Mageia forum

May be you haven't read it because many people do not read the mailing lists.

This morning a member of the council suspended her position as such and all her positions in various teams. Marja, the member in question, is deputy leader for bugsquad, leader for docteam, assistant leader for forums team, and a valuable member of the Good Forces of this forum. So, what happened?

I don't know and most other people do not know. Nicolas (boklm) seemed to have a conflict with Marja which they discusses in private. This is ok as long as it turns to a solution for both. But now Marja reports that Nicolas wrote he will leave Mageia because of her, which makes it a major case for the council. So, instead of taking all weight on her shoulders (she wrote, she made a mistake and seems to damage Mageia) she should have brought the case to the attention of the council - according to the rules we gave us ourselves at the beginning.

Marja and Nicolas are not the first active and valuable members Mageia lost because of conflicts. May be that the council's leadership in the non-technical area needs improvement.

This story in the ml saddened me for three reasons.

First one, as Wobo said they are both valuable members and Mageia hasn't strengths to lose.

Second one, Mageia isn't that big company, everybody knows everybody, a few month ago "baby Mageia" was still managed by a bunch of friends, and it is a pity that two of these lead peoples can't find an agreement in this "village".

At least, the third one is that I really appreciate Marja and if she leaves the doc team leadership, I fear it will never be the same thing any more for me.

Well, I am waiting for some words by the people who's job it is to respond to such situations. Our organisation model explicitely states "conflict resolution" as one of the tasks of the board. IMHO silence is no resolution of a conflict.
May be some have forgotten documents like the Code of Conduct where you find such sentences like "Be collaborative , Be pragmatic , Support others in the community , Get support from others in the community".
I can't find something like "Be silent wherever possible".

Last but not least:
If boklm is leaving, is he also stepping back from his position as member of the Mageia board?

Not meant as an offense, but based on the little I know about all this Nicolas did not act as I would expect from a member of the board. This is my personal opinion. If it is wrong because of missing facts, don't blame me! Blame the silence about the whole incident.

Sorry for not posting this yesterday:

boklm has explained me how I caused this to happen. He and I appear to have very different ideas about my motivation, my words and deeds. I'm very thankful he told me this, because it stopped my frantically searching for "Where did it go wrong, how could this happen?"

This doesn't make it less sad, but it enables me to do some work for the teams I'm in.

wobo wrote:Marja and Nicolas are not the first active and valuable members Mageia lost because of conflicts. May be that the council's leadership in the non-technical area needs improvement.

Maybe so... we are all humans, and humans make mistakes. And as such there is always room for improvement.
But having people standing on the sidelines "accusing" others of inabilities to resolve issues and starting all kinds of discussions based on assumptions are not really helpful to those involved as it tends to "fuel the fire", making an already sensitive problem more inflammatory.

wobo wrote:Well, I am waiting for some words by the people who's job it is to respond to such situations. Our organisation model explicitely states "conflict resolution" as one of the tasks of the board. IMHO silence is no resolution of a conflict.

Well, you do read council ml, so you know Marja brought it to council attention only 1 day before you started this thread...
https://ml.mageia.org/l/arc/council/201 ... 00013.html

Do you seriously expect the issue to be resolved within one day before starting this "silence is no resolution" "nonsense" (nonsense from timeframe perspective) ...
Board members also need time to get all the facts before acting publically...

wobo wrote: This is my personal opinion. If it is wrong because of missing facts, don't blame me! Blame the silence about the whole incident.

Well, in this case i "blame" you

Expecting full publicity / resolved issues with this short amount of time is overly optimistic, isn't it ...

wobo wrote:If boklm is leaving, is he also stepping back from his position as member of the Mageia board?

Don't worry, I step back from everything.

tmb wrote:Expecting full publicity / resolved issues with this short amount of time is overly optimistic, isn't it ...

Issue is resolved. I'm leaving, marja is staying. This should make everybody happy. Now everybody can go back to work, there is nothing to discuss here.

boklm, I hope you'll reconsider - you've been a part of the core of Mageia since it started, and we'd really miss your input very much.

boklm wrote:

tmb wrote:Expecting full publicity / resolved issues with this short amount of time is overly optimistic, isn't it ...

