Victor, my apologies if I gave that impression, but by no means do I wish to belittle what you and Mayel have already put in, or to express any form of ingratitude!

I can't comment on that call you mention everyone was invited to - possibly that was before or early on in my readings of the Loomio group.

I hope you'd agree, we outsiders cannot infer the processes required easily (and just as importantly, safely) just by looking at the servers, there are too many unwritten assumptions to negotiate.

Firstly, I don't really want to have to discover the truth by poking around on the server and guessing. These are productions servers, and expecting me to do this is really as much a waste of my (also somewhat valuable) time as it would be to expect you to write large amounts of documentation.

It's not enough just to say everything is following "standard procedures" - you need to say which document you mean, and give indications where, if anywhere, our servers deviate from it.

I don't think we can easily just start over - we're not setting up a fresh new Mastodon instance any more, there are users and data to respect.

So we need some sort of a compromise.

Of course I don't expect you to write extensive docs (as nice as that would be). I hope that could be done by the incoming team. I will do some of it myself if I can gather the information and get some feedback on how correct I am.

To achieve this, during the hand-over period we will need to be able to ask questions, and get answers of some sort (perhaps this will be "don't know" or "ask so and so"), or at least know if or when we can't do this and have to guess. I think the problem with Loomio is that questions asked here get buried and don't get answered. For instance this and this are two of mine.

Perhaps we need a forum which is quieter and more discreet to ask in, so that we can avoid you needing to deal with long Loomio threads quite so much. GitLab might work for that, when I can get it procured (I'm blocked on this here).

I'm not sure if audio/video calls are very suitable since we are all in different time zones and have different commitments. I suggest something asynchronous is more likely to work out.

For now I'll probably use email as you suggest.

I don't think we can easily just start over - we're not setting up a fresh new Mastodon instance any more, there are users and data to respect.

Strongly disagree, I came into this project where Mayel had a more conventional deployment and I decided to migrate it on fresh instance(s) into a Docker swarm cluster and decouple how user-generated content was stored and distributed... I did this by myself and it was a considerably more complex and longer process than you will most likely meet ...

Anyone with Postgres skills can easily restore the database, all user-generated content is decoupled from the instances as it stored at DreamObjects and delivered by Fastly... I would be very surprised if a fresh instance could not be deployed using Mastodon documentation and existing data being restored, without too many hoops to jump through.

I think this is much easier for you to say with all the hindsight you have :) I would simply not have known this.

I wouldn't suggest one recommend anything unless the person thought it reasonable and viable — twice I have recommended this, with no caveat... On this occasion I have been more descriptive.

Thank you @victormatekole and @wulee for engaging on this. One of most difficult things right now seems to get the kind of engagement required to move something forward as complex and critical as a transition from a legacy dev group to a hopefully sustainable team structure. All the while having that conversation continually buried under other a ton of other activity.

One of the reasons I have been pushing for a formalization of the process is so that volunteers contributing to the platforms operations will be empowered to do what needs to be done within a clearly laid scope of work and established level of group over-site and input.

Once the Coordinators officially take on their roles I'm hopefully the process produce less frustrations.

On a side note; From my vantage I don't believe that your (@victormatekole) or @mayel lengthy contributions have been properly recognized. No doubt the organization wasn't in a form to do so piror and I'm not exactly sure what should or could be done about it now but it is something that I do believe would be right to do so.

@wulee are open to being nominated for the Coordinator position? @matthewcropp nominated you for the Infrastrucrue position as well. There is nothing that says a member can't hold 2 positions if necessary either way the are both key.

@matthewcropp any ideas on how to get the word out on this. The response has been low so far and not sure many are seeing it.

Broadly yes, I think I will have time and skills to spare. As I said, I'll see what I can do.

CC'ng those that previously expressed interest (on @mayel poll) in joining the Tech Admin Ops Team. Nominations are open for (2) Coordinators (2) Critical Infrastructure Maintenance Developers (1-10) Project Developers -

There are 4 critical position to fill and a per project crew which would be a great place for those wanting to learn/teach with less responsiblity. If you can't commit please reach out to any other member you think would like to be a part of the team.

@gregcerna @michelslm @dp @stevehanson1 @christinahendricks @jeremyapthorp @robin012 @karlschultheisz @strypey @aaronwagener @h @dixongexpat @fardog @bilbono @edwardlplatt @idmyn @wakest @christianbundy @jankoscielniak

I have the time and skill to help out, but I have to admit, I've lost track of what's going on amongst all the messages. How do I express interest in a position?

Excellent. Just add your self as an option to one or more of the 3 open positions in the Polls on the right.

I am interested in contributing as one of the project developers. I have worked as a software developer (mostly web) for the last 20 years, and have also spent much of that time administering Linux systems in the process. I have some experience with Docker and Ruby software stacks which could be useful for the social.coop Mastodon deployment. Generally I think what social.coop. I would like to learn more about how platform cooperatives do their work and would be able to work about 5 hours per week since I have a full time job and am also a PhD student (studying web archives).

