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Grex > Coop13 > #365: The Staff and Board Alert Item | |
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| 25 new of 92 responses total. |
tod
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response 51 of 92:
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Oct 11 00:23 UTC 2006 |
re #48
Naturally, no one will fire any grex staff simply because things are
documented. But then there is the fact that writing documentation is
kind of a pain in the neck. It is great when people do it but actually
getting people to do it is another thing altogether.
I sympathize with your descriptions but I hesitate to say that we shouldn't
ask staff to put a blip in the system problems item in Agora for say things
like reboots or other obvious interruptions. I've asked several times for
a who/what after the system comes back online and don't think it should be
necessary to ask. A person with root privilege is entrusted by the Board who
is entrusted by the membership to keep its asset useful. If somebody brings
the system up then we should at least get a status of Grex's condition.
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slynne
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response 52 of 92:
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Oct 11 00:44 UTC 2006 |
resp: 50 I am just pointing out that writing technical documentation is
not most people's idea of a good time. Not only that, sometimes people
have real reasons for NOT writing documentation. Since I have no way of
knowing what is going on in the heads of current staff members, I just
used a personal anecdote to illustrate why sometimes people have an
interest in keeping knowledge to themselves.
So the question becomes, how do we motivate people to write
documentation and mentor other staff people?
As it happens, I dont currently have an answer to that question. I do
know that when it comes to motivation, most people respond more
positively to the carrot than they do to the stick. So you will forgive
me if I dont take your approach. I see an end where people donate lots
of time and money to grex because they think grex is worth it and they
get something positive for their efforts (a good feeling perhaps). I
dont, however, know how to get there.
That might make me not well-suited to being on the board but that is a
moot point anyways since I dont agree with that point enough to cause me
to resign from the board. I am also not eligible for re-election when my
term is up and I can honestly say that there is at least a part of me
that looks forward to joining the ranks of those who get to criticize
and make OBVIOUS suggestions like "we need documentation" without having
to worry about actually having to put any effort into making that
happen.
resp:51 I think it is ok for us to ask that staff put something in the
systems problems item or something in the motd. But I dont think we
should require it. One of my fears if we did that is that grex might
crash and someone might think something along the lines of "I have time
to run over and reboot it but I dont have time to log on and put
something in the motd or an item and I dont want to deal with people
being angry that I didnt inform them so I'll get to it later when I have
more time."
My other big fear is what if the board requires such a thing and staff
simply ignores it? What a negative and terrible position that would be,
huh? Because well, you know, punishment works real well with a volunteer
staff.
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slynne
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response 53 of 92:
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Oct 11 00:59 UTC 2006 |
Oh and btw, I know my tone is not the greatest up there. I do appreciate
people's suggestions and input. It does get frustrating sometimes though
because *of course* it would be nice to have updates for our users and
documentation and more staff than we can shake a stick at and loads of
people willing to serve on the board and lots of paying members and
everyone getting warm fuzzy feelings and a pony too while we are at it.
Of course all of those things are things that would make Grex strong and
healthy, but truthfully, I cant think of a way of really getting those
things other than making Grex a full time job for me and others.
Frankly, I dont want to commit that kind of time and energy to Grex. A
few hours a month is about what I am willing to give. I would love it if
there were others willing to give more. I would resign from the board in
a heart beat if I thought for one moment that my being on the board was
preventing someone who could do the job better from being on the board
in my place.
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cross
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response 54 of 92:
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Oct 11 01:02 UTC 2006 |
I think that slynne is a pretty good board member, actually; at least she's
willing to listen to suggestions.
The thing is, after you reach a certain point, you need some sort of process
to make things sane. Otherwise, it becomes a free-for-all; this sorta how
it worked on the Sun, and it sorta worked because the OS had been EOL'ed, so
it didn't matter what changes grex made to the basic system. As long as
they backed it up and could get it back in the event of a crash, it was ok,
since it wasn't like they had to worry about merging those changes into a
future version of the operating system (since there wouldn't be one). Grex
got into the, ``I'll change this; maybe tell people, maybe not...''
mentality. The situation now is different: the OS is supported and actively
developed. It requires some maintenance. The staff environment is
different.
