_Role#Contributing
+ what effect do you expect that to have on the project ?
I don't have difference (core or marginal) in my personal approach, as
we have a non-exhaustive list of types of contributions in §10 b.) of
the statutes. Of course the explicit types of contributions listed there
are our main references to approve or deny a new member in the MC, but,
in many cases, we should check applications in a wide perspective (for
example, organizing an official conference, advocating for the project
in a public/academic institution, managing a Facebook group with
thousands of participants, etc).
* If you've stood before, approximately how many people have
you encouraged to apply for membership ?
I'm going to answer in a wide perspective (as I'm currently a MC
member). I already encouraged a lot of people to apply, from many
different areas (counting successes and fails). No idea how many, but
I'm glad to remember two nice cases: a translator who simply didn't know
he could be a member and a documentation volunteer who had his
application denied in the past because the language barrier.
* How many applications have you voted against ?
As in the previous question, also an uncountable amount since 2016.
* Do you believe we should have a half-way house / badge
between membership and non-membership that encourages
a person, and gives the a path via more contribution to
achieve full membership ?
I think some actions like our Open Badges awards are interesting to
recognize contributions from non-members. But I believe they are more
related with Marketing/Communication than with the process of
membership. In other words, it's a recognition for the contributor and
can be a tool for the MC, but I don't believe that it should be in the
formal path to reach the membership.
* When there are no concrete metrics (such as translated strings,
code commits, wiki changes, ask comments, etc.) available to
decide on a person's contribution; what is best practice for
MC members vouching for their friends' contributions, and how
should other MC members validate that ?
Search for more information, asking for references to another members or
asking directly to the person. Discuss until reach a consensus. Suggest
he/she to reapply in future if contributions aren't clear.
* To what degree should the MC's decisions & discussion
be transparent (ie. publicly available) ?
I guess we could split it in small topics. I'm going to comment two
here.
About applications, I think we are fine publishing our minutes with the
current format (I mean renewed and new applications). I think we
shouldn't publish additional information (MC member votes or comments in
applications, for example) as they could be interpreted as personal
information. There are also some issues related with the European GDPR.
Unfortunately, K-J , who started to check it's implications in our
process, isn't longer with us.
About other process, I think it's mandatory sharing contents and
activities. I'm trying to do it with all aspects related with the
mcm-script (as I presented in Almería) and other current MC members are
doing the same with another topics.
* How do you believe we can improve the existing election
system - assuming the statutes can be tweaked ?
+ I'm interested in where we have the situation that
being too popular can stop you being able to
engage at all as a deputy - as we saw with
Miklos/Jona in the last MC election, and Kendy
in the last Board election.
I believe we can always improve a process, but I'm not comfortable to
answer a simple yes or no in this case, especially if it could imply in
changes in the statutes. If yes, we should check carefully not only all
possible issues (remembering that, in both cases mentioned, we didn't
have corner cases because one of the candidates involved decided to
resign before the final announce by the electoral body) but also if the
changes will be coherent according the German law.
Thanks for any answers =)
Michael.
Regards,
Gustavo.
--
Gustavo Buzzatti Pacheco, member of the Membership Committee
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin
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