Propagating Concerns

misdirected issues frequently disappear or explode, neither of which is really good.

General flow

when anyone is approached with a concern, question or idea, it should be taken to the group of most specificity which would sensibly be interested and/or responsible for addressing it. that group is then responsible for addressing it within a month. after that, the requestor is given the opportunity to go to a group of less specificity with both the original issue and to address the failure in the responsiveness of whatever group was tasked with their issue first.

An example

someone suggests to you that freegeek should use FreeBSD on our firewall. you recommend them to go to the ASS meeting. they do, and the ASSes ignore them. after a month of having their messages ignored, the person then emails staff@ with their concern, who then discuss it at their next meeting, ask the ASSes about it, and proceed to suggest a solution.

Help things along

Often a contentious subject comes up in council and we decide that it needs more discussion; when it comes back up the next month, it turns out we have not had time to have that discussion and everyone who wasn't there the previous month needs extensive briefing. My proposal is that a shepherd should be assigned to such items who can collect related information, scope out various viewpoints pro and con, and present at the next meeting. If no one is available who can represent multiple sides of the issue, multiple shepherds could be assigned but must work together.