Forkable SOP/Governance

Reps
1

Hello, after our discussions at Reps mailing list I want to do this proposition to move Reps architecture to something with real options to participate in the program governance and SOP’s definition/improvement …

Facts

  • From the point of view of Mozilla staff this program is community-driven because the council is conformed by 7 Reps(representative democracy) + 2 Pay staff but from the point of view of some Reps in the base this program is not community driven because they can’t participate in the program governance and decision making related with issues like SOP’s.
  • Just now the program definition is in this wiki page and subpages: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Remo and we don’t know how to propose modifications to the actual definition and how to consult others about our propositions.

Idea/proposition
Why not learn from OpenSource code development doing a forkable wiki?

  • We can use the collaborative code review workflow (https://github.com/features) using GitLab (like github but OpenSource).
  • Just now we are using wikimedia (with a database as storage backend) and we can’t manage this database with GitLab but we can migrate Reps program information in to a wiki engine like Gollum that use git as storage backend

Will be hard to participate?
With a good setup (including some hacks by the sysadmin and persona integration) Any rep will be capable to do everything from a web browser using modern web software.

Finally the question is, you think that a Forkable Reps wiki (SOP/Governance) is important to this program? are you interested in propose changes to the Program (SOPs, Governance …)

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I want to say that we are holding regular Github/Git training, if anyone is curious about the skills involved.

More on the Community Education Training Calendar

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Wiki says “Currently, 7 volunteers and 2 paid staff sit on the council.” although right now currently 5 are volunteers the other four are paid staff.

4

I am a volunteer on council, that is not part of my paid role at Mozilla. I’m not sure who the fourth would be:

https://reps.mozilla.org/people/#/group/council/

Looking here.

5

I duplicated this topic by mistake (that post will be deleted shortly), so copying over some questions I had:

  1. Can you tell us more about gitlab
  2. How does this help participation
  3. Does this become an unfair barrier for non-technical participation

How do we ensure (since SOP are governance) that translated/forked SOP
are correctly translated. You can lose meaning in translation, and when
it comes to governance, wondering how that’s been handled previously.

what do you think about this proposal?

And fredy’s responses:

https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/making-sop-forkable-wiki-alternatives-to-increase-participation-opportunity/1708/2?u=emma_irwin

6

I read this question as:

What’s radical participation in the Reps Program?

TBH, I don’t think this a technical question, but really one of cohesion and innovation.

How do you do new things that are purposeful? That advance the mission as our leadership sees it? Yet does things that our leadership didn’t expect?

Mark has a series of blog posts in the past few weeks that are mostly around this topic, and there are quite a few open questions.

Also, to drive this back home to technical terms:

The challenge we’re facing here is not really how to fork, but how to merge.

Mark’s last post was really about “don’t ask for permission to fork”, if you want to use that technical term.
What we’re doing research on is how do we get into a situation where most of these forks merge without conflict? Not in lines in text files, but in mission.

7

The technical side of things is relevant in making it easier - but, yes this is the question isn’t it? I think it ties nicely into this last post Participation, permission and momentum | commonspace

Be the change you want to see in the program. Kind of thing.

8

I asked the same some time before (when I was to go for the council last time, and I was a contractor). The wiki needs to change to: 2 non elected council members and 7 elected council members. But like you said, still have the first definition that was in the beginning of the project.

1 Like
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Hi @Pike

I’m so glad to found you, Emma, I liked a lot the Mark post and I read this other to and I’m so happy to see that in the head Mozilla is thinking in recover their path.

Is a good timing because I will have 2 days to read/think and maybe do something following this idea of radical participation.

10

Thanks for the feedback @digitalfredy

Council has been gathering feedback regarding this issue for some time now and we are going to share soon a proposal to get mentors feedback.

We want everyone to be empowered to get involved in the program governance and structure and at the same time keep the process clear, simple and accessible to everyone.

1 Like
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When we did the first draft council policy, I know we discussed whether or not we could have more than 2 staff on council. Some proposed that if they were elected then they should be on council, the other side was that we want to limit the amount of pressure that can be put on council members from Mozilla internally. I don’t recall if we made a decision on the topic, and it wasn’t written in any notes if we did.

