[Volunteers] Hello out there

[Heather Stern]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2005 at 01:19:52PM -0800, J. Paul Reed wrote:
> On 28 Mar 2005 at 13:06:20, Marc MERLIN arranged the bits on my disk to say:
> 
> > With some hand work, they can be put back in the volunteers list, but
> > that's iffy.  Honestly, I'm not sure why the web-team list was removed,
> > but whatever.
> 
> Because we're consolidating all the volunteer lists into one list. There's
> no reason to fragment our volunteers like that.
> 
> What stuff in the history is important?
> 
> Later,
> Paul

I can bring some historical reference to this.

I've also had an *extremely* hard year so far, so if *any* of what I say
stings your spirit, I beg you to read all the way to the end, stop, and if
you still feel ire, read it again thoroughly before composing a reply.  My
life has been full of sorrow lately and I *truly* desire not to bring more - 
what I'm saying is an effort to stop a slippery slope I am seeing, before it
becomes a nasty landslide.  Forgive me that I've come late to the fray, too; 
due to a sudden attack of Real Life Wins, I had been away from mail, and
only just got back in.

This is history for the webspace as I saw and experienced it.

Once upon a friendlier time, there had been a fairly large handful of
volunteers doing things for SVLUG.  We'd tried to do all the volunteer tasks
on officers@ but, this has made the list very heavy, ad it was decided that
sprouting some sub-lists would be a good idea.

A desperately good idea - it restored sanity, it gave us organization.

Speaker Coordinator got its own thing, and has gone through fits of
being useful as a position or not.

Installfest has always pretty much been managed by one person at a time that 
I could tell.  Among the sub-tasks done by officers it's probably been the
best handled...

"web-team" didn't become a list until after we three women (Amy, Lisa,
and I) took over being webmaster as a triumvirate of Design, CGI, and page
Coordination (iow pointing out who should do what, or what pairs of folk
to go deal with something), from Ian Kluft, who had been showing signs
of volunteerism overload for some time and was actually kind of close
to meltdown.  We held a supper at Pedro's for all volunteers interested
in helping *directly* with web stuff specifically ... about a dozen
people ... held work parties at Lisa's place (I think it was Lisa's
place. I remember the chameleon in its cage), and we seriously debugged
the SSI that we all currently enjoy.  The only thing I considered a
bug of that, was considered a feature at the time, fixed size boxes --
Amy graciously noted that as an open source group, our web page style
should be free for use should anyone ever ask. (If we want stretchy boxes
nowadays, btw, I do know the code to do it.)  Ian had been not the
only person working on directions, but the most active by far, and it
was a gentleperson's agreement I made with him, that he would continue
to have access and to be involved in directions only, but people should
stop asking him *anything* about web spaces, and refer to the triumvirate
webmistresses or the web-team.  Ideally the team. 

The CGI coordinator was allegedly in charge of several people dealing with
CGI bits - in practice that led to some nice ideas, that didn't come
through, its enthusiasm faded when people dove off into their real lives.
Speaking of real lives, Lisa had a kid, so she hasn't been able to help much
since...  

The Design coordinator mostly made sure new pages got their kit of SSI, and
otherwise kept a hand in as "ordinary" web folk.  Amy's real life got busy 
too - for "Coordinator" then there was just me, and that basically made me
the webmaster alone, except now there was a team.  Oh yeah, and if we needed 
a new button, I did it.  Not too bad, overall...  but time passes.

Ian wasn't the only one to update directions later either - I know I did
my part for a few places.  However, after things got expanded about as
far as they could go, to the one place we go to most, there really wasn't
anything else to say there.  Of all the ways directions can be done - some
like one way, some like another - if you say one style, people who need the
other ways groan that there's something missing - while if you say
everything... as presently... the groan there's too much to read.  Frankly
when I'm sitting passenger in someone's car and giving directions to the 
driver, I can *tune* things - give them directions in only the way they
like.  In a web page we are bound to annoy someone no matter what we do, the
best we can do is put the core information first, and at least get the most
impatient folks where they are going.  

I'm really frustrated that it's been turned into a turf war;  clearly
the whole volunteerism for SVLUG matter can stand to be organized anew
- but I am not seeing people here act like a *team* at all, people all
trying to solve the same problem together ... I'm seeing it degenerate
into a case that looks most like some sitcom Dad talking down to his
teenage daughter or son.

... the same behavior that in real life successfully gets the child to be
self sufficient, and leave, is not optimal to have a friendly team of people
*stay* and get useful things done.

