Hello Everyone!
Today we held our open call on the Group Identities Registration Pilot to address some of the questions and concerns that Community members raised on discourse, telegram and the etherpad. A huge thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts with us!
If you would like to watch the call, find the link here and notes from the call below.
What is the need for this pilot?
[Lucy] Right now there is no one platform for everyone to go and to find groups near them where they can participate right away. Makes it harder for new people but also Staff don’t know where there are active communities so it’s hard for them to connect with different groups as well.
Common platform for new and existing community members to contribute: A community directory through which individuals can view all the active groups in mozilla join those that suit their interests or skills.What is this going to be? A new website? A new mozillians.org, but for groups?
[Lucy] For the Piilot it will be a website that displays groups who were accepted into the pilot but uses the Mozillians API and then adds fields that Mozillians doesn’t currently have (like meeting times etc.). We are going to use a simple github page and use the API to populate it. Enables us to put things in, not just be a tag group, accept CPG etc. Based on the results of the pilot we will suggest changes to mozillians.org
The term “officially recognized by Mozilla” is confusing to me for 2 reasons. How and why Reps project doesn’t serve for this purpose? That was supposed to be the sole goal of the reps project, given the 4 purposes stated.
[Konstantina] They are not the same, reps are about empowering individuals that want to become community builders, it was never about groups. This is about recognizing groups that currently exist and help them get visibility and support so there is no overlap.
Like “if you don’t have Aadhaar, we don’t recognize you as Indian” - is it similarly, “if you’re not in a registered group, we don’t recognize you as (Indian) Mozillian”? Or, did I get that wrong?
[Mrinalini] (1) Group registration is only for groups (not individual mozillians) (2) you can definitely have a group that isn’t “registered”. Registered group will have access to additional support, calls, opportunities etc.
What’s the criteria to be selected? Is there even any?
[Mrinalini] Basic criteria is listed on discourse (ii.e. group exists already, has 3 or more people, meets regularly) but we’ll also be trying to choose “diverse” groups so groups that are different sizes, focuses, etc. so we can make; sure it works for everyone
What’s the policy on multiple-inheritance (single person in multiple groups)?
[Lucy ] People can definitely be part of multiple groups! No problemo.
What are those “new support mechanisms”? Why can’t they be named/detailed?
[Lucy] Newsletter, calls, getting to be listed as a group on the website. (visibility).
What’s the structure of NDA (if any) regarding this. If there is a need for NDA, shouldn’t people know about it before registering?
[Lucy] No NDA requried but you have to have a mozillians profile.
How do we define "regular meetings"
[Mrinalini] For the pilot “you need to meet to meet at least once" the date should be decided before you register your group (can be a virtual or in person meeting) must be open to everyone. They need to happen once every 3 months.
How do we define “active’ contributors” (what counts?)
[Mrinalini] Groups in registration say how they’re contributing and then we look into those contribution areas to see if group members are actually contributing. However there are no required hours.
Who will be the Group representative?
[Mrinalini] Contacts are selected by the group - that is the person who will be the “point person” between the group and Mozilla, for the duration of the pilot.
[Viswaprasath] which team will be responsible to change the leader. like whom the group should contact to change the leader ?
[Lucy] Contacts will be able to make the change themselves by editing their groups profiles. We’ll keep an eye on it though to make sure one person doesn’t just make themselves the contact forever :P.
’Can’t we just share an active list of projects that are currently going on?'
[Konstantina] Unfortunately this is not sustainable. We’ve tried to explore this with the contribute page. But since Mozilla is changing so fast it was very hard to keep everything updated. Also teams were not ready to deal with so many volunteers and eventually volunteers were lead to a dark whole". That is the reason we introduced activate for Reps, a patlform with specific activities volunteers can do. And that is why we also have the campaigns program, where we have a campaign every month with a specific call for action and an infrastructure that is ready to take the number of the volunteers inside Mozilla.
[ Viswaprasath] One way or another sometimes feel Activate is bit restricting with contribution area, many people want to use their skillset and contribute. Example Take me a Android developer, If i am introduced to test pilot Android team, i can use my knowledge very well and contribute to Mozilla project. But in case I am not expert in say WebCompat I feel I cant contribute to Mozilla (since MozActivate is not showing any android projects, this is case for some contributor tries to jump in and leaves soon).
[Lucy] Good point! We definitely need to buld an ‘escape hatch’ for technical contributors. Right now https://whatcanidoformozilla.org/ is the best way to find technical projects. Perhaps we should add a link to the activate site that says “want to code? Check this out!”. The individual introductions idea is, unfortunately, not scaleable and many devs aren’t sure how ppl can get started on their projects.
[Konstantina] Exactly. Activate is not perfect and was built with the idea to provide some easy contributions for people that want to be introduced to different projects. For now we have what can I do for Mozilla and we are also exploring how to better populate our evergreen contribution areas. Again we will never cover everything, unfortunately we don’t have the resources and the teams are not ready for mass contributors numbers in some functional areas.
Why smaller groups instead of one MozillaIN ?
[Lucy] We saw in all of our research that people associate in a number of different ways at Mozilla and are often part of many different groups! You might be a member of a Mozilla Club at your university, a L10N group in your city, AND consider yourself a part of MozillaIN. In order to provide support to the multitude of ways that people organize we want to give people the freedom to register any group they’re a part of. Question - Does Mozilla India have regular public meetings? (It might be more of an “identity” than a “group” if it doesn’t meet).
Whether groups are based on Regional basis or Functional basis ?
[Lucy] Groups can be regional (do a number of things) or functional (just contribute to one area) as long as they contribute regularly, are open to new members, follow the CPG, etc. it’s all good
[ Viswaprasath] if we are not fixing whether its regional or functional we are going to creating a mess… Say a contributor is contributing from X region and he is in Y functional team of india. Now lets take the case of highlighting his contribution,
[Lucy] clarification that we won’t be highlighting any individuals as part of this pilot or program. If someone is part of multiple groups and gets credit through a program like Reps or SuMO for doing good work, I’d assume both groups would be glad to see one of their members acknowledged…
[Viswaprasath] if we say he is from X region then Y group will feel bad… if we say Y group then X region group will feel bad… we wont have quality contribution.
Thanks!