I do recall clearly that there was supposed to be ongoing work to review the council policies, including whether or not we should return to having regional representation on council. We also haven’t done a review on the current cycle of elections and rotating council members. I mean a full review, what’s working, what’s not working, would we change anything or not? Not just a “temperature test” of “well it’s working so far, so let’s keep doing it.”

We have a good number of former council members now. Perhaps we should organize something where these Reps give their feedback on what worked, what didn’t work, what they would change if they still could, what they definitely wouldn’t want to see changed and then review those recommendations at the next ReMo Camp?

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Back to my main subject about radical participation in Reps governance, is nice to know that Mozilla have guide lines and history about decision making (Mitchell).

@Pike now my question is, the merging problem is related with Mozilla mission or how to merge old programs like Reps, webmaker… with new/forked radical propositions?

1 Like
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Hi @digitalfredy and @emma_irwin How this workflow will be different from the existing one regarding proposing changes and taking decisions about it? I don’t think the problem here is a technical one, is not the tool (but this is my point of view)

14

While the discussion on this was pretty brief Brian King and I gave a talk at OSCON in 2012 and we talked about the Reps Program and Council and IIRC we told folks the reason for the ratio was so that there was only two employees on council at any given time to like you said regulate pressure from Mozilla internally or even a better way of wording might be to just keep council balanced and community-driven.

Even the ReMo Structure Chart shows two employees and 7 volunteers. Whether the policy has changed today that I do not know. Whatever the position is we should either update the language of the wiki to reflect what it should really convey or leave it as is and have that be the practice. The current text gives the impression that regardless of your role at Mozilla there should only be two staff on Council and the rest of the 7 seats should not be staff.

In regards to former council members giving feedback I think that is a great idea and am wondering would you suggest asking for general feedback or might there be a set of questions you think they could give feedback on?

15

@bkerensa I think that the real point is not if this 2 people are or not Mozilla employe, the point is that is mozilla employe to do that work.
In the other hand to maintain balance is interesting to keep a quota from non mozilla employes.

But related with my subject (radical participation), really I think that this kind of structures aren’t good, we are doing in small that we hate a large scale (country’s representative democracy).

I really prefer the benevolent dictatorship over representative democracy but I really want to believe that we can experiment with emergent p2p models.

1 Like
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We do have a benevolent dictatorship structure in every area of the Mozilla project essentially module owners are BD’s for the sub project/program they oversee and then the structure underneath them is meritocracy (some what).

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Just like @bkerensa pointed out, the current Mozilla Governance structure is iike that, all projects related to Mozilla follow the same structure, why do we need to change our structure to another one? Just because someone doesnt like it, it doesnt mean it is bad.

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Because we need radical participation!

A clear volunteer leadership structure, where people anywhere can get involved in leading and shaping the direction of Mozilla once they have proven themselves.

19

@digitalfredy what radical participation things do you want to do that you can’t inside the Reps program today?

I think that would be a concrete question to answer to identify in which areas we need to improve or which barriers we have (if any) right now.

20

But Radical Participation as Mark explains on his post has nothing to do with the current Mozilla Governance structure, at least that is what i can understand from his post, also:

Don’t we have a clear leadership structure in Reps?

I mean, we have Reps as recognized volunteers able to lead and get people involved into Mozilla projects.

We have Mentors that lead Reps and coach them to improve themselves, and also these Mentors have proven themselves to be strong leaders, educators and motivators.

And finally Council, still formed by volunteers, chosen by volunteers from all the entire program, also, i think that the 2 Mozilla staff members are still necessary on the Council, i would say, they are vital, a good explanation of their roles was given during the Council AMA.

Now the tricky part is how every Rep can get involved directly in leading and shaping the Reps program, we used to have the ReMo Camps for this, Mentors+Council get together once a year and they discuss, shape and modify the program, set goals and strategies, Mentors where asked each year to tell their Mentees to share feedback on things they would like to change ot the program so they could collect all their opinions and take them into this meeting.

So, it has been some sort of way for all the Reps to participate, in the structure and governance of the Reps program, yet i agree that it isn’t enough.

That is why in a few days, the Council will post their draft proposal to Mentors for a SOP on Community Proposals, where every Rep in the program can propose changes to the program, anytime, from anywhere.

I’m pretty confident that this draft on Community Proposals will enable and promote radical participation from Reps on all the program.

Also, i would like to quote Mark again:

I think that the last bit, its seriously important, Education and Recognition.