Unfortunately, no one is willing to stand up to staff and say, ``hey, people
depend on this service. You need to be more transparant. You need to
document what you do.'' They should. Because people *do* depend on this
service. And if individual staff members don't like that, then they should
be thanked for their time and released from their duties and obligations as
a grex staff member. Is that too harsh? I don't think so. People will
step up and volunteer and do the work; what does grex have to lose?
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cross
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response 55 of 92:
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Oct 11 01:04 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #53; Slynne slipped in. But I'm curious: why do you think it is
that, in general, people aren't willing to devote more time to grex?
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slynne
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response 56 of 92:
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Oct 11 01:54 UTC 2006 |
I dont think there is a simple answer to that question and I imagine
that the answer is different for every individual. But, honestly, I have
noticed that there is a lot of abuse online here that gets directed at
all staff and board members. It is something I accept as being part of
the territory but I think it is at least one factor in the equation.
People generally do not like to put themselves into positions where they
must deal with a lot of people telling them what they are doing wrong
all the time.
Maybe one thing we could all spend a little more time doing (myself
included) is, in addition to pointing out what people are doing wrong,
we could also point out what they are doing right. For whatever reason,
people seem to have a more difficult time doing that than pointing out
what people are doing wrong. I am certainly like that.
I know one person who doesnt get nearly as much credit as he deserves.
That is aruba. I dont think there would still be a grex if he wasnt
willing to put as much effort into the place as he does. For that
matter, *everyone* else who puts time into grex is making it a better
place, even the people who do nothing more than participate in bbs and
party. My fellow board members are all doing a pretty good job in my
opinion, some more than others. John and Mary Remmers certainly put a
lot of effort into this place. As a staff member, STeve puts in a lot of
time behind the scenes. Cross, you were an asset to the staff before you
resigned. I dont have a great base of UNIX knowledge upon which to form
opinions of the staff but I know I have heard people who do know what
they are talking about praise your abilities.
The thing is that a lot of the criticism flung around here could be very
constructive except that it seems to instead make people feel very
defensive which isnt constructive at all. People here have really good
ideas but often forget that the implementation of a good idea often
involves a lot of hard work.
I mean, just the whole co-location thing is a good example. It was an
excellent idea in my opinion but moving out of the Pumpkin was several
hours of work put in by a lot of people. Not everyone is willing or able
to put in that kind of time and effort for a good idea or a positive
change. Had there not been people willing to do that work, there would
still probably be people sitting online here going on and on about what
a good idea co-location was. People who would be wondering online why no
one was listening to their VERY GOOD IDEA when the problem wasnt that
people didnt think it was a good idea but, rather, that no one was
willing to do the implementation.
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cross
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response 57 of 92:
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Oct 11 02:04 UTC 2006 |
On the opposite end of that spectrum, you have people who have the time,
energy, and interest to do things to grex to make it a better place who get
shot down because such and such a thing is so and so's baby, and we can't
touch it for that reason. I know I feel like such a person sometimes. The
way some people act around here, changing some of grex's software is
tantamount to tearing down Westminster Abby to put up the world's biggest
neon-lighted tube station, when in reality it's more like tearing down the
old outhouse to put in a septic tank for indoor plumbing. Being told, ``No!
We have to think this THROUGH FIRST!'' only to have the discussion die at that
point gets old after a while.
But no matter. It's gotten to the point where I think history should repeat
itself and an, just as grex shot off from M-Net because M-Net was stagnating
and stiffling, I think it's nearing time to spin off yet another system to
replace grex.
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cyklone
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response 58 of 92:
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Oct 11 02:20 UTC 2006 |
And I think there's a lot of truth to that last sentence. It's interesting
that I made TWO suggestions, yet the response from lynne only focused on
my documentation suggestion (and if it's so obvious, why hasn't it been
done? Or if it was tried, why did it fail? Any "lessons learned"?).
I also recommended training new people and got no response whatsoever.
However, instead of tossing off some fairly sharp, and well-aimed,
criticism at the board, etc., let me simply say that if NEW volunteers are
welcomed more, perhaps they could both learn another person's job AND at
least begin the documentation process. It's all about NEW blood, pure and
simple. Either grex gets it or it doesn't. Ball's in your court, folks.
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eprom
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response 59 of 92:
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Oct 11 03:20 UTC 2006 |
re #45, 48
I made that identical suggestion almost a year ago (item 294 #86)
Maybe they'll listen to you. But it seems to be that the old guard of
grex has a way of doing things and they aren't about to change anytime
soon.
