It's been a week since I opened up the poll, time for an update...
TLDR: Poll closes next week, then it's "New year, new tools" ;)
# Myself
As most of you know, today is my last day full-time, as I go off on
leave tomorrow for a few months. However, this is my most ambitious
community project to-date, and I will not be abandoning it. Expect to
see me active in the evenings (GMT) - my profile [1] will tell you when
I was last seen if you want to stalk me :P
If you need me urgently, an email or a private message on Discourse
should reach me within 5-10mins, and I will reply as soon as I am able
(likely immediately, at least in brief).
# Which lists?
At first glance this poll is pretty clear, 71% in favour of moving both
lists. But that would be unfair to long-time members of the community
who voted to move a single list - as we often say, it's a meritocracy,
not a democracy, and not all votes are equal.
There isn't a number for "merit" that exists, so as an approximation, I
weighted the votes using the length of time the user has been on the
mailing list (not perfect, but better than nothing). The results,
however, don't shift the needle very much:
Total vote-days cast: 26490
Both lists: 16156 (60.99%)
Just users: 10334 (39.01%)
Even attempting to weight for karma/merit/call-it-what-you-like, we
still get a pretty clear 61% result. I will leave the poll open into
next week (Thanksgiving means the US in particular haven't had much time
to consider), but I think we need to start planning for this outcome.
Sidenote: I don't want vote-days to become a standard metric, I think
we're usually pretty good at coming to a consensus - but in this case I
wanted to try to give fair treatment to those who disagree with me on a
divisive topic. Hopefully that works for everyone. If you want to check
my maths, you can find the raw data and the script I used at [2].
# Moderators & Maintenance
I'd like to thank Ori, Tomer, and Eric for agreeing to be moderators. In
my absence, any spam/flagged-posts/tags/split topics/etc issues can be
directed to them. Ori and Ewoud are also admins, should that be
necessary for some reason.
The Discourse host has been added to our puppetmaster, and offsite
backups of the Discourse DB are now happening. This includes files, and
so will protect us in the unlikely event of a complete loss of the host.
# Users feedback
I will bump the users thread today and make them aware of the poll too.
So far I've only heard positive or neutral feedback from users (some of
it private, so you'll have to believe me), and I don't expect any major
upset at this stage.
The November newsletter will also contain this info, so that readers
there have a final chance to join in before we take a conclusion next week.
# Migration plan
No comments have been left on this yet, so either I've done a really
good job of planning, or ... ;)
I think the debate is now coming to a natural close (no new viewpoints
have been addded in a while), and we also need to consider a time to do
the actual migration. New Year is traditionally very quiet, and seems to
fit the timescale. Given the above plan calls for a 3 week notice
period, I'm currently planning on the following dates:
Thu Dec 7th - conclude polls and state decisions regarding list(s)
Mon Dec 11th - initiate migration plan (as above, T - 3 weeks)
Sun Dec 31st - at midnight (or close to it) migrate the list(s)
I can work though the items on the plan in my evenings, it's not too
high a load, but assistance is welcome ofc. I will also volunteer to
give up my New Year's evening to do the migration - with 2 small
children, I'm not going out anyway :P
New Year, new tools. Should be fun :)
Thanks
Greg
[1] https://community.theforeman.org/u/Gwmngilfen/summary
[2] http://irc.emeraldreverie.org/R
