Joomla Community Council ???

[brian]

Whilst everyone is in the mood for long discussions. Perhpas this is worth considering for discussion

http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20070515-00

[ibnhafsun]

Do you mean a philosophical body?
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/processes/council

Sounds interesting but hard to accomplish if we don´t know what Joomla! wants to be.

[brian]

I think its far more than a philosophical body if you read the council aims and objectives at the url you provided

[brad]

Good for Ubuntu!

I certainly wish them all the best with their plans and model for governance/input etc.

[ibnhafsun]

Sure!

I believe they are doing a great job. As an example, their rules are the WGs rules...

[brian]

So is there something we can learn from this? Is there a need for a Joomla Community Council elected by the members?

[TomT]

I'm not in favor of elections. I think this forum is a Community Counsel. We all can express our opinions and these are part of the decisionmaking of the coreteam.

[brian]

The ubuntu councel is far more than that and the elections are just a means of selecting those involved. Dont get sidetrcked by the issue of how you get on the counil. Think more about what the council woud do. Would a more democratic and representative body be more effective....

[Jenny]

How can you get more democratic or representative than the community involvement at will of over 100,000 members?  Everyone who joins the forum can of their own free will take part in any discussion that is going on.  How much more democratic can you get than that?

To restrict the input to a few "elected" persons would be a step backwards for the community..

[brian]

I take your point MMedia but is it realy the forum members that drive the direction of Joomla?

[Jenny]

I think it is.

[ibnhafsun]

By some kind of [spam] or... are there any processes available to take a look and learn how it is done?

[Jenny]

Surely you jest?

Look at the number of members.  Look at the number of posts.  Look at the posts where requests are made, and you can see that actions are taken on those requests. 

As this thread has now dissolved into the asinine, I will unsubscribe. 

[ibnhafsun]

Oh, I see... No, I was not joking and I will try to be more polite than you.

The process is ask, get a response and wait for further action. This way the forums members drive the direction of Joomla!.

But the Joomla! community is more than us, the forum members. Louis explains this better than me:
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg581690

And we have international communities that work outside this forum too.

The structure is rationale: forums, WGs, Core, OSM. We know some processes, they are published. Some others (and I can show you several examples) not. Or simply there is no planned way to manage some issues or there is no appropiate way to manage them. But that´s my opinion. I guess is as valid as yours at least from a personal perspective (as I do appreciate your hard work).

[TomT]

Think more about what the council would do. Would a more democratic and representative body be more effective....

I think not. I don't see any advantages in a representative body. Now we can all represent ourselves, for me that is more democratic than being represented by someone else. A council leads to more politics, more struggle, more bureaucracy, slower decision making etcetera.
And I'm happy with the way things go now. The coreteam and working groups are open to questions, suggestions and criticism. There have been done so much in Joomla!'s short existence, the project is a huge success. And I have no reason to doubt that the quality of both code as organisation will keep growing.

[ibnhafsun]

I agree, TomT. There is no need for a representative body or something like that and, as you´ve said, we have the chance to represent ourselves. And an "alien" representative body would mean that we, somehow, were wrong when we moved from the old project.

But I am not so happy with the way things go now, even being thankful for all the advances that the project has done (from time to time we need to take a look back and see what we had and what we have now) and it doesn´t mean that we live in a perfect world. At least not a perfect world for everybody.

IMVHO, this forum, being a great (but limited) resource, is becoming part of the problem as it is not the solution for everything.

But the question is how we can be tied to the letter to the community and what can be done to improve the way Joomla! is managed by the ability of the developers and the demands of its users. In other words: how can we stablish the best processes to be there.

Yes, some of us could think that this is accomplished by posting a request, an answer and an action. But I don´t think so: we need clear and published processes too. Then, just the same way the forum mods are doing their work, we would have persons supporting that processes and helping us to understand the goals.

[manuman]

Just a footnote... OSM is a team inside a WG so the structure is Core -> WG's -> Teams (with OSM being a team inside the Foundation WG).

[compass]

Hos will that structure once (if I read some other posts right) Joomla goes 501 (c). Doesn't that need the board at the top of the pyramid?

[Jenny]

http://www.opensourcematters.org/

[louis.landry]

Hos will that structure once (if I read some other posts right) Joomla goes 501 (c). Doesn't that need the board at the top of the pyramid?

Nope

[mcsmom]

The board is in a legal sense the top of OSM, but OSM itself is just a part of the Foundation WG.