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tod
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response 60 of 92:
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Oct 11 04:14 UTC 2006 |
I think we can all agree that the board as well as the volunteers are just
waiting for STeve to die or something rather than addressing his behavior
head-on. If I was wrong then the Board would've addressed the problem at the
recent meeting rather than dance around like they didn't remember. If that's
not the case then it must be that they don't care enough about staff beyond
STeve.
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naftee
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response 61 of 92:
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Oct 11 04:43 UTC 2006 |
re 57
It's almost worse than that. When some people start up discussions, some
other people seem to find it necessary to tell them to shut up. I'm not going
to name names here, but...
If this is a system where we have to discuss to change something, and yet
those very discussions are discouraged, we're not getting very far.
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keesan
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response 62 of 92:
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Oct 11 13:40 UTC 2006 |
STeve, are you reading this item?
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slynne
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response 63 of 92:
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Oct 11 18:39 UTC 2006 |
resp:57 Yes, it is clear that the old way where staff did everything by
consensus isnt working anymore. That worked well when everyone knew each
other personally and communicated in social situations. I dont know what
the answer is now. The truth is that if you and some people whom you
talk to frequently wanted to start a similar system, you probably could
and it would probably be pretty nice. But what if you stayed and put
that energy into running *this* system? It seems to me that for the
effort and expense that would be put into a whole new system, the same
effort could be put into running things here. Run for board. Join staff
again. There are so few members here these days that the character of
this place can easily be what anyone wants to make it. I got on the
board last time with under 20 votes.
resp:58 Why havent those things been tried? Because actually doing
something takes a lot more effort than sitting on the sidelines coming
up with great ideas. Both documentation and mentoring are good ideas and
both things involve someone's time and labor.
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cyklone
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response 64 of 92:
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Oct 11 20:24 UTC 2006 |
And you've mentioned the NEW blood and encouraged them to be involved in grex.
Historically speaking, they were involved in grex and left. IF the next round
of new blood arrives, the only "time and labor" you need to find must come
from the board and current staff members. It's really simple. Person X
volunteers, SOMEONE on the staff and/or board needs to give them the tools
to do the job. Reading between the lines, you seem to be saying the board or
the current staff don't have the time or labor to give out reasonable
assignments, or answer questions the newcomers need answered to complete the
documentation. Again, grex needs to proactively plan how best to utilize NEW
volunteers to accomplish the goals of redundancy and documentation. Welcome
new blood or die.
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cross
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response 65 of 92:
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Oct 11 21:36 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #63; I was on staff. It seemed like a waste of time. But why?
Let me tell you by asking a question.
What, exactly, is someone supposed to DO on staff if everything they propose
to do (or actually DO do) is undone by other staff members who feel entitled
to dictate technical policy? Here's an example: a couple of years ago, I
changed the symbolic link that points the ``bbs'' command to Picospan and
pointed it to fronttalk. I think a total of two people noticed, since they
have problems with their .cfonce files. Steve changed it back, and said in
BBS not to make major changes to grex without getting approval, or something
like that - the gist of it was that it had to be discussed and a concensus
arrived at. (This was either in staff email or the staff conference; I
don't recall which, but think it was the conference.) Basically, don't do
it again. So much for initiative; my rationale was that we could have
identified the major bugs and rough points rather quickly with a larger
testing base and then fixed them, clearly the way to get rid of picospan.
Oh well.
As another example, consider my recent changes to move to the standard
password hashing algorithm: I've got the code written; it seems to work
(I've tested it on a throw-away test system at home). But, EVEN IF I WERE
ON STAFF, putting it into the system would be like pulling teeth. Why?
Because the old hash algorithm was somebody's baby (never mind that that
somebody logs into grex irregularly at best - like, once a year or so).
It's the same thing with replacing newuser, or replacing PicoSpan (which has
definite identifiable bugs that we can't fix because we don't have the
source code).
Then there's grexsoft: I put effort into re-writing a bunch of grex's
home-grown utilities when I was on staff. I think some of them were much
improved (a lot of bugs were fixed). However, no one reinstalled them after
the last system upgrade, despite my repeated requests, instructions how, and
offers for assistance. It certainly takes away the motivation for helping
out. Yeah, we *could*, as a community, put energy into fixing fronttalk to
the point where it was a viable alternative to picospan for everyone who
uses BBS regularly (I've used it as my standard BBS program for years; I
know of only one major bug that's probably a one-line fix). But again, it's
somebody's baby, and even if we did that, there would be strong oposition
from the old guard to ditching the ancient program that is holding the
system back. What's the point of doing the work if it's just going to be
ignored in the collective dust bin of grex's bit bucket?
