Merit
Posted: 30 May 2015, 21:44
Took me a few months.. (life, it happens) but I have an initial working extension to show what I have in mind.
Committed it to: https://github.com/Tim-Blokdijk/spring- ... ring/merit
We definitely should not take this version into production, the code works but I want some quality feedback.
I have not uploaded this to http://test.springrts.com/phpbb yet but that will probably happen soonish.
First a little background
Spring doesn’t have official leaders, no hard responsibilities or requirements.
This lead to some unfortunate friction when developers where not happy with the way the server was functioning. Which escalated and never really .. anyway we had some trauma.
To prevent situations like that in the future we need to communicate a bit more effective about who is responsible for what. What is expected and what needs to be done if those expectations aren't met.
There was an attempt to document some of this @ https://springrts.com/wiki/About/Organization
Which is good but when do you remove someone from that list? Can someone add himself to the list? It needs more structure.
Further down the road, what if a Spring game gets popular? And some actual money starts flowing in. How do we keep a balance between hobby contributors and those that are building a business? Who has the "authority" to discuss this?
I have tried to think of processes and structures for the different challenges we face but they all require some form of administrator or leader. And the easy way out would be to pick someone and make them "leader". Think "Ton Roosendaal" from Blender or "Mark Shuttleworth" from Ubuntu.
Those are project founders, our founders Fnordia and SJ are looongg gone. And we had several people doing "lead dev" stuff since then who moved on too.
So there is no natural leader that we can default to. We will never have a "leader" that can claim ownership, it will always be an administrative role.
Which means we need to make decisions as a collective. Which lead to the question who are part of the collective? As some are more equal than others.
Introducing the "merit" feature.
Merit feature
I added 2 panels to the member profile page, left gives the status, right is explanation
If all requirements are met the user can click the status link to give a "merit recommendation"
PhpBB asks for a conformation
The user rejects
Or accepts
Status link is replaced with text that you already gave merit
And if the user has received 3 or more recommendations this merit gets set to "Yes"
Left detail
Right detail
The discussion
Concretely the interesting part is the merit requirements panel.
What as a community do we require from people if we want to recognise them as a relevant contributing member that can have a say in how things work?
I picked a set of requirements that is visible in the second last picture. But that must be discussed.
One of the things I would like to add to that list is a requirement to sign a 'Code of Conduct', we don't have one but for example Debian and Ubuntu have them. We would have to write one. And does someone have to sign it before they can get merit status or before they can give merit recommendations?
Should we give people the option to block receiving merit recommendations from others? And/or an option to set your own merit status to false (No) and keep it there?
Should the merit status only be displayed with the name/avatar panel if it's "Yes" but not if it's "No"?
I currently chose to not make it visible who gave who merit recommendations, to prevent it becoming a "I'm your friend, are you my friend?" thing. But? Maybe we should know who gave us (or others) recommendations?
I also chose not to make it visible for others how many recommendations a user has (you can only see how many you have yourself) to prevent it becoming a popularity contest. But again? I don't know.
And how to deal with changes to the requirements once it's in production? Are people going to lose the merit status? I currently don't plan on taking it away from people once they gain it. As the creator of this feature I currently reserve the right to do so but that's not something I would be happy to do.
Or should we maybe lose it automatically after some time of inactivity or should it be actively renewed by the people that gave you recommendations?
Can merit recommendations be retracted? I did not create that option as that would (or would not?) have consequences for the merit status itself.
Should recommendations by people that have many recommendations themselves be "worth" more? Or those who have merit status longer?
More meta, I tried to think of a dead simple system, remove things that makes it more complicated. But I did pick a particular approach, is this the type of system we want?
Anything else?
Committed it to: https://github.com/Tim-Blokdijk/spring- ... ring/merit
We definitely should not take this version into production, the code works but I want some quality feedback.
I have not uploaded this to http://test.springrts.com/phpbb yet but that will probably happen soonish.
First a little background
Spring doesn’t have official leaders, no hard responsibilities or requirements.
This lead to some unfortunate friction when developers where not happy with the way the server was functioning. Which escalated and never really .. anyway we had some trauma.
To prevent situations like that in the future we need to communicate a bit more effective about who is responsible for what. What is expected and what needs to be done if those expectations aren't met.
There was an attempt to document some of this @ https://springrts.com/wiki/About/Organization
Which is good but when do you remove someone from that list? Can someone add himself to the list? It needs more structure.
Further down the road, what if a Spring game gets popular? And some actual money starts flowing in. How do we keep a balance between hobby contributors and those that are building a business? Who has the "authority" to discuss this?
I have tried to think of processes and structures for the different challenges we face but they all require some form of administrator or leader. And the easy way out would be to pick someone and make them "leader". Think "Ton Roosendaal" from Blender or "Mark Shuttleworth" from Ubuntu.
Those are project founders, our founders Fnordia and SJ are looongg gone. And we had several people doing "lead dev" stuff since then who moved on too.
So there is no natural leader that we can default to. We will never have a "leader" that can claim ownership, it will always be an administrative role.
Which means we need to make decisions as a collective. Which lead to the question who are part of the collective? As some are more equal than others.
Introducing the "merit" feature.
Merit feature
I added 2 panels to the member profile page, left gives the status, right is explanation
If all requirements are met the user can click the status link to give a "merit recommendation"
PhpBB asks for a conformation
The user rejects
Or accepts
Status link is replaced with text that you already gave merit
And if the user has received 3 or more recommendations this merit gets set to "Yes"
Left detail
Right detail
The discussion
Concretely the interesting part is the merit requirements panel.
What as a community do we require from people if we want to recognise them as a relevant contributing member that can have a say in how things work?
I picked a set of requirements that is visible in the second last picture. But that must be discussed.
One of the things I would like to add to that list is a requirement to sign a 'Code of Conduct', we don't have one but for example Debian and Ubuntu have them. We would have to write one. And does someone have to sign it before they can get merit status or before they can give merit recommendations?
Should we give people the option to block receiving merit recommendations from others? And/or an option to set your own merit status to false (No) and keep it there?
Should the merit status only be displayed with the name/avatar panel if it's "Yes" but not if it's "No"?
I currently chose to not make it visible who gave who merit recommendations, to prevent it becoming a "I'm your friend, are you my friend?" thing. But? Maybe we should know who gave us (or others) recommendations?
I also chose not to make it visible for others how many recommendations a user has (you can only see how many you have yourself) to prevent it becoming a popularity contest. But again? I don't know.
And how to deal with changes to the requirements once it's in production? Are people going to lose the merit status? I currently don't plan on taking it away from people once they gain it. As the creator of this feature I currently reserve the right to do so but that's not something I would be happy to do.
Or should we maybe lose it automatically after some time of inactivity or should it be actively renewed by the people that gave you recommendations?
Can merit recommendations be retracted? I did not create that option as that would (or would not?) have consequences for the merit status itself.
Should recommendations by people that have many recommendations themselves be "worth" more? Or those who have merit status longer?
More meta, I tried to think of a dead simple system, remove things that makes it more complicated. But I did pick a particular approach, is this the type of system we want?
Anything else?