Re: New board roles

[Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>]

Le lundi 05 février 2007, à 05:31, Mariano Suárez-Alvarez a écrit :
> Hi all,
> 
> On Mon, 2007-02-05 at 08:08 +0200, Quim Gil wrote:
> > [snip]
> > My candidate program was focused on internal board/Foundation
> > improvements, and this is what I will try to push.
> > [snip]
> 
> One thing that appears to need improvement is the handling of foundation
> membership applications. 
> 
> As mentioned today (for an appropriately chosen timezone) on #g-h, every
> so often someone comes into that channel asking for someone from the
> membership committee to ask for news about his/her application after
> having waited X time. Independently of the reasons behind the delay, it
> undoubtedly results in unnecessary frustration. It can be construed as
> an excessively high bar of entry; it can occasionally be, and indeed has
> been, seen as discrimination against specific individuals, &c.

Having been in the membership committee for a very long time, I confirm
that many people had such feelings.

However, things have been getting much better lately (I could even say
they've got better since I left ;-)): applications are kept in RT, and
should be processed within a month. Applicants are told to mail the
membership committee if it's not the case.

> Part of the problem lies in that applicants are more or less in the dark
> as to what happened to their application, apart from the email that
> (some?) of them get after submitting the application form. From asking

(People not getting the email after submitting the form are probably
losing it because of a spam filter)

> on line, it appears that most of the delays are due to having to wait
> for contacts to respond to confirmations and so on; having a status page
> where such information can be queried would probably be of much use. It
> has also been reported that some people have had their application
> accepted while not having gotten any notification of the fact.

Status page is a good idea. I don't know if it's easily doable, but we
should look at this. Guilherme did something related:
http://www.gnome.org/~gpastore/accounts.html
I'll see if we can steal this ;-)

Baris will know better than me, but I believe the system has been
improved and the notification is now automatically sent.

> I think that the membership committee is doing a great job. I think
> there is some room for improvement, too, in, at least, the public
> perception of their work.
> 
> 
> If help is needed, do let me know, by the way.

The first way to help is letting the membership committee know about the
issues (that's what you did, and that's great).

Many of the issues should be fixed with the switch to the new system to
manage applications and members, which happened late last year.

Vincent

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.