These aren't examples of sitting on the sidelines sniping, they're actually
doing things. But if none of it ever gets put into production, what's the
point? If every not-even-major system change has to be funneled through
Steve et al, and they just doesn't want to change things, then what is
bringing in new staff members going to do, other than put more spin cycles
on the CPU with people who sit around cleaning up after disk hogs or zapping
spam accounts, and never doing anything FUN or INTERESTING? If we want
janitors to take the load of Steve so he can do all the interesting work,
then just say that. But if not, then more needs to change than just adding
a few people to a couple of Unix groups and mailing lists.
And I asked for opinions about me rejoining staff to work on grexsoft and
other basic system stuff; largely with the aim of making grex more
``standard.'' So far, I haven't heard much back about it (I'm certainly not
going to get on my knees and beg). Slynne, I think you might have been one
of the few people to even acknowledge it.
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slynne
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response 66 of 92:
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Oct 11 21:47 UTC 2006 |
Yes, cross. Everything you have said there is a pretty major problem. We
do need to encourage staff initiative. I dont know what else to say but
I'll try to remember to bring it up at the next board meeting.
FWIW, I would love it if you were on staff again.
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cyklone
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response 67 of 92:
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Oct 11 21:55 UTC 2006 |
Cross brings up a good point related to my documentation suggestion. I'm not
a techie, but if I understand the situation correctly, the more closely grex
can be brought to commonly accepted and understood standards, the less a
problem documentation becomes, because we don't have as much "customized" work
to track. Correct me if I'm wrong on this.
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cross
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response 68 of 92:
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Oct 11 21:56 UTC 2006 |
That is correct.
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slynne
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response 69 of 92:
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Oct 11 22:21 UTC 2006 |
I have enough experience working with highly customized systems at my
job to know that there is a lot of value in moving closer to what is
standard.
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tsty
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response 70 of 92:
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Oct 13 08:50 UTC 2006 |
does/did the well have a transition trauma?
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remmers
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response 71 of 92:
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Oct 13 15:30 UTC 2006 |
Re #58: The CVS-based documentation mechanism was set up by Jan Wolter,
as Dan mentioned in #47. It's called "grexdoc" and is publicly
accessible. See the directory /a/r/e/remmers/grexdoc for a current
copy. In it you'll find instructions for downloading and installing the
operating system, installing our various specialized applications such
as party and backtalk, and many other things. It's really quite
complete, and the installation of major subsystems is automated via
scripts. Using grexedoc, I was able to bring up a "test" version of
Grex on one of my own machines as part of our OS upgrade, modifying the
documentation as needed to be consistent with OpenBSD 3.8, before the
upgrade was applied to the "real" Grex.
Grexdoc is a very useful tool. If there's been a problem with it, it's
that not all staff members have been equally diligent in updating the
CVS when they tweak the system, causing the documentation to be out of
sync with reality here and there. While this is not ideal, it's also a
human failing that's hardly unique to Grex, as Lynne pointed out
earlier. But it's not fatal either -- it means that before doing the
next OS upgrade, we'll have to take care of any loose ends and make sure
that grexdoc is up to date.
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cross
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response 72 of 92:
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Oct 13 16:12 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #70; To/From what/what?
Regarding #71; Yes, it is useful. But it could be cheaply made more useful.
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cyklone
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response 73 of 92:
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Oct 13 19:17 UTC 2006 |
Great, so my suggestion is far more doable than lynne was suggesting. Now get
on the personnel redundancy issue.
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slynne
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response 74 of 92:
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Oct 13 23:23 UTC 2006 |
I never said it wasnt doable.
I just pointed out that sitting on the sidelines suggesting the obvious
while ordering others to do the work is a lot easier than actually
doing the work.
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naftee
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response 75 of 92:
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Oct 14 00:08 UTC 2006 |
re 65
And now Fronttalk is basically in the same situation as Picospan, except with
more bugs. The real question is whether janc would've put more work into it
if he noticed that it was GreX's primary BBS software, or if we would've wound
up using an almost unsupported program with more bugs and fewer options.
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