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Grex > Helpers > #140: Grex System Problems - Spring 2005 | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 457 responses total. |
mary
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response 363 of 457:
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Jun 2 20:04 UTC 2005 |
Is this the part where we're being nice to staff?
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jep
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response 364 of 457:
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Jun 2 20:07 UTC 2005 |
re resp:363: I see offers of help, and tod and happyboy being
irrelevantly trivial which is normal for them. What do you think would
help?
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happyboy
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response 365 of 457:
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Jun 2 20:14 UTC 2005 |
you just responded to yourself, nerse ratchet
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naftee
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response 366 of 457:
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Jun 2 20:29 UTC 2005 |
would you trust a gay man with your children ?
would you trust TWENEX with your COMPUTER ?!
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tod
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response 367 of 457:
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Jun 2 20:36 UTC 2005 |
re #363
WHAT staff? Why is it staff that has the authority to decide who can
volunteer and who can't? Why doesn't the BoD step up to the plate and make
some management decisions instead of letting things drag on over and over?
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mary
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response 368 of 457:
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Jun 2 21:01 UTC 2005 |
The board has always been of the opinion that we're not going to micro-
manage staff. That has worked pretty well in the past. We've encouraged,
asked what we could do to help, and facilitated as we could. Staff, on
the other hand, has, for the most part, never trucked off on their own
without consulting with the board and the membership on important issues.
It's been teamwork.
Every once of people skills I own is telling me now is not the time to
change that policy. You may disagree. You may want to run for the board
next time around, stating that's how you'd do business, and see how it
goes.
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mary
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response 369 of 457:
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Jun 2 21:02 UTC 2005 |
s/ounce/once
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tod
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response 370 of 457:
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Jun 2 21:18 UTC 2005 |
I understand not wanting a barn full of admins running amok and fscking up
the system but what if the opposite is happening and the barn is empty?
Right now, newuser is defunct. There is "one" staff person that everyone is
aware of that can fix it. That "one" staff person is tight on time and has
had health concerns. Is that how you want to do business with Grex?
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nharmon
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response 371 of 457:
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Jun 2 21:22 UTC 2005 |
> You may want to run for the board next time around, stating that's how
> you'd do business, and see how it goes.
Ancient chinese proverb speaks of being carefull of what one wishes for.
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glenda
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response 372 of 457:
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Jun 2 22:31 UTC 2005 |
STeve is working on the problem, he just called to ask me if I needed the car
tomorrow so that he can work on it tonight for as long as it takes to get it
done. Even if it means he misses his ride to get enough sleep to be useful
at work and has to drive himself in tomorrow. He is sorry for not getting
it done sooner. He will also be showing me how to do such things so that I
can help more in the future. (Mary missed me on the staff list.)
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rcurl
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response 373 of 457:
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Jun 2 22:58 UTC 2005 |
This is a good beginning for the immediate problem, but it seems there is
still need for a longer range solution, which is the development of additional
volunteer staff members.
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steve
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response 374 of 457:
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Jun 2 23:48 UTC 2005 |
Indeed, more are needed.
I am getting the data right now to finish the fixing of master.passwd.
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drew
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response 375 of 457:
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Jun 3 00:30 UTC 2005 |
When exactly did newuser go fubar? Was it coincident with going to the new
system? Was it coincident with moving into the co-lo?
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nharmon
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response 376 of 457:
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Jun 3 00:50 UTC 2005 |
I believe it had something to do with a drive going bad, and the password file
being messed up.
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cross
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response 377 of 457:
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Jun 3 03:40 UTC 2005 |
This response has been erased.
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slynne
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response 378 of 457:
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Jun 3 03:50 UTC 2005 |
I have a feeling that both glenda and steve would agree that it isnt
fair to dump everything in their lap. I am sure they will correct me if
I am wrong.
I agree that the lack of staff is a board issue. I am not sure exactly
what the solution is here. I want to make people feel welcomed enough to
feel that they can volunteer to be on staff without being in some sort
of in-crowd. I want the staff to let those people who volunteer do things.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is security. The staff tend to allow
people they know onto staff because those are the people they know they
can trust. It is true that the best way to become staff on grex is to be
invited. It is an "in crowd" on staff. On the board too I suppose
although it is probably easier to get on the board than it is to get
onto staff.
