Ubuntu Wiki

The Ubuntu Forums Council has been given the power to confer official Ubuntu Membership upon forums members based on their activity in the forums. This document has been approved by the Ubuntu Community Council, but may receive minor adjustments if necessary.

This process conforms to the process for the entire community outlined at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership, but with minor changes suitable for our venue. Applicants are still required to provide evidence of sustained, beneficial contributions. Only specific differences from the details at the above link are outlined below. The main difference is that many forum members do not use IRC, so the forums themselves are being used as the venue for the interview portion of the application.

Applications from forum members seeking official Ubuntu Membership will be accepted quarterly (this is likely to change to every other month or monthly once we refine the process).

Applicants are expected to be active forum members in good standing, have a clear history and record of helping other forum users by posting meaningful responses to help threads for at least six months and must not have had any active infractions for at least one full year.

The application is to be announced in a forum post that will include the following:

a link to the applicant's wiki page at wiki.ubuntu.com where all activities that the applicant wants considered as foundational for membership should be listed clearly, especially those in the forums since they are the basis by which we are empowered to confer membership--think of this as a resume and the forum thread as an interview. Please see this wiki page [link to example to be added] for a sample of the sort of activity we are looking to find. Once you have posted your forum thread, please put a link to it near the top of your wiki page to make both easy to find.

a link to the applicant's Launchpad page at launchpad.net showing that they have signed the Ubuntu Code of Conduct

Applicants should invite other forum members to post a comment in their application thread in support of their application.

The application will be posted in a new sub forum to be placed under the Community Cafe which will be called "Ubuntu Membership Applications" and which will have a sticky thread at the top with a link to this wiki page and a short synopsis of the process.

At the beginning of each quarter, the Forum Council Chairman will designate a three day period at the end of the quarter for Forum Council members to read all applications and perform the interview, commenting or asking questions for each candidate. At the end of the interview period, all application threads will be closed for comment by all except FC members and the vote will be called. The vote may happen sooner when appropriate, such as when it is obvious that an applicant is qualified. The time limit is to ensure that we complete deliberations in a timely manner. The advance notice is to ensure that applicants have sufficient time to prepare their applications and that they know when they need to be available to respond to comments and questions during the interview period.

When Ubuntu Membership is conferred by the Forum Council, those members will also receive membership in a to-be-created Forum Members team in Launchpad. This team will ultimately be the ones who vote on forum-specific issues such as Forum Council membership. This may not be the exclusive method by which Ubuntu Members are added to that Launchpad team as this group has not yet been created. Examples of similar teams include: https://launchpad.net/~kubuntu-members and https://launchpad.net/~edubuntu-members