Issue is resolved. I'm leaving, marja is staying. This should make everybody happy. ...

No, not me.
I backed Marja because I want her to stay, I never expected that this actual problem could make you to leave because you are a founder and ready to manage this kind of problem. Resigning isn't a solution, I hope you will find new motivation to go ahead.

"Our baby is growing" was called out not so long ago.
And yes, look around it really is. Mageia is making name in a more than excellent way.
And this all is made possible, by all those volunteering for this one goal.

We are growing and hence, like in real life, it seems unavoidable, to pass through different phases.
Maybe we have reached the phase of puberty right now.
And needless to say what this all can bring, don't we all remember?
In the end we all came out as better people, didn't we?

So, without reaching into details, whereof i am not fully aware of, i think of better solutions than running away.
Please people, get your heads together, and turn all this for the positive.
We have too much gold in hands to let it slip away.

tmb wrote:

wobo wrote:Marja and Nicolas are not the first active and valuable members Mageia lost because of conflicts. May be that the council's leadership in the non-technical area needs improvement.

Maybe so... we are all humans, and humans make mistakes. And as such there is always room for improvement.
But having people standing on the sidelines "accusing" others of inabilities to resolve issues and starting all kinds of discussions based on assumptions are not really helpful to those involved as it tends to "fuel the fire", making an already sensitive problem more inflammatory.

If this was the first incident since Mageia has been started I would certainly agree to the first 2 sentences. And I would surely not have used the same words. But it isn't. This you should know as well as me without the need to go into details here about past incidents.
First, this is the first and only discussion. Second I did not make assumptions on the fact that there was no official response to the official message of suspending, that is a fact. Third, I'm not fuelling the fire because until now I did not know that there was a fire at all. You make me aware that there is one, though. Making a problem known in public is only a bad thing if there is somebody who does not want it to be known. BTW: Yes, I made it known in the forum because I am sure that the majority of users do not read the mailing list and because Marja is a very active member of the forum crowd. Don't try to hand the blame over to me, that does not work as simple as with Marja.

Well, you do read council ml, so you know Marja brought it to council attention only 1 day before you started this thread...
https://ml.mageia.org/l/arc/council/201 ... 00013.html
Do you seriously expect the issue to be resolved within one day before starting this "silence is no resolution" "nonsense" (nonsense from timeframe perspective) ...
Board members also need time to get all the facts before acting publically...

I know that there were private messages, so there would have been enough time to respond to the official message in the list. I did not ask for a resolution in 1 day, I only asked for some sign that the council/board has acknowledged the issue and is working on a solution. Marja wrote she is open for mediation. So you'd expect something like "We are sorry to receive this message about suspending and will work on the matter" or anything else... But not a total nothing. Looking into the list I still see Marja's mail with no response from the recipient.

wobo wrote: This is my personal opinion. If it is wrong because of missing facts, don't blame me! Blame the silence about the whole incident.

Well, in this case i "blame" you [/quote]
No problem, you can blame me for whatever you want as long as it isn't true (as explained in the previous paragraph).

boklm wrote:

tmb wrote:Expecting full publicity / resolved issues with this short amount of time is overly optimistic, isn't it ...

Issue is resolved.

No, it is not!
Whenever some important member of the project leaves it is an issue. If he leaves on reasons outside the project and does say this, the issue is closed alright. But if it is clear that the problem is inside the project then somebody has failed in his job. Either the one who leaves, or the other, or the community who has the declared job of solving such a situation. If this is not right then we can forget our Code of Conduct, it is a mere text without meaning.

So, I know that there were private messages between Anne and Marja and I am sure Anne and probably ROmain have been talking to you as well. This is what I mean with trying to solve the situation, so they have done what they should do. But I only know this because a) I was told and b) I assume it because you are close.

Pls understand that I am not so much interested in the initial reasons for the situation at hand but in the way the situation is handled by the rest.

But of course I can very well agree to isadora's last sentences: running away is not a solution for grown-ups, neither for you nor for Marja. You both know better than that, or do you?

tmb wrote:But having people standing on the sidelines "accusing" others of inabilities to resolve issues and starting all kinds of discussions based on assumptions are not really helpful to those involved as it tends to "fuel the fire", making an already sensitive problem more inflammatory.

