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Fridge Calendar <-> #ubuntu-meeting Issues

The Fridge calendar is read by the meeting bot in #ubuntu-meeting to set the topic on the channel.

Currently, the Fridge calendar does not support repeating events. Adding/updating/deleting a weekly meeting is a nightmare. The calendar feeds also don't work when read by Google Calendar, which is known issue with the Drupal Events module.

There are two options:

• Upgrading the Fridge - The Fridge is running an older version of Drupal. Most of the development (including support for Events module, aka calendar) has moved on to the next major version of Drupal. Talking to Matthew Nuzum, an upgrade isn't an option at the moment.
• Using an off-site calendar - Cody Somerville, Matthew Nuzum, and I have discussed using Google Calendar. It easy to give access to anyone to update the calendar (a gmail account is required). It can be easily embedded into the Fridge. And its easy to add/update/delete repeating events.

The News Team is now maintaining a separate Google Calendar which will hopefully replace the existing Fridge calendar, but this is where we have a problem: the bot in #ubuntu-meeting does not support repeating events. stdin and persia have tried to find development help. stdin, who maintains the bot, asked for help in -motu and -devel to make the needed changes, but got no response.

We need development help to switch over to the Google Calendar. The community is growing too fast for the News Team to maintain the calendar by itself.

Asia Oceania Membership Board needs more members

Asia Oceania membership board was setup keeping in mind, Ubuntu membership applications from the vast geographic region of Asia Oceania. Currently seven members serve the Board. Past experiences of Board member s's presence in the meeting have made us to decide to have flexible timings. This will also help member candidates from the Asia Oceania region itself. Participation of members candidates from the region for which this Board has been setup is also minimal in the past. The idea is to have two more members on board and conduct the meeting at 15.00 UTC and 9.00 UTC on alternating Tuesdays of a month.

Previous Items

Artwork Guidelines

(This was on the agenda last time, when no quorum was reached. No talking happend elsewhere, either. The following text is an extended take.)

The artwork team suffers from having no clear goals to work towards and no guidelines to further a common visual identity for Ubuntu. There are only few members who are actually productive, but in the end still just go their own way. There's not much of a common ground, just many opinions based on personal taste.

We need a tool to overcome personal taste, something that can be used as measure for all efforts. This falls in line with the needs of a proper design process for a visual identity.

Goals

All decisions should flow from the top level goals for Ubuntu. The graphical presentation must further, or at least not be in conflict with, these goals.

Message and Audience

The presentation, like any act, conveys a message even if you don't care about it. That would be to take a risk instead of an opportunity. If you do care about the message, you have to think about the recipient. You don't talk to a 12 year old girl the same as to a 61 year old man.

The target audience for artwork doesn't need to be identical to the entire audience for Ubuntu as such. You can't please everyone.

Defining a main audience, even if specifically only for the presentation, is likely to raise complaints about excluding people. But the attempt to target everyone implies an audience of just average people. No single person is average, though. Especially geographically.

Process

I intend to create guidelines and get the community involved.

Contents:

• Fundamental goals
• Central target audience
• What we want to communicate to said audience
• General means of doing so
• Standard widgets and what should be considered in light of our message and usability (treat widgets like parts of a language, define what they have to say)

These guidelines should:

• become the base for a consistent, goal-oriented presentation for Ubuntu
• get people from the artwork team to pull in one direction
• give us the necessary context for real constructive criticism
• have educational value as a showcase of an extensive design process

The Question

While I'll be glad for general feedback, the central question is: Will sabdfl be ready to approve, modify or criticise such guidelines? If not, what is seen as the problem with this proposal?

This undertaking would benefit immensely from official approval. Especially for the top level goals, strategic considerations and the central target audience.

--

Thorsten Wilms

http://thorwil.wordpress.com/

t_w_@freenet.de

Use of Launchpad Mailing Lists - added by MatthewEast

Now that Launchpad offers mailing lists for teams, the Community Council has discussed whether it is appropriate to give teams in the community a choice about whether to use a mailing list on lists.ubuntu.com or one provided by Launchpad.

The Council has decided to strongly recommend that teams use an existing list on lists.ubuntu.com or request the creation of a new list there rather than using Launchpad mailing lists at this time. This is because, while it is ultimately intended to migrate to Launchpad for Ubuntu mailing lists, we are waiting for the ability to manage lists on Launchpad that remain on different domains, like lists.ubuntu.com, and intend to move once that's in place and we have tested it thoroughly.

In my opinion a few issues arise out of this.

