Posted by greggles on July 25, 2010 at 1:18pm
The "promote to front page" queue on drupal.org follows a few social norms that I think we should generalize for all administrative accounts on all *.drupal.org sites:
- If you are a friend or directly involved with something that is about to promoted to the front page, you should not do the moderation action yourself but should find a fellow moderator to take the action
- If you are not directly involved in the ongoing maintenance in an area, taking a one-off case that interests you just because you have the role is likely to lead to a mistake and should therefore be avoided
- A great way to find a fellow moderator who wants to help you is by taking care of a few items in the queue
- Actions that are questionable with regard to our policies should require multiple +1s or a sanity check with another moderator prior to the action (and that check should be noted in a comment somewhere "Checked in irc, got a +1 from Foo, Bar, Baz).
These can be tough to balance with our desire to "get things done" because often the only people interested in taking action in an area are people who have a personal connection somehow. My perception is that these norms are more important in the gray area cases and can be ignored if it's a clear cut case.
Comments
+1
Agreed.
Here's the background of this thread:
Yesterday I attended DrupalCampWI. While there I ran into a friend of mine who is insane. And by insane I mean she frequently jumps out of perfectly good airplanes! ;-)
We were discussing how she had became aware that some of her fellow skydiver friends are planning jumps at Cons and Camps and that the organization of these conversations was loose. I commented that it would really be effective to have these skydiving conversations on GDO. She was emphatic at the notion.
I had TWO facts running through my mind when I had her create the group then I immediately approved it.
[1] the loosening of criteria for new groups. (I did NOT accept this a a blank check to start as many groups as there are ideas for groups. I whole heartedly believe in having existing groups serve broader purposes rather than having new groups serve niche purposes. However in this case, using the Drupal-Fit group did not cross my mind.)
[2] When the http://groups.drupal.org/local-user-group-organizers group was 1st proposed it was shot down. While at DrupalConDC I held a BoF for Local Group Organizers. The idea of having a group just for us was proposed. I explained that the idea was recently shot down. One of the attendees was a moderator. I forget who AND I can no longer access the info. He said, "submit it now and I'll approve it now." So we did and he did and all was well. No one ever complained.
Armed with these 2 facts the skydiving group was born.
When I saw Greg's proposal that it move to the FIT group I was torn. On the one hand I'm a strong supporter of the "fewer groups is better" idea. On the other hand we had people who tempt death and we're asking them to join the FIT group. I wasn't convinced it was a bad idea but I was sure that it was rather a humorous one. :-)
Kiamlaluno, aka Alberto, and I have discussed *.D.O maintenance issues quite a few times before. I caught him in IRC and without prejudicing him I asked his opinion. He agreed that the FIT group would serve the better purpose. That was good enough for me.
As mentioned I had completely forgotten about the FIT group. (some of you know that I'm NOT SO fit) I already thought that the FIT group could be good so with Alberto's 2nd opinion I sought to go and make the correction.
Alas... I had been demoted and was no longer a moderator. In Greg's defense he replied to my email asking him what happened. His reply was that he was intending to restore my role but wanted to discuss the matter first. He provided a link to this thread as the means of discussion.
I used the model of the birth of the http://groups.drupal.org/local-user-group-organizers as the basis of my decision. I see Greg's 4 points above and agree with them wholeheartedly. I am more than happy to see the skydiver group merge with FIT. I am more than happy to adopt the policy of no lone-ranger approvals. It's so easy to get a few fellow moderators to chime in on the process. I could have easily done this but was influenced by the 2 points I made above.
As for my involvement [or lack there of] in the moderation queue [a point of concern for Greg as expressed in the email and in this thread] I do not have access to check, but I believe I did approve the LMS group after asking Josh in the hallways at SF if I could do so. I believe I noted that in the log.
Now... That leaves me at 90days of no moderation activity until I pulled this bone-head move and prompted this thread and had my roll revoked, if only temporarily.
When Josh granted me access one of the reasons I requested it was my heavy involvement in many local groups as well as my attendance and planning involvement with many Camps. While I was not moderating any groups in that 90 day period, I did change 2 or more managers in groups [with the understanding of the previous managers], helped some set up panels for their group, negotiated a situation where a 2nd group was not needed [here I encouraged the user to seek admin access from the manager and suggested that a panel-page would serve as the page for the 2nd region.]
Conclusion...
* It would have been far better for me to have sought a 2nd opinion for my approval. Or better yet to have not approved a group that I was that close to. President had been set but I agree with the points Greg makes.
* Even though I have additional objectives in my service as a moderator, I am convinced that it is essential that I stay on top of the moderator queue. That should have been a given but as stated I did have other agendas. I am sincerely thankful that Greg has raised this point and I will happily comply.
Thank you,
- DV
thanks for the history and ideas and agreement
I saw the one event as something that could be a learning moment for the community about proper use of our roles.
I don't think we need to dwell too much on the incident but look toward what we think should happen in the future.
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
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I take it means that a user should not take action for a specific case, and then not do anything in the specific area.
I agree on that, even if I have to admit that in some cases is not possible to make a distinction between , and . Probably we should distinguish from case to case. If there is a moderation queue, then the reported rules have a meaning; in other cases, I am not sure those rules make sense.
Does that means that if somebody reports a typo in a name of a taxonomy term used on drupal.org, I should not change it if I didn't change any taxonomy term before? If that would be the case, then nobody could do anything, independently from the role users have. In the case of removing spam, does that mean I cannot remove spam if I didn't do it before? Also in this case, that would not make sense.
My perception is that these
I think the cases you talk about are clear cut and therefore these norms are less important.
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation