On 8 December 2010 05:44, keenerd <keenerd@gmail.com> wrote:
> After much heavy thought, I withdraw my application. *My apologies for
> the trouble.

You shouldn't let other issues hinder your application. Reconsider
withdrawing, because it would disappoint your sponsor. You were asked
a very simple question:

"Considering this and the still-ongoing discussion about the AUR guidelines, do
you agree that it would be prudent to be more patient in the future and wait
until we've come to a conclusion before going ahead with something like this
again?"

And that's about it. Maybe some took the bot issue a little too
seriously, but we would still vote. Personally, I believe you will be
of help to the team

On Tue 07 Dec 2010 16:44 -0500, keenerd wrote:
> After much heavy thought, I withdraw my application. My apologies for
> the trouble.

Noooo. I was interested in your analysis of the AUR and I think we could
make good use of it. I kind of wish I could spam users about their bad
packages. I have sent a few emails manually.

I guess the real issue is that if there is any action that has a
widespread effect on the AUR we should always decide what should be done
as a group of TUs. That's one reason that I made Jakob create a proposal
for the last mass AUR cleanup. I could have easily applied the changes
behind the scenes otherwise.

On Wed, 8 Dec 2010 05:57:34 +0800 Ray Rashif <schiv@archlinux.org>
wrote:
> On 8 December 2010 05:44, keenerd <keenerd@gmail.com> wrote:
> > After much heavy thought, I withdraw my application. *My apologies
> > for the trouble.
>
> You shouldn't let other issues hinder your application. Reconsider
> withdrawing, because it would disappoint your sponsor. You were asked
> a very simple question:
>
> "Considering this and the still-ongoing discussion about the AUR
> guidelines, do you agree that it would be prudent to be more patient
> in the future and wait until we've come to a conclusion before going
> ahead with something like this again?"
>
> And that's about it. Maybe some took the bot issue a little too
> seriously, but we would still vote. Personally, I believe you will be
> of help to the team

Don't withdraw, you made a good impression and as long as you answer
this question of Xyne I don't think there are people that vote against
you as long as you assure to keep waiting till something is decided in
the future. An Abstain is not a No, it is to reach quorum and I'm still
mostly tending to that, as Lukas said you made a very good impression
and I think if we two had real contact in the past, I still would vote
clearly for you. I think this application will pass, I guess there are
enough of us who really know you and vote for a Yes as they really know
your person and don't just read some forum posts as I did.

So don't withdraw, just make a clear assurance to keep low till
something is really discussed and you'll pass, as long as there are
more Yes votes than No votes and like I said there won't be many of the
latter as you really left a good impression. An Abstain is to reach
Quorum it currently has no influence on wether a vote passes or not.

--
Jabber: atsutane@freethoughts.de Blog: http://atsutane.freethoughts.de/
Key: 295AFBF4 FP: 39F8 80E5 0E49 A4D1 1341 E8F9 39E4 F17F 295A FBF4

On Tuesday 07 December 2010 21:44:46 keenerd wrote:
> After much heavy thought, I withdraw my application. My apologies for
> the trouble.

I agree with the others - please reconsider withdrawing. I believe that we
could certainly do with someone with your keenness and skills on the team. I
think that if we can all have a mature discussion about this and learn from
it, then I'd welcome you on board.

This has raised an interesting point though - perhaps we should also agree
some sort of guidance for large actions that are likely to affect lots of
users (like with this bot), that requrie a proposal and a vote etc.

Pete.

On 7 December 2010 22:44, keenerd <keenerd@gmail.com> wrote:
> After much heavy thought, I withdraw my application. Â*My apologies for
> the trouble.
>
> -Kyle
>

Hello, Kyle,
I'd say that you just showed that you understand what you did wrong.
But please, do not withdraw your application. I think there is still a
high chance that your application will pass.

Lukas

keenerd wrote:

> After much heavy thought, I withdraw my application. My apologies for
> the trouble.
>
> -Kyle


I agree with the others who feel you should reconsider your withdrawal.

I also want to explain myself. I was hesitant to voice my concerns about the
bot, especially as your sponsor, because I understand how it could be
perceived as a betrayal of sorts. I understood that it would evoke negative
reactions among some TUs and that it might cost you some votes. At the same
time, I genuinely felt (and still do) that it was something that needed to be
addressed and that I would not be doing my job as a TU had I not brought it up.

I agreed to sponsor you because I believe that your skills and motivation can
enrich the team and benefit the community and I still stand by that belief. All
I wanted was for you to address the concerns and to assure those among us who
shared them that you would be less impetuous as a TU, and I still hope that you
will.

Technical skills are only part of the requirement for becoming a TU. Being
able to communicate meaningfully with other TUs and work as a team is just as
important. In this case, showing that you can accept and address criticism
would make you a stronger candidate, in my opinion.

So again, please reconsider.


Regards,
Xyne


p.s. I really do feel a bit bad about this.

On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 4:57 PM, Ray Rashif <schiv@archlinux.org> wrote:
> You shouldn't let other issues hinder your application. Reconsider
> withdrawing, because it would disappoint your sponsor. You were asked
> a very simple question:
>
> "Considering this and the still-ongoing discussion about the AUR guidelines, do
> you agree that it would be prudent to be more patient in the future and wait
> until we've come to a conclusion before going ahead with something like this
> again?"

That depends.

Here are three examples were it is pretty cut and dry: Using the good
name of the TUs, using magic tu.php powers, or using information only
TUs have access to. Before going anywhere near that stuff I'd get
permission in triplicate. In other words, great responsibilities are
attached to even the least of *TU* resources.

However, an AUR scanning/reporting bot could be made and operated by
any *non-TU* in less than two hundred lines of any scripting language.

I'll agree the bot was poorly executed. The trigger thresholds were
initially set a bit too low. Less than 1/3 through the scan I greatly
increased the triggers (ignore improper nesting, ignore less than four
PNGs/GIFs/JPGs).

To act as if this is a black and white issue draws a parallel with a
very unethical Non-Compete agreement: "While you are a programmer for
FOO Corp, you are not allowed to write/release software outside of
work." I have never and would never take employment with such a
company. (Conversely, I have never worked on FOSS stuff for fun while
on the clock.) What rights, that we have as ordinary users, are given
up even outside of the TU sphere?

Retracting my withdrawal would be cheating. I will wait at least
three months, as a fair interpretation of the Bylaws requires.

By the way, this ML has very strict and undocumented rules regarding
attachments. I do all sorts of work to get my charts and graphs the
under the 100KB limit, only to find that all PNGs are scrubbed out.
The irony. Check my site later for those.

-Kyle
http://kmkeen.com

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:15 PM, keenerd <keenerd@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'll agree the bot was poorly executed. The trigger thresholds were
> initially set a bit too low. Less than 1/3 through the scan I greatly
> increased the triggers (ignore improper nesting, ignore less than four
> PNGs/GIFs/JPGs).
>
> To act as if this is a black and white issue draws a parallel with a
> very unethical Non-Compete agreement: "While you are a programmer for
> FOO Corp, you are not allowed to write/release software outside of
> work." I have never and would never take employment with such a
> company. (Conversely, I have never worked on FOSS stuff for fun while
> on the clock.) What rights, that we have as ordinary users, are given
> up even outside of the TU sphere?
>
> Retracting my withdrawal would be cheating. I will wait at least
> three months, as a fair interpretation of the Bylaws requires.
>

I don't think the three month rule applies in this case. Your application
was not rejected by Standard Voting Procedure. Admittedly how to proceed in
this case is not altogether clear per the by-laws but by my interpretation
if your application did not reach the voting period, then if would follow
the same procedure as any other motion that did not reach the voting period.
A good example is the slew of by-laws amendments flying around. Each version
is slightly different from the previous one, and only one will ever reach
the voting period; the discarded ones are effectively 'withdrawn'. It would
be ridiculous to require the edited version of each proposal to sit tabled
for a minimum of three months: we would never get any work done.

I believe Thorsten was too harsh in his mail regarding your bot, and I agree
with your assessment that your actions were well within your rights as a
normal user. I think what all of us are concerned about is that it may
appear as if you have spoken for all of us regarding a policy matter that in
actuality has not been decided.

In all honesty I don't think it was a huge deal. You are very excited about
Arch Linux; potentially you're about to become a Trusted User; people get
overzealous and things like this happen. Most of the comments that your bot
left were not controversial at all. The important thing is to learn that you
will be working as part of a team, and what you say or do affects how that
team is perceived.

Ideally I would like to see your resubmit your application immediately
because I think that your skills and enthusiasm would make a great addition
to the team. --Kaiting.

--
Kiwis and Limes: http://kaitocracy.blogspot.com/

On 9 December 2010 02:15, keenerd <keenerd@gmail.com> wrote:
> However, an AUR scanning/reporting bot could be made and operated by
> any *non-TU* in less than two hundred lines of any scripting language.

In fact, that's exactly what I'm trying to say. That issue is you
doing something as an Arch Linux user, and that's all. An idea you
tested. Some people liked it, some people didn't. That is why I
believe it should have nothing to do with your TU application. I
didn't even expect anyone to bring that up here, but Xyne did what he
felt was right.

I can see that you're demotivated by the (bot) feedback. Anyway, it's
up to you and your sponsor now Three months later or not, you're
definitely TU material.

keenerd wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 4:57 PM, Ray Rashif <schiv@archlinux.org> wrote:
> > You shouldn't let other issues hinder your application. Reconsider
> > withdrawing, because it would disappoint your sponsor. You were asked
> > a very simple question:
> >
> > "Considering this and the still-ongoing discussion about the AUR guidelines, do
> > you agree that it would be prudent to be more patient in the future and wait
> > until we've come to a conclusion before going ahead with something like this
> > again?"
>
> That depends.
>
> Here are three examples were it is pretty cut and dry: Using the good
> name of the TUs, using magic tu.php powers, or using information only
> TUs have access to. Before going anywhere near that stuff I'd get
> permission in triplicate. In other words, great responsibilities are
> attached to even the least of *TU* resources.
>
> However, an AUR scanning/reporting bot could be made and operated by
> any *non-TU* in less than two hundred lines of any scripting language.
>
> I'll agree the bot was poorly executed. The trigger thresholds were
> initially set a bit too low. Less than 1/3 through the scan I greatly
> increased the triggers (ignore improper nesting, ignore less than four
> PNGs/GIFs/JPGs).
>
> To act as if this is a black and white issue draws a parallel with a
> very unethical Non-Compete agreement: "While you are a programmer for
> FOO Corp, you are not allowed to write/release software outside of
> work." I have never and would never take employment with such a
> company. (Conversely, I have never worked on FOSS stuff for fun while
> on the clock.) What rights, that we have as ordinary users, are given
> up even outside of the TU sphere?
>
> Retracting my withdrawal would be cheating. I will wait at least
> three months, as a fair interpretation of the Bylaws requires.
>
> By the way, this ML has very strict and undocumented rules regarding
> attachments. I do all sorts of work to get my charts and graphs the
> under the 100KB limit, only to find that all PNGs are scrubbed out.
> The irony. Check my site later for those.


I never said that it wasn't within your rights to launch the bot. It isn't even
about the bot itself.

The issue as I see it is that you presented the idea on this list for
discussion but didn't care to follow that discussion until a conclusion was
reached. Some TUs objected to the bot and I think you should have taken those
objections into consideration (e.g. that icons should be tolerated, etc). The
TUs exist to manage the AUR and their collective interpretation of the rules
should carry weight.

Instead, you decided that your own interpretation of the AUR guidelines was
correct despite those objections and went ahead on your own. As a result, many
AUR users may now be confused regarding the rules of the AUR. Of course that's
within your rights, but it's not something that a prospective TU should do.
Using your wild west analogy of the AUR, it shows that you see yourself as the
lone gunman who lives by his own rules. That doesn't work well in a team
setting.

Again, the bot itself isn't the issue for me. The attitude is, or at least I
think it could be. All I asked for was some indication that you wouldn't skip
discussions in the future and ride off on your own, but I understand that my
message and the comments it evoked were demotivational. It's unfortunate that
you took it the way that you did rather than simply allay the concerns.

As for your FOO Corp analogy, you weren't being asked to sign a non-compete
agreement. You presented yourself as an applicant to FOO Corp. You also noticed
that FOO Corp has a Facebook page and that many of its clients have posted
various comments there. FOO Corp presents itself as a "family-oriented
business" and you felt that there were many comments on the Facebook page that
were not in line with this image. You therefore wrote a bot that could send
messages to those FOO Corp clients to inform them that their comments were
inappropriate. You presented your idea to the people at FOO Corp. Some of them
agreed with you about which comments were inappropriate and some disagreed. You
ignored those who disagreed and launched your bot before the people at FOO Corp
had even reached any internal conclusion about how "family-oriented business"
should be interpreted and used to evaluate the appropriateness of the Facebook
comments.

Could someone outside of FOO Corp write such a bot. Obviously.

Is it within your rights to do so? Yes.

Is it understandable that it would raise some eyebrows while considering your
application? I think it is. Even if you do so on your own time, FOO Corp should
be worried if you have a different interpretation of FOO Corp's policies and
act on that interpretation in a way that directly affects FOO Corp's clients,
especially if you show that you have no interest in determining official policy
first.

The intention is clearly good but the wrong interpretation of the desired
outcome leads to bad results.



The length of my replies might be taken to mean that this is a bigger issue
than it really is. I'm simply trying to be thorough in explaining myself. This
isn't an attack on you. I really hope that this doesn't diminish your overall
enthusiasm for Arch.



/Xyne