Removing Ubuntu Wiki from membership application process

Community Membership
#1

Hi all

I’d like the membership board to consider removing the Ubuntu Wiki from the membership application process.

Moving the introductions to this discourse category is a great first step and thank you for that! That was the reason why I was able to become an Ubuntu member. I tried a few times in the past, but I could never get the Wiki to work right.

However, there is still one step that involves the wiki: adding yourself to a meeting. Many of the recent membership applications have had to ask more senior members to update the wiki because they couldn’t themselves.

Therefore, I’d like you to consider an alternative method for adding people to a membership council meeting. Bad suggestions to get the discussion started:

  • Google calendar with recurring meetings to show when meetings happen
  • Applicants can add themselves to a meeting by emailing the membership board
  • Discourse post for each meeting
  • Google form for adding applicants to meetings.

What do you think, @mapreri, @bashing-om, @lucyllewy, @Wild_Man, @msdomdonner1

4 Likes
#2

Reference: Membership application process

Option: Example UbuntuOnAir rolling calendar Upcoming UbuntuOnAir Live Streams . In Discourse, posts can be wikis and interested folks can edit them. Includes versioning; any Mod can rollback in case of vandalism.

5 Likes
#3

I like the current application process.
It does include Wiki and Discourse as an avenue for the membership process already.

#4

hi @merlijn-sebrechts ,

Sorry to give my opinion even though I’m not being tagged for asking opinion :face_with_peeking_eye: . Btw, nice to finally meet you in person at the Tallink Hotel lobby after the summit closing party.

I do agree with you that some newcomers having difficulty with the wiki. The recent application candidates are now putting their applications through discourse.

We need to find a way for the candidate to schedule the meeting with the membership council through discourse too as you already listed down some points to start the discussion here. With that, we can slowly leave the wiki and all the processes being done using discourse.

just my 2 cents, looking forward to hearing from other board members…

#5

et al

My 2 cents as a member of the board.
While we continue to consolidate to Discourse, what we presently have in place works well for the way I keep up with an applicant’s state and status.
It is no burden to look at what is required to make a time announcement on:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership/Boards
and to do so. However, I too look forward to the time we no longer need to keep up with that page to ascertain an agenda for our meetings.

Cheers

Bashing-om

2 Likes
#6

Apologies for not pinging everyone. I used the list on launchpad but it looks like I included only the 5 “newest” members instead of clicking through to see the entire list of members.

1 Like
#7

I’ll suggest rather than on google.docs (especially given the recent problem Ubuntu News has had with gdoc), you consider it just being on this site and kept as a wiki page here.

As example; the current UWN issue (814) is still available as a wiki page which would allow most users of this site to have edit privileges. I requested some testing of it on IRC prior to use (for Ubuntu News) using it & can confirm members of the site have no issues, and according to the discourse site trust level 1 or above) can edit too (all all but new accounts on this site).

The limitation we’ve encountered is less of a problem for a low traffic wiki. There is no capacity for the site to allow multiple people to edit, and no warnings are given if another person has already clicked EDIT, thus if two people end up editing at the same time, when the second person clicks SAVE they’ll overwrite any change(s) made by the first user (they were editing what had been saved on the site at the moment they clicked EDIT, regardless of changes made by the person already editing). The history is still visible on the site though (it’ll show the last save deleted whomever was first to click save), and I’ve not found it onerous to check that regularly (the size of the page, amount & frequency of edits will of course matter). FYI: @Bashing-om will be most aware of what I’m trying to describe here :slight_smile:

Please note: I’ve used UWN814 as example here as it’s currently a wiki page, however that issue is currently in REVIEW & the edit link will disappear rather soon. In a day we’ll start UWN815 & it’ll become our WIP issue which will become the WIKI page example.

3 Likes
#8

Something related to consider: I’m currently moving the last of the Community Council wiki pages to ubuntu.com/community (backed by discourse wiki posts). I noticed that a number of the membership application content is currently duplicated between the old wiki and discourse/community hub. For example, see Membership Application Process

Is anyone interested in reviewing the Community Hub membership pages to see what should be updated and what pages on the wiki can be changed into a redirect? @aaronprisk and me are happy to help migrate and update content. We both have some experience with how these discourse docs work and some of the more advanced markup you can do.

I currently really like how the wiki uses lots of pictures and that seems to be missing from the community hub. But the pictures are aging. Maybe we can use some of the Ubuntu Summit pictures?

#9

merlijn-sebrechts;
The Membership Board has this on our radar.

Cheers

2 Likes