+1

Nicolas/boklm did enormous, excellent work, from the foundation of the project to the details of its infrastructure today, being part of an excellent, yet sparse, sysadmin team, taking most of the incoming load on his shoulders since the previous member departure, and doing it well with what he had.

Marja did too with her commitment within the project, in several teams.

But something went wrong in their way. Obviously there has been a huge gap of their respective expectations and understanding of each other priorities, roles, focus and a few other bits. There are maybe personal/cultural reasons for that, or others. I don't know what they wrote to each other, and I don't want to know. But obviously, it's been offensive for at least one of them.

What happened, how, what/who is to blame? I'm not sure, and I won't take one side against the other - at least at this point. In the end, this is something between 2 grown-up, educated people. Whatever happens, and what is the outcome for them, it is their choice, not anyone else's.

Now, that doesn't prevent to pinpoint bits that may be related to this, I have a few in mind, not revolutionary, but won't detail those now. There's a time for that.

Ok, to explain more why I'm leaving, here is an exemple of what happenned recently, and I think representative of what has been happening all the time recently with maat and marja.

In August we went with rtp and coincoin to datacenter in marseille for 2 days to setup new servers. Maat is living in Marseille and had been complaining before that we didn't ask his help when coming to Marseille last time, saying that he could take us at train station with a car if we were coming to Marseille, and that his workplace is 5 minutes from the datacenter. So in July when we decided about the date and bought the train tickets, one month before, I sent him an email to ask him if he would be available those 2 days, to which he answered "there are chances" :

Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 11:09:13 +0200
From: Maât <maat-ml@...>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.6esrpre) Gecko/20120717 Thunderbird/10.0.6
To: nicolas vigier <boklm@...>
CC: Arnaud Patard <arnaud.patard@...>,
Damien Lallement <mageia@...>
Subject: Re: Voyage à Marseille le 27 et 28 Aout
In-Reply-To: <20120727155910.GE21938@mars-attacks.org>

Le 27/07/2012 17:59, nicolas vigier a écrit :
> Hello,
>
> Pour info, nous avons prévu de passer à Marseille chez Lost-Oasis le 27
> et 28 Aout prochain :
> https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Marseille_3
>
> Est ce que tu penses pouvoir etre la ces jours la ?
>
y'a des chances...

P

One week before going to Marseille (August 21), during council meeting coincoin asked maat if he would be there :

21:30 < boklm> and it's planned to bring the servers to Marseille datacenter next week
21:30 < boklm> https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Marseille_3
21:30 < coincoin> maat: will you be there?

And he answered the next day :

22:47 < maat> <coincoin> maat: will you be there? <-- hope so
01:18 < coincoin> maat: \o/

On friday 24, coincoin asked him his phone number, and if it would be possible to take us at the train station :

18:55 < coincoin> maat: yop, tu pourrais me filer/mailler ton 06 cocotte stp pour lundi ? tu passerais nous prendre à la gare ou pas alors ?

But there was no answer. On monday we took the train to Marseille with the servers. It would have been nice to have a car to bring us to the datacenter from the train station, but there had been no answer from maat, so we took the metro.

At the datacenter we installed the servers and started making the changes that were planned. In the afternoon, maat talked to me on #mageia-sysadm, said it would be difficult for him to come, but maybe he would come in late afternoon at best, but no guarantee. And he added that it's a pity that we didn't send him the time of our train as he could have bring us from the train to the datacenter.

15:12 < maat|lin> boklm: ping
15:20 -!- remmy_ [~remmy@a80-127-245-95.mobile.xs4all.nl] has quit [Ping timeout: 246 seconds]
15:26 < boklm> maat|lin: pong
15:40 < maat|lin> vous y etes déjà ?
15:40 < maat|lin> depuis ce matin ?
15:50 < boklm> oui
16:04 -!- DavidWHodginsNot is now known as DavidWHodgins
16:10 < maat|lin> havi
16:10 < maat|lin> grmpf
16:10 < maat|lin> ça va être compliqué pour moi de passer :-/
16:10 < maat|lin> ce soir
16:10 < maat|lin> au mieux
16:10 < maat|lin> (sans garantie)
16:11 < maat|lin> c'est con si j'avais eu votre horaire d'arrivé je vous aurais amené avec le mathos
16:19 -!- maat|lin [~maat@unaffiliated/maat] has quit [Ping timeout: 252 seconds]

It's quite strange to say that he could have helped us bring the servers when he didn't answer when we asked him before, and didn't give his phone number. But we ignored that and continued to work on the setup of the servers. Around 8pm we left the datacenter, and we didn't see him.

