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Grex > Coop12 > #194: Motion to encourage staff delegation of responsibility | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 120 responses total. |
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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aruba
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response 22 of 120:
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Jun 3 17:41 UTC 2003 |
We discussed the matter some at the meeting. Staff was not ready to make
any recommendations to the board, so we didn't take any action. THe staff
plans to discuss adding new people at its next meeting, which is (we think)
next week.
We also discussed how we could have a better system of mentoring new staff,
so that there is some sensible track toward acquiring the necessary level of
trust. No one had any brilliant ideas on how to go about it. There was a
general consensus, though, that we don't do a good job of it now.
One thing that seemed to be a good idea is to make a list of staff's current
tasks, and known future projects, so that there is something to give new
people to do. Of course, no one wanted to invest the time to make such a
list. But it might happen - some staff member will have to say where we
left that.
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flem
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response 23 of 120:
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Jun 3 18:14 UTC 2003 |
re resp:19 - allow me to clarify. The problem, as it relates specifically
to non-essential maintenance tasks that do not require root access, is that
because staff is busy, it doesn't get around to appointing other less busy
people to to those non-essential non-root tasks. It's not because they're
not allowed to, or because they aren't "encouraged" to, it's because they're
too busy. Hence, the proposal in #0 will not change the status quo at all.
There are two things that I think we can do that will actually improve the
status quo at this point:
1) Someone make that party channel already, so that at least the
immediate issue will be less pressing. Or make Eric or someone
else a partyadm, or whatever.
2) Wait for staff to have a staff meeting and possibly recommend new
staff members, or at least have a somewhat better idea of how to go
about adding new staff members.
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other
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response 24 of 120:
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Jun 3 22:29 UTC 2003 |
I definitely did not get that the staff don't have the time to delegate, but
rather that there is not currently the common perception that staff may
actually do so at their discretion. The discussion revealed that such used
to be the case, doesn't seem to be now, and that there is no good reason why
it shouldn't be that way again.
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flem
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response 25 of 120:
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Jun 4 15:45 UTC 2003 |
Hmm, that's not exactly the impression that I got from that discussion, but
I'm having a hard time articulating in what way my impression differs.
I think everyone is in agreement that it would be a Good Thing if staff
delegated responsibility for certain maintenance tasks, such as party channel
administration, at their discretion. That's not in dispute. Furthermore,
it seems pretty clear that, in light of the resolution remmers posted above,
staff is at liberty to do so right now. The fact that this does not seem to
happen is arguably a problem, but -- here's my key point -- I don't think the
proposal under discussion will help to solve that problem.
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carson
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response 26 of 120:
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Jun 4 17:29 UTC 2003 |
(so, what happens if this proposal goes up for a vote and is defeated?
would that invalidate the previous policy, which it largely duplicates?)
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other
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response 27 of 120:
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Jun 4 18:00 UTC 2003 |
No. We don't have that kind of precedental system. The vote on a proposal
is exclusively on the proposal as worded at the time of the vote.
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jmsaul
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response 28 of 120:
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Jun 5 00:39 UTC 2003 |
Why doesn't some staff member just go ahead and appoint a partyadm?
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jp2
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response 29 of 120:
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Jun 5 00:57 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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janc
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response 30 of 120:
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Jun 5 02:31 UTC 2003 |
I've proposed that we have a staff meeting real soon, with the discussion
of staff candidates as a top priority and with the discussion of
the new Grex as the second priority. We didn't get a date set yet.
Someone needs to give that process a kick in the rear - see if we can
get a decent number of people to agree to a date.
Why don't I go out and appoint a partyadm? Well, there were three
or four candidates, and I'd probably have to think of a good reason
for choosing one. I don't have the brain space for that right now.
Aside from a whole lot going on in my life, and some amount of stuff
going in in my work, I'm putting in a lot of hours on the new Grex.
I don't want to deal with this too.
Probably there is a systemic problem here too. Most staffers like to
do some talking to other staffers before taking any action in an area
that isn't in their usual area of operations. This is in principle
a good thing. The problem is that not many staffers are very good
at communicating these days. Some don't read the staff conference.
Some don't read the staff email (I just recently discovered the my
staff email was broken, so I'm not innocent). Staff meetings are no
longer frequent. So, to a large degree, we can't talk to each other.
So we are reluctant to make any decisions.
We should have a staff meeting. If only we could talk to each other
enough to pick a meeting time.
Maybe we need to reinstitute regular staff meetings. Maybe we need
a "chief of staff" whose job is to talk to all the other staff people
and keep communications working. Or an alternate title might be better -
"Grex catherd" maybe.
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spooked
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response 31 of 120:
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Jun 5 02:53 UTC 2003 |
I, as a staffer, wish to appoint Eric (other) as a partyadm if he wants
the position.
What partyadm-specific privileges do you need Eric? I should be competent
enough to give (or negotiate with others) the privileges he needs for the
responsibility.
Anyone disagree? Beat me down now...
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other
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response 32 of 120:
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Jun 5 02:59 UTC 2003 |
I thought partyadm was a group and all necessary privileges were part and
parcel of group membership, or at least came automatically with it.
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carson
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response 33 of 120:
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Jun 5 03:04 UTC 2003 |
re #30: (why pick just one? there's "five" now!)
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other
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response 34 of 120:
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Jun 5 03:15 UTC 2003 |
You know... if there are five partyadms and requests are going unresponded
to, then what possible harm could there be in having nine partyadms if
four additional people have volunteered and seem by all reasonable account
to be responsible people?
And just so I'm sure I understand the process, would someone please tell
me just exactly what it takes to actually provide adm privileges to a user
for party, lynx, cf, &c.? I'm of the impression that in most cases it is
simply a matter of running a command which adds the user to the specified
admin group -- a process which I estimate takes less than a minute at the
extreme, possibly including the time it takes to log in as root, if
necessary.
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cross
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response 35 of 120:
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Jun 5 03:36 UTC 2003 |
Aw, for crying out loud, people, just add other to the damn group. Who
would possibly object to that?
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spooked
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response 36 of 120:
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Jun 5 08:07 UTC 2003 |
I'm about to add other, gelinas, and carson to partyadm.
Now get to work :)
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spooked
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response 37 of 120:
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Jun 5 08:24 UTC 2003 |
I've added other,gelinas,carson to group membership of partyadm in
/etc/group so you should be able to read/write/execute the appropriate
files bestowed upon the partyadm role. I'm not sure where there is good
documentation on what you need to do - I think other already has some.
A good person to ask about partyadm stuff is valerie. Remember, as
scott pointed out there isn't much demand for party admin stuff these
days so don't expect to be too busy - but, if requests do come up, at
least we will have some active partyadm's again.
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gelinas
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response 38 of 120:
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Jun 5 12:50 UTC 2003 |
Thank you, Sir. Now if some kind soul would add us to the partyadm mail
group, things should be just peachy.
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janc
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response 39 of 120:
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Jun 5 13:21 UTC 2003 |
Thanks Mic.
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janc
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response 40 of 120:
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Jun 5 13:29 UTC 2003 |
I don't know if there is any partyadm documentation as such. Reading 'man
party' would likely be a good starting point.
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