I really dont know what the best solution is though. We could always
double the staff's pay ;)
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aruba
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response 379 of 457:
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Jun 3 03:52 UTC 2005 |
Re #375: Drew - the problems with newuser are more recent than either the
move or the change to NewGrex.
jep's assessment of the staff situation in #342 (I think) was pretty
accurate a couple of years ago. But we definitely passed the point where
the board felt it was a good idea to depend on STeve and Marcus to fix
things. A few years ago we acquired 3 or 4 new staff members, and we really
hoped that would solve the problem. Unfortunately, for various reasons,
we're largely back where we were. When this latest crisis came up, for
instance, no one but STeve stepped up to work on it, and then he got it half
fixed and moved on to other crises, leaving Grex in limbo.
We certainly need more staff, and it's certainly true that there have been
many barriers to getting onto the staff. We need a procedure for giving
potential staff members some responsibility to see how they do, then
"promoting" them if they do well. But the board/staff also needs the
discretion to ignore applications from people who are clearly just trying to
cause trouble.
There's a needle to be thread there.
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aruba
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response 380 of 457:
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Jun 3 03:53 UTC 2005 |
(Lynne slipped in.)
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glenda
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response 381 of 457:
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Jun 3 07:36 UTC 2005 |
Re #354: Because Glenda is burned out from almost 6 years of intensive
computer classes and needs a break, that is one of the reasons she is not
working regular classes, just the 4 one week long special sessions this
summer. She is going to spend most of her time working on the organizing the
house, get her spinning wheels and looms up and working, stitching, beading,
and other general crafting, and reading fiction and crafting books. The most
technical reading will be SciFi (my favorite genre). The only real computer
work I am planning on doing is building the computer that I have had
components for since just before the emergency surgery in December 2004. It
is a 64 bit processor machine with a minimum of 250G hard drive (maybe more),
a gig of memory and will run OpenBsd as main OS, Net and Free BSDs and SuSe
to play with, haven't decided whether it will have a small windows area or
not. Some of my needlework, weaving, and beading software only runs on
windows since most of the people using it aren't really computer literate and
only use windows.
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scholar
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response 382 of 457:
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Jun 3 08:33 UTC 2005 |
Right, because computer literacy is defined by Unix.
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jadecat
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response 383 of 457:
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Jun 3 12:44 UTC 2005 |
In regards Cross's comment in #377- it does seem that more information
needs to be shared between current staff members.
It's hard for other staffers to help when the only one that knows isn't
sharing info. I've seen Cross ask several times, in this item, for more
information on what's wrong so he (or someone else can help) but
haven't seen ANY indication that STeve (or glenda) is sharing any of
that. Maybe this is happening in staff e-mail, but I would think that
if it was Cross wouldn't be here repeatedly asking for more info.
Right now I'm one of those people that can telnet in to my account but
can't access the mooncat account via Backtalk (which makes me glad I
created this account on a whim a few months ago).
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jep
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response 384 of 457:
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Jun 3 13:42 UTC 2005 |
It was a lot easier for me to write my perspective about how Grex is
limited by lack of trust than it is to overcome that limitation.
I think resp:379 is part of the right approach for bringing in
additional volunteers to the staff. There's also a need for some sort
of training procedure to bring new staffers up to speed with the
philosophy and practices of the staff. That will require time and
effort from someone on the staff.
It's also going to require patience and flexibility from the staff and
all of Grex, because new people coming in are going to have their own
ways of doing things. It's not fair to expect them to suppress their
personalities and the techniques they have used in the past in other
contexts to volunteer for the staff of Grex. They do have to fit into
the team which exists, but the team has to adjust, too.
In the short term, it's easier for the existing staff to just do things
themselves to get by, but right now it seems apparent the short term
doesn't last forever.
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twenex
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response 385 of 457:
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Jun 3 14:55 UTC 2005 |
Hear, hear.
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naftee
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response 386 of 457:
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Jun 3 15:36 UTC 2005 |
has steVE still not told cross what is wrong ?! i believe cross is available
to fix.
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tod
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response 387 of 457:
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Jun 3 16:02 UTC 2005 |
Cross is not in the Burns Family "circle of trust"
I've got my EYES on you, Focker. ;)
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