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From: Alex Harui <aharui@adobe.com>
To: "general@incubator.apache.org" <general@incubator.apache.org>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 09:49:26 -0700
Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] Mandatory podling exit interviews
Thread-Topic: [PROPOSAL] Mandatory podling exit interviews
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On 6/21/13 5:58 AM, "Upayavira" <uv@odoko.co.uk> wrote:

>
>
>On Fri, Jun 21, 2013, at 01:52 PM, Marvin Humphrey wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 2:18 AM, Upayavira <uv@odoko.co.uk> wrote:
>>=20
>> > As in any such survey, author identity should be optional. Sometimes
>>it
>> > can be deduced, but not always, and if someone would rather not
>>mention
>> > their name, we should give them that opportunity.
>>=20
>> "Sometimes" preserving anonymity is not good enough.  It would be
>> irresponsible of us to solicit candid feedback when identity will be
>> revealed
>> "sometimes".
>>=20
>> If respondents state that they would prefer to remain anonymous, at the
>> very
>> least we must limit publication of any natural language responses to
>> private@incubator -- which would be unfortunate because it shunts
>> discussion
>> that ought to take place in public onto a private list.  Furthermore, we
>> should tell them outright that they are fooling themselves if they think
>> no
>> IPMC members will be able to guess who they are.
>>=20
>> I'm not even sure we can realistically preserve anonymity for "scale of
>>1
>> to
>> 10", multiple choice, true/false and so on given the very limited pool
>>of
>> potential respondents.  We're going to have to think really hard about
>> what we
>> ask and what we publish -- and if we try hard to scrub and fail, I'm
>> going to
>> feel really bad.
>>=20
>> Nevertheless, if an "anonymous" option that can only be discussed
>> privately is
>> the price of consensus, I'm still on board.  It's better than nothing.
>
>Exactly. I've seen many surveys where the name is optional, but 5 of 6
>people fill in their name. So much for anonymity.
>
>I would say make the name field optional and have a 'keep my comments
>private' tickbox, default unticked. They likely won't be able to keep it
>from any members of the IPMC, but at least would allow them to say "you
>are a complete bunch of loosers" without it getting into the public
>domain.

As a newbie, it seemed like the IPMC and ASF as a whole was like how the
movies portray the Mafia in the sense that you had to earn your way in,
and folks were pretty tight-knit and knew each other personally.  There is
no way I would name any names in any email where I didn't know exactly who
would read it, so I would never name names in a survey or in an email to
an ombudsman or private@.  Not because of fear that a 'hit' would be put
on me, but just that it could burn bridges I might need later. That's why
I just offered another section to the "What to expect" thread about
finding a mentor or ASF member to work with to resolve complaints against
individuals.  If the matter cannot be resolved directly and off-list, that
mentor or ASF member should help the crafting of any email that ends up
on-list.  Just because the person you are complaining about isn't in the
IPMC, there is no guarantee they won't be invited to join the day after
you write your email to private@.  I would actually suggest giving up on
trying to find a way to provide anonymity and adding a warning to the
survey/exit-interview to caution folks about naming names.  In theory, the
complaints about individuals you are worrying about missing have been
alluded to on the dev list of that project and addressed via the help of
mentors or other ASF members long before the project graduates and an exit
interview happens.  If some person filling out the exit interview has
something else to say that requires they remain anonymous, they should
also voice that with a mentor or ASF member, and they should have done so
long before graduation as well back when the incident or issue was taking
place.

My five cents,
-Alex


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