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Grex > Coop12 > #194: Motion to encourage staff delegation of responsibility | |
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Message |
other
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Motion to encourage staff delegation of responsibility
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May 31 20:52 UTC 2003 |
A motion:
In order to alter the perception and reality of Grex's culture of
nonresponsiveness to less-than-emergency priority requests, Grex's root
staff are hereby expressly permitted and encouraged to unilaterally
appoint people to non-root admin positions, subject to the appointing
root staff person's judgement about the good character and motives of
potential appointees.
Submitted at ~5:00pm EDT on 31 May 2003.
Discussion will conclude and voting on the proposal shall commence
at ~5:00pm EDT on 14 June 2003, with thanks to the voteadm.
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| 120 responses total. |
jmsaul
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response 1 of 120:
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May 31 21:45 UTC 2003 |
You might want to require them to notify the other root staff when they do
it.
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gelinas
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response 2 of 120:
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May 31 22:00 UTC 2003 |
I like the proposal.
I don't think explicitly requiring notification is necessary, since we
should be able to rely upon staff to keep each other informed of their
actions.
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other
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response 3 of 120:
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May 31 22:28 UTC 2003 |
I agree with #2. The whole point is that if we can trust people not to
abuse root access, we can certainly trust them to delegate responsibly.
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cross
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response 4 of 120:
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Jun 1 00:17 UTC 2003 |
Trust has less to do with it than just keeping people informed. Joe's
probably right that they'll do that anyway, but it wouldn't hurt to make
it explicit (or at least say they're encouraged or something).
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jmsaul
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response 5 of 120:
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Jun 1 00:53 UTC 2003 |
It wasn't about trust. It was about not having two roots fill the same
position with two different people. It's about avoiding duplication of
effort, which seemed like an obvious possible consequence.
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gelinas
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response 6 of 120:
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Jun 1 03:11 UTC 2003 |
Right. But how is this different from all of the other things the staff
does? Yes, staff *should* keep one another informed, both to prevent
duplication of effort and to make sure that things actually do get done.
I don't *object* to adding an explicit requirement for notification to
this proposal; I simply consider it unnecessary. On the other hand,
the question has been raised, so maybe it is necessary.
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jmsaul
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response 7 of 120:
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Jun 1 04:02 UTC 2003 |
<shrug> Just mentioning it. No biggie.
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carson
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response 8 of 120:
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Jun 1 06:39 UTC 2003 |
(Eric's on the board, which IMO would be the better avenue for this
proposal. does this really need a member vote?)
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other
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response 9 of 120:
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Jun 1 07:08 UTC 2003 |
What's wrong with duplication of labor, in this context? If the job's
not getting done, and suddenly two or four people have been delegated the
responsibility, that's still a whole lot better than none. I think the
additional requirement is extraneous and unnecessary.
I'd like to keep the proposal as narrow and tailored as it is in order to
accomplish its goal. I'm trying to lighten the load here, not increase
it.
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remmers
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response 10 of 120:
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Jun 1 17:22 UTC 2003 |
The proposal is pretty close to something the Board passed a few years ago:
Staff Membership - November 16, 1994
------------------------------------
Motion (remmers, srw):
----------------------
Staff with permanent root access may at its discretion grant
specific resources to qualified individuals for the purpose of
performing work that is beneficial to Grex. Examples of such
resources would be write access to selected directories in
order to modify data files or to install software. In the the
event of an emergency, temporary root access may be granted by
any permanent root.
Permanent root access, access to the staff conference, and
access to the "baff" mailing list shall be with the advice and
consent of the Board.
Basically, the motion says that a certain level of privilege requires
Board approval, but short of that, staff may, on its own, appoint
volunteers to do useful stuff and grant them the resources to do it.
Although I support the idea behind Eric's proposal, I don't think
the proposal is needed since the policy is already in place.
(See http://cyberspace.org/local/grex/policy.html for a list of
policy decisions both by the Board and by member vote. Jan
compiled this summary from archive of minutes a couple of years
ago.)
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jmsaul
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response 11 of 120:
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Jun 1 21:22 UTC 2003 |
So... why aren't staff just going ahead and doing this, then?
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gull
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response 12 of 120:
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Jun 2 12:39 UTC 2003 |
Grexian inertia.
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flem
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response 13 of 120:
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Jun 2 18:05 UTC 2003 |
Yeah, I was gonna ask how this proposal was any different from the status quo
in terms of what staff *can* do. I don't think it is.
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janc
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response 14 of 120:
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Jun 2 20:32 UTC 2003 |
Well, news to me that Grex staff has that discretion (though I should know
better if I compiled that page). Wow, I see we are also authorized to
institute disk quotas. That's good, because we mean to turn them on on the
new Grex system. If we're quick, we may be able to get that policy
implemented less than ten years after it was passed.
OK, someone should go appoint a partyadm.
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carson
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response 15 of 120:
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Jun 2 21:11 UTC 2003 |
(there's certainly several candidates...)
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jmsaul
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response 16 of 120:
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Jun 3 00:31 UTC 2003 |
I guess I shouldn't have worried about staff members rushing out and
appointing too many people. ;-)
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other
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response 17 of 120:
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Jun 3 02:46 UTC 2003 |
re #10: I think that the policy as worded now is inadequately explicit and
insufficiently encouraging. It is never a bad thing to clearly and
specifically state a policy if you want it to be observed.
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flem
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response 18 of 120:
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Jun 3 14:59 UTC 2003 |
I think the real problem here is that staff has too much to do and not enough
time/motivation to do it. This is not a problem that can be solved with a
clearly worded policy.
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other
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response 19 of 120:
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Jun 3 16:12 UTC 2003 |
On the contrary, the whole purpose of the proposed policy is to spread that
workload more easily to a larger pool of individuals.
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cross
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response 20 of 120:
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Jun 3 17:03 UTC 2003 |
As is the idea of adding more staff members. At least three people,
including myself, have volunteered. I was under the impression that
this issue would be discussed at the board meeting last night. What's
happened with it?
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gelinas
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response 21 of 120:
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Jun 3 17:32 UTC 2003 |
Staff is still discussing candidates to present to the Board.
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