Communication: while a guideline has been added to the wiki pages dealing with new team creation, I have increasingly seen examples of people being unaware of the policy. I feel it should be communicated more widely, and discussing the subject at a CC meeting is one way to do this. Also, it's important for those people considering applications for Ubuntu lists either on lists.ubuntu.com or on Launchpad are fully aware of the policy. Although the policy has been discussed with some of the key Launchpad mailing list developers, I don't think everyone who is responsible for mailing list approval is aware of it because I've seen some applications for mailing lists approved for official Ubuntu teams.

Unofficial lists: not all requests for mailing lists are accomodated on lists.ubuntu.com. These usually result in 'unofficial' lists being created with providers such as freelists (for example the italian local team currently uses around 10 such lists for its various subteams). Given that Launchpad is another example of a free mailing list provider, such teams should be allowed to use Launchpad if they choose. I think that ideally a system should be put in place to ensure consistency between lists.ubuntu.com applications and Launchpad list applications and check that requests are made to the right place depending on whether the list is official or not. This might be done by the creation of a list admin team, with access to lists.ubuntu.com and the Launchpad list admin feature, who can coordinate privately on requests for lists and discuss any issues with the person requesting a list. There are a couple of Launchpad features which would be useful to assist with that - the ability to give a reason when approving/rejecting a mailing list application, and the ability to list all enabled mailing lists in Launchpad.

Interface for Intrepid Ibex - added by Acelin

Ubuntu is by far the most user-friendly Linux distribution available presently. It has continuously pushed forward time and time again to provide its community with great releases. We have drivers, great programs, and easy installation. We have security, stability, and great community support. I would like to discuss for a minute what the community wants to do with the interface of Ubuntu.

As a member of the Art Team, I see a lot of great pieces of work, great ideas, and great discussion. The current Ubuntu interface is good - its clear, concise, easy to use, and easy on the eyes. However, it does look outdated and could be friendlier.

We therefore can do several things to improve this.

1) Fonts. Our system font and fonts used in programs such as OpenOffice.org and Firefox are very outdated, even though there are better FOSS fonts out there. I suggest we update all fonts, in order modernizing our OS.

2) Icons. I believe that while our current icons are nice, they simply are outdated. They look almost like a playtoy. They were fine 4 years ago. We can progress.

3) Everything Else. The artwork team is working on this, but better guidelines need to be set up to take action, such as better voting procedures, more input from the developers, and our restrictions. What themes are acceptable? What colors are wanted? How will the final decision be made? What is Mr. Shuttleworth looking for?

Many people see II as the release that will really push Ubuntu forward into the mainstream. We are very close to being THE knock out Linux; why not make our OS look better than any other OS and present the all around package?

Respectively,

Salane Ashcraft salane89@gmail.com

Complaints about Planet Ubuntu posts - added by Fabian Rodriguez

I am a bit suprised at the tone set by this blog post:

1. Linux Haters Blog ? Windows Lover Blogs ? WTF? - posted by Ubuntu member Stephan Hermann

I usually have a high treshold for anything that would be offensive, but within this context (Planet, CoC), I have a hard time seing such content up on our Planet. I'd like to discuss better guidelines being established and posted at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PlanetUbuntu , at better harder than the vague "... the only hard and fast rule is "don't annoy people."

I often refer colleagues, family and friends to Planet and quite frankly the arrogant attitude and the cursing on such posts is unacceptable in this project. I contacted Stephan via IRC and via his blog comments, my initial attempts to discuss this directly were either ignored or dismissed. Seeing the violence in all his public attacks and responses and no intention from him to communicate directly with me, I didn't find it would be constructive or objective to try communicating with him again.

I also tried to find a lower governance instance to deal with this, like the membership boards, but there was no clear contact information nor any visible way to deal with this.

Note: I removed another blog post from this complaint after having quickly discussed and resolved my concern about it with its author (Jorge Bernal).

• Also, the response he posted today, is not only not of the interest of the ubuntu community, but unrespectful and challenging -- Nxvl

• Planet, based on its current rules, seems to be meant *not* for all-Ubuntu-all-the-time, but to allow for the human side of the developers, contributors, and other members. Members, not machines. Our human sides have emotions, and expressing them is what makes us human. Yes, Stephan's post was a bit angry, but you know what? People get angry sometimes, especially when they feel someone is trying to censor them and take away their ability to express themselves. And I hate how I keep seeing people saying that you can avoid having one specific post go to Planet. You can't. Not unless you leave the Planet for 3 days after you post, because it takes 3 days to get it off the front page. Supposedly *some* blog software lets you have a feed for just one category, but that is not the case with all blog software. I use Blogger. I can aggregate every post or none of them. Most of my posts are Ubuntu related, but sometimes I go off-topic because I want to raise awareness/rant about something (usually related to treating people equally, which I think is an "ubuntu" ideal, but which I realize goes against the beliefs of others), and as far as I'm concerned, if you don't want to read the post, you don't, but if you want to know what I think, (during those rare moments when I'm not thinking about computers ;)) read them. -- MacoMorgan

