[fab] New project formation is out of control

[Patrick W. Barnes]

I'm a little concerned by a recent chain of events.  Damien Durand recently 
decided that running interviews of Fedora contributors was a worthy project 
and began working, without support, to make it a reality.  This, in itself, 
is good.  We need people who take initiative.  The problem is the subsequent 
announcement and adoption without review, and this is just a symptom of a 
larger, standing issue.

As soon as Damien put up a page and interviewed Chitlesh Goorah, he sent an 
announcement to fedora-marketing-list and made a post in his blog.  Then, 
Thomas included the announcement in the Fedora Weekly News report.  The 
problem is that this program has had no peer review and doesn't have any 
support within the Fedora Project.  I had instructed Damien to make a post to 
fedora-marketing-list to let the Marketing team know what he was working on 
and to ask for feedback, not to provide a formal announcement.

My concern with this particular project is that it is doing something that is 
already being done and for which a new venue is not needed.  RHM already has 
a column that features contributor interviews, and assorted other sources 
already allow contributors to be introduced to the community.  Without the 
interest and resources going into Fedora Interview, I'm not sure it can 
really succeed.  If the Marketing team adopted the idea and decided to 
support it, then we could have given more consideration into what we would 
throw behind the program.  Another issue is the fact that Damien has not had 
the time to correct the issues that have already been pointed out.  Moving to 
a public announcement was premature.

This really only highlights and underlying problem.  We have a number of new 
or inexperienced contributors who are in a hurry to start up their own 
initiatives.  We already have a significant number of projects that need more 
attention, not separation.  These new contributors take advantage of the 
freedom they are given to stake out grounds without peer support.  This is 
fracturing our community and leaving all kinds of loose and dead ends.

Another fine example of this issue is Clair Shaw's Word of Mouth program.  
Many of these initiatives are popping up under Ambassadors and Marketing, 
simply because the Ambassadors have an immediate sense of involvement and 
power, but this problem spreads well beyond those projects.  We need to be 
flexible in allowing the formation of new programs, but allowing the creation 
and branding of new programs without any controls in place will soon dilute 
the standings of existing projects and will introduce confusion.

With these small, unsupported programs popping up everywhere, projects are 
fracturing and initiatives are failing.  We need to work on tightening 
controls and focusing the contributor energy where it is needed.  It's time 
to consider establishing policies and practices for the formation of new 
projects and programs.  This needs to happen at two levels.  We need policies 
for the creation or promotion of projects at the top level, and individual 
projects need policies for the formation of sub-projects.  If we don't exert 
control now, we'll have a hard time regaining it in the future.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Interview
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/WordOfMouth

-- 
Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
nman64 at n-man.com

http://www.n-man.com/

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