The web-team was once a thriving thing - went through occasional bursts
of people lost or gained - but after a while, in *theory* I had a
team, in *practice* I was the only one, because I was the only person
doing webstuff for SVLUG's sake, and not merely nosing in because I
was an officer and had the right.  When Steve Traugott stepped up to
the similarly overwhelmed "Speaker Coordinator" position, his wife
joined the web-team, and I gleefully allowed her full control over
any and all speaker stuff. We really did coordinate - we were friends.
The installfest coordinator had been doing the installfest pages - though
there was a while they were pretty dusty, not much needed changing if
the place didn't, and we stopped keeping the date of the next in the
changeable full page...  I had Margaret Wendall helping me with looking
at farm stuff, and some of the stuff RCS attributed to me in places was
*her* work or mostly hers, because twice I had asked for an account for
her, even offered to bonafide for keeping an eye on her changes closely
if people thought her skills were shabby.  This was deep in the boom
though and the real world was giving everyone overload - the account
didn't show - the bust hit - more volunteers disappeared -

Even more overload when the bust hit, and some people were more concerned
about keeping their *paid* work going instead of the volunteer stuff.

Yeah, SVLUG's had some hard times.

I've had my own rough times too.  (Please don't ask the details, at
least not in mail.)  I was glad when Rick wanted to jump in and put
some fresh life into coordinating the web team.  Even if it's basically
just him and me.  I'd long since given up on finding out what hoops to
go through to have people officially added to *aid* me - to replace me
might work.  Looked like it worked - for a while - but here we are, our
elected SVLUG officers treat the webmaster job like as volunteers at all,
we just plain don't exist.  This isn't respect, guys.  It doesn't win.

If things manage to turn kindly again, it might be easier to convince
us to exist.   Pay sucks for being a volunteer.   Ian said it best when
things stopped melting down for him - the one thing we *do* owe our
volunteers is recognition that they are human, to care enough for them
to allow them to do their job, without giving them a nervous breakdown.
What I've said - published in magazines even - is that the pay of the
opensource realm is *respect*.  People who deserve that respect don't
get it without communication.  If nobody knows who maintains what, the
project looks good or dead on its own - and nobody gets any respect
for it at all.  That's a bit more unpaid that most volunteers want,
except for some who really would rather never face any light whatsoever,
even so much as a "thanks, dude, cool beans for chipping in."  (Yes, I do
know such people.  Bless their eternally frightened hearts, accept their
code on its own account.)

And ESR said the other part, to a project itself, the final responsibility
is hand-off, cleanly if possible, so it can live pass the loss of its
original humans.

I thought I'd done that justice to mine, and I now feel an ache as I wonder
if I did it an injustice instead.  What good's a webmaster who's not allowed
to be responsible for web pages.  My first impulse is to flee this politics
madness, but I desperately feel that's the wrong answer - it lets the
problem grow - drives it deeper, loses another volunteer, and that loss is
something I have the power to stop, 'cuz well, err, that'd be me;  I don't
*have* to go.

I'm perfectly happy to get *more* involved rather than less involved
with SVLUG as a volunteer.  I'm not happy at the ownership games I'm
seeing played.   It's embarrassing;  I've seen young kids who really
don't like each other much sort it out faster (although to their credit,
they were dealing with their problems in person, not over the emotionally
flattened world of email).  ***So*** I'm willing to show up at some sort
of meet to get some volunteer enthusiasm up - but I'll feel like I'm
interviewing someone, do I really want to stick with this or not.  And I
wouldn't blame anyone else there a damn bit for feeling much the same.
I'll be looking for signs that I'm working with, among, and for people
who actually care.  I have a life, and a limited amount of volunteerism
time - I'm close to full.  I used to enjoy being involved with SVLUG's
internals; I viewed it as doing stuff with friends, to help the linux-folk
around here get together without having to think about the gory details.
My sig used to say "hats:many" and be proud of what I was up to here. Now
I'm not at all sure.

Such people as want to work on web stuff really will want to have a
completely different meeting, about getting some real procedure in place
for style guides, behavior in regards various sections, merging things.
In an older, kinder world, we three girls had the delusion that RCS
would be enough - merge problems are easily sorted out.  Clearly, time
has shown *that* to be wrong.

In short - convince me I'm in the right place.  

I'm giving all my numbers; people are welcome to phone me instead, if
they'd prefer to hear whatever emotion can carry that way instead of
guess at what I'm thinking or feeling in mail.

  . | .   Heather Stern                  |         star at starshine.org
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