No news from maat the next day, until we discovered on #mageia-fr in the afternoon that he was telling people that we didn't contact him because we don't like him, that we didn't give him news, etc ...

16:38 < maat|lin> marja: bon ben on s'est débrouillés pour pas se voir avec les sysadmins en commando à Marseille
16:38 < maat|lin> pfff
16:38 < maat|lin> ils m'aiment pas
16:39 < marja> coincoin t'a demandé de les joindre
16:40 < marja> maat|lin: j'ai mal compris?
16:40 < maat|lin> il m'a demandé si je serais dispo
16:41 < maat|lin> j'ai fait (re)passer mon tel hier matin par Anne
16:41 < maat|lin> pas de news depuis
16:41 < marja> ah

I was busy working on the servers, and there was not a lot of time left, so didn't answer to explain that what he said was not true. People on #mageia-fr who were not on #mageia-sysadm couldn't know that he told us he would likely not be able to come, and that it's him who did not give news, not us. He also claims he sent his phone number to Anne, I don't know if that's true but we didn't receive it, and if he really wanted us to call him he would have sent it to us directly instead of telling us he will likely not be able to come.

If he was too busy to come, it would have been ok to just say he cannot come. Instead he chose to use that as an other excuse to criticize me. Everything he does seems to be a trap to find an other way to attack me, with marja spreading the false news as much as possible.

Now most people seems to think I'm responsible for all kind of problems, and I'm tired of this, so it's time to leave and spend my time doing something more useful.

boklm wrote:On friday 24, coincoin asked him his phone number, and if it would be possible to take us at the train station :

18:55 < coincoin> maat: yop, tu pourrais me filer/mailler ton 06 cocotte stp pour lundi ? tu passerais nous prendre à la gare ou pas alors ?

As it seems that this last posts speaks more of me than of the center of the topic let me just add one thing to defend myself:

The message you gave here i never received it and it is not in my logs

Network timeout or something like that ?

So i honestly thought what i said and i was wrong because i did not know. I'm sorry for this wrong interpretation i made.

Seems that we just had you and i bad luck in our common will to meet

(Next time i promise i'll give my phone and email and everything)

maat wrote:

boklm wrote:On friday 24, coincoin asked him his phone number, and if it would be possible to take us at the train station :

18:55 < coincoin> maat: yop, tu pourrais me filer/mailler ton 06 cocotte stp pour lundi ? tu passerais nous prendre à la gare ou pas alors ?

As it seems that this last posts speaks more of me than of the center of the topic let me just add one thing to defend myself:

The message you gave here i never received it and it is not in my logs

Network timeout or something like that ?

Next timeout in my logs is more than 8 hours later :
03:40 -!- maat [~maat@unaffiliated/maat] has quit [Ping timeout: 260 seconds]

And even if you missed that message, it's not an excuse to lie and claim that we didn't give you any news, when you told us in an other channel you would likely not be able to come.

So i honestly thought what i said and i was wrong because i did not know. I'm sorry for this wrong interpretation i made.

You honestly though you didn't come because we didn't give news, and not because you told us you would probably not be able to come ?

Seems that we just had you and i bad luck in our common will to meet

Bad luck can happen once in a while. It is not bad luck when it happens all the time.

Look Boklm i'm ok to accept the mistakes i made and to make efforts... anticipate more and everything.

Just remember that i was willing to help... trying to ping me a second time coud have been an option... and my email is well known too... so sending me an email with arrival date & time a few days before so that we can all organise the day for the best coud also have been an option.

What can i do more than apologizing & taking note for myself to avoid making mistakes next time ?