• Maco, try this: http://xxx.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/labelname - my complaint is not about being off-topic, BTW. -- FabianRodriguez

• I don't believe the CoC specifically disallows bad language, or abbreviated bad language. My interpretation only sees the CoC trying to prevent it being used personally against someone. The CoC does however talk about 'poor manners', and I think that Fabián was *very* polite in his post, stating his opinion that others should try to keep certain behavior away when representing Ubuntu. Conversely, Stephan seemed consistently rude, condescending and generally displaying bad manners, not respecting Fabián one bit - "you should really get a life" for example. So... I believe bad language is ok as long as it is not used as a personal attack, and that Stephan is being rude again. (I'm resisting mjg's suggestion of wording after seeing his lightning talk at lrl) -- PriceChild

• I agree with PriceChild that Stephan was being impolite. I still disagree with Fabián regarding whether or not words which are considered questionable by some people should or should not be allowed on Planet, however. The goal should be, as LinuxChix has as its only rule, "Be polite. Be helpful." -- MacoMorgan

• I think this guy should be removed from the Planet this response is not aceptable from a Ubuntu Member. -- mayeco

• Does anyone else find it deeply ironic that the _only_ time Planet Ubuntu has been frozen, and had an article manually redacted out of the database is when Fabian _himself_ blogged Canonical company secrets? Glass houses - throwing stones... Made me chuckle anyway -- AlanPope

• Maco: You actually can, i write in spanish and english and none of my spanish post goes to Ubuntu Planet, also i separate Debian specific (for debian planet) from ubuntu specific (ubuntu planet). Also the problem here is not to use or not some words, it's about attitude and i have find Stephan unrespectful not only on the planet, but on other communication resources. Also what Fabian did on his post was to ask on polite way not to write those post, and the reaction is totally unacceptable for an ubuntu member. Keep in mind that planet ubuntu is somehow the face of the community to the external world, that's why only the ubuntu member (who represent the ubuntu community officially) have the rights to be there and i don't think that anyone of us would like the world to think that the ubuntu community is unrespectful. Nxvl

• Nxvl: You don't appear to be using Blogger, based on all those wp-content URLs. It seems WordPress can do this, but to say that every Planet member must aggregate only Ubuntu posts...well...no more Blogger-users allowed, then. I haven't talked to Stephan much in other contexts, but he seemed respectful the one time we talked on IRC. If you want to scold him for being disrespectful in that post, that's fine, he was neither polite nor respectful in his response. However, I still don't want to see the Planet turn into a you-must-use-WordPress-so-we-can-pretend-you-have-no-soul-and-it's-all-about-Ubuntu place. -- MacoMorgan

• On blogger you can do it also, see Fabian's response. Also if you take a closer look, Stephan not only uses drupal that allows you to have separate feeds by category, but he also has only his ubuntu category suscribed to planet ubuntu, so this post was not just on planet ubuntu because it's on he's blog, but because it was posted to make his way into planet ubuntu, which IMHO makes things worst. Nxvl

• I was looking for more context for the post from Stephan that started this, and a recent post featured on Slashdot seems related: Tough love: Linux needs more haters -- NealMcBurnett

• Stephan's reaction is a perfect example of a proper reaction to censorship. If the words he was using were "religion" or "children" or "marraige" and someone had told him they should not be used because they might offend people, everyone would be on his side. You cannot barrage someone over and over for years and expect their reaction to be "oh ok I see your point, let me kindly do exactly what you say." Stephan is not the only one that has experienced this on the Ubuntu community. It is why many..let me emphasize MANY of us have come in and see what your group does, and LEFT. Censorship belongs in a church. One common excuse for calls of censorship is that others might be offended that we refer. When I refer folks here I don't even have to explain that these are not my posts, people are smart enough to figure it out. Also, whether Fabian and others like it or not, these words are common language, and are used not only in blue collar settings, but also white collar now. Though I find the typical prejudice against blue collar language showing through. Fix bug number 1? Not so long as only elite white collar workers are entitled to be a part of your community. -Joseph James Frantz