[kde-community] Community Working Group Report to the e.V. AGM 2013

[Valorie Zimmerman]

Hi folks,

This is the Report of the Community Working Group for the past year,
submitted to the Annual General Meeting of the e.V. immediately
preceeding this year's Akademy in Bilbao, Spain. Discussion of the
issues presented in the report are welcome on this list. -v


CWG Report 2013

Our year began with a report from the sysadmins about how they worked
out a problem with enthusiastic bug-triaging, which clogged the mail
servers. I hope that the Bug Squad is aware that triaging *many* bugs
at one time can create problems. The take-away lesson:

"The "Change several bugs at once" tool should be used especially
sparingly, and never for an excessive amount (more than 25) of bugs.

"If you need a change made which affects a large number of bugs, and
this change is the same across those bugs - please file a Sysadmin
request and we will make the change at the database level or in some
other manner which will avoid the emails being sent out."

It was interesting that we got a request for the link to the Krita
manual. Perhaps in future these sort of inquiries will be sent to the
new Community list? It is my personal hope that this list will get
some vigorous promo in the coming year. I think it can be great.

We dealt with one matter on a number of different levels, because all
of us wear more (and some of us many) hats. I personally felt a lot of
tension during one such incident, and was not only relieved by the
outcome, but pleased that all of us involved could rise above
emotions, and work out a solution that worked for everyone.

We have an on-going problem with one of our KDE community members, who
feels that discouragement is a method which should be used as a method
of shaping the progress of KDE. I've had a conversation with this
person on IRC, and that really is his philosophy behind his harsh
statements and criticism of actions and even patches of which he
disapproves.

This leaves us in the CWG feeling a bit helpless. We've expressed
quite strongly how destructive this behavior is, and asked for a
change. Right now, that is all we can do in this situation. We
actually lost a member of our team over this (Ingo Malchow); it
discouraged him so much he asked to leave the CWG. We would like to
respectfully ask the Board to think more about what can be done to
deal with people who are contributing code, but driving away other
contributors by their harsh behavior. Since this report will be
submitted to the membership of the e.V., we would ask for your ideas
as well. This is not just our problem; it is widespread in all free
software projects.

Shorts: We fell behind in our effort to "find the unloved" and promote
them. We'll do better this year.

We were unable to attend our Board call. I hope we get another chance.

Our Office Hours seem to have hit a slow time; last one had no
attendees but Lydia and I.

We have discussed recruiting not just beginners, but those who are
already experts in their fields. At the present moment, both art &
design, and sysadmin people could make a huge contribution to KDE. How
do we reach these experts, and draw them into our community? Perhaps
this discussion should widen.

Respectfully submitted,

Valorie Zimmerman for the CWG

More about the e.V.: http://ev.kde.org/
More about the Community Working Group: http://ev.kde.org/workinggroups/cwg.php
-- 
http://about.me/valoriez