This is not a mistake. You do that intentionally in order to create problems and find a reason to attack me. So there is no "next time" for me, there has already been too many.

rda wrote:

tmb wrote:But having people standing on the sidelines "accusing" others of inabilities to resolve issues and starting all kinds of discussions based on assumptions are not really helpful to those involved as it tends to "fuel the fire", making an already sensitive problem more inflammatory.

+1

I see, you either did not read my response to that or you do not understand what I am talking about.

Again, I do not care what kind of argument or misunderstanding led to the situation at hand. I do not care at all who is to blame or if there is anybody to blame at all. That's neither my problem nor does it interest me nor is it so extraordinaire when differrentpeople with different mindsets are working together.

The far more important and (for me) the interesting question is how this is handled by the other members of the leading group. I do care that 2 valued members of the Mageia world are leaving the stage and the incident was not even commented by those who created the Code of Conduct, which says that in such situations we should care to resolve the conflict. As this is not the first incident of the kind I cared to mention this. Furthermore I cared to make the situation known to the wider public (here) because the council list is probably not read by that many users.

There is nothing in it about accusing others or "fuelling fires" or even making an already sensitive problem more inflammatory". If you think so we have a very different picture about the behavior of a leader in such situations.

OTOH I must admit that in a case where one of the "opponents" is not able to even try to find a solution all mediation will be void. I did not expect such a sentence from boklm as this last one in the previous post.

wobo wrote:The far more important and (for me) the interesting question is how this is handled by the other members of the leading group. I do care that 2 valued members of the Mageia world are leaving the stage and the incident was not even commented by those who created the Code of Conduct, which says that in such situations we should care to resolve the conflict.

Then I suggest you read the Code of Conduct again:
https://www.mageia.org/en/about/code-of-conduct/

Nothing in there states that the first response to the issue at hand must be public...

quoting C-o-C:
Support others in the community.

Our community is made strong by mutual respect, collaboration and responsible, pragmatic behaviour. Sometimes these values have to be defended and other community members may need help.

If you witness others being attacked, think first about how you can offer them personal support. If you feel that the situation is beyond your ability to help individually, go privately to the victim and ask if some form of official intervention is needed.
...
Get support from others in the community.

Think deeply before turning a disagreement into a public dispute. If necessary request mediation and attempt to resolve differences in a less highly-emotional medium. If you do feel that you or your work is being attacked, take your time to breathe before writing heated replies. Consider a 24 hour moratorium if emotional language is being used - a cooling off period is sometimes all that is needed
end C-o-C quote

wobo wrote: As this is not the first incident of the kind I cared to mention this. Furthermore I cared to make the situation known to the wider public (here) because the council list is probably not read by that many users.

And exactly how is this "care" helping the participants involved in this issue?

wobo wrote:There is nothing in it about accusing others or "fuelling fires" or even making an already sensitive problem more inflammatory". If you think so we have a very different picture about the behavior of a leader in such situations.

I'm sorry wobo, but I think this comes out more of a "besserwisser" attitude that is not really in line with C-o-C either, intentionally or not.


As for the issue at hand Its sad to se boklm "give up", and I hope he will reconsider either now or later.
But if he feels that it's the best for him at this time, then we have to accept his decision in this matter.

Guys, honestly i think this thread should be locked. The whole thing should be discussed between participants in private,
and escalated to council/board, and discussed there too and there should be a "lessons learned" type of thing.

To be honest i think much of this discussion is quite offtopic, and also there is not much use about throwing dirt
and accusations at each other, this does not clear up anything.

IMHO some of us should calm down a bit, work a bit less and look at the whole thing from a little distance.
Apart from that i don't really understand if all that would be a reason to quit from the project from one day to the other ...

doktor5000 wrote:Guys, honestly i think this thread should be locked. The whole thing should be discussed between participants in private,
and escalated to council/board, and discussed there too and there should be a "lessons learned" type of thing.

To be honest i think much of this discussion is quite offtopic, and also there is not much use about throwing dirt
and accusations at each other, this does not clear up anything.

+1

I agree with doktor5000 and filip.

Enough and even more has been said now.

Lets get the emotions down, get levelled (with each others), and spent energy for the better.

Topic locked.