Just a thought, maybe the roles we advertise and the roles on this list of jobs to do should be matched up:

https://github.com/wu-lee/social-coop-docs/blob/wip/jobs.org

My intention there was to keep things as simple as possible, but split things in terms of general skill level/admin access required. i.e. A small number of people with rare skill-sets / access to sensitive places, and a larger number of people who can help without needing those.

Not sure exactly how this goes, perhaps:
- Critical Infrastructure admin dev/coordinators = server admin/dev
- Project developers = web admin/dev

In my scheme, the four main roles are a multipilcation of
- "admin" means "needs admin role/password" and
- "dev" means "doesn't need admin role".
vs
- "server" means needs an ssh account on the servers, and
- "web" means needs an account on some software (e.g. Mastodon, GitLab)

I'm also thinking that a lot of the early work will be researching and documenting the jobs/processes fully, so the know-how can be picked up by newcomers easily.

Comments welcome.

That makes sense. So kinds of the things would a "web developer" be working on?

Weeeell "developer" isn't the right term to be frank. In retrospect. What I mean is someone who could administer/config GUI apps like Drupal, WordPress, and I suppose, Mastodon. (i.e. minimal Linux CLI know-how required.) "Web administrator"?

Hey y'all; I'm one of the folks that helped get mastodon running again a few days back and I'm definitely down to help out, but I find Loomio pretty exhausting so I don't participate here much. It's really difficult to figure out what's going on.

That said, I'm willing to act as a stand-in for a maintenance developer, but my time's often very limited so I'm hesitant to throw my name on the poll as I feel like I'd be committing to something where I'm unlikely to hold up my end of the commitment. If folks can deal with me being somewhat absentee though, I can definitely throw in my tech skills when I'm available.

Great @fardog how about adding your self as an option to project developer poll which will get you as part of the team but not the primary maintenance developer.

done

Wasn't there a poll a while back in which people could say that they might be able to help out? (I looked a while back, couldn't find it, maybe someone else knows the link.)

It was here. I invited all the members who answered yes. So far the participation has been low. I'm assuming many people are not checking Loomio often or are bogged down with notifications. We should push forward with a skeleton team and look for a ways to engage the larger group to add to the team. This

https://www.loomio.org/p/ytmeUYcD/i-have-at-least-some-skills-time-interest-to-join-the-tech-ops-team-?group_key=ibncxoDR&status=closed

I'm happy to help out on project development occasionally. Loomio is confusing and i'm not sure what's being voted on here though :S

Ohhh, I see, the polls on the right are polls we can add ourselves to & vote in. got it.

I hope it's not too late to nominate @victormatekole. I think it will be good to have his participation, if he is willing, since (I think) he has had a significant role in the setup & maintenance to date.

Oh I see people can no longer be nominated since the voting is underway. Nevermind then.

It is not really too late. It's pretty open process and at this moment we don't have more nominees than there are positions available in any of the categories. Having @victormatekole as part of the team would be amazing but as he hasn't engaged thus far in the team formation process my assumption is he doesn't have interest or time beyond the feedback and direction on some configuration questions @wulee posted.

@graham2 it looks like you voted "none fo the above" for Polls 2 and 3? Is that an error? If not did you want to nominate someone? The Tech coordinator position still needs an additional nominee as there are 2 open postions.

Thanks for the heads-up. Ive now changed those votes. It's just the crap UI.

Thanks to @robertbenjamin for setting this up and taking on a lot of this organising.

I confess to being hesitant to nominate myself or anyone else, perhaps other people are too (luckily someone else nominated me for me).

I can't help feeling we might as well just gather all the self-selected volunteers we can get - there's not that many, and at the moment we don't really know each other or our skills and preferences. The business of nominating and voting for other people might make more sense further down the line, but at this point feels arbitrary, because I haven't any criteria to make a choice with, apart from wondering if I should vote for myself or not.

Agree with this - maybe just setting up a chat somewhere (where it can be recorded for posterity) and getting on with it. The complex and inscrutable machinations of Loomio are clearly enough to cause plenty of confusion and are almost certainly keeping people less engaged, IMNSHO. That's not to say doing all this was a bad idea, but the low response and sheer number of "how does this thing even work / this is exhausting" about Loomio are telling. Streamlining things until we really need all the functionality might be a good thing.

To be fair I do think Loomio has its place - there are times when polls and checks etc. are needed. And as a forum it's not bad (and not Facebook.)

My experience of taking the git.coop proposal through the tech WG and then the main WG and then the finance WG, possibly not quite in the right order left me wondering if the effort was justified, and if i wasn't just annoying people by asking basically the same question in slightly different circles.

In retrospect I was wondering if it might work better for social.coop to grant working groups some budget and then allow them exercise autonomy within that limit (perhaps with internal votes where it's considered appropriate). There would still be accountability to the main group if it looks like funds are being misallocated.

Thank you @wulee for putting in the work you have already and ultimately stepping up.

Although I would have hoped for much higher engagement (on something as important as how the instance is to be technically kept alive) I still see what we have accomplished so as a huge win. It looks like we now have 6 fresh volunteers as part of the initial Tech Ops Team where before there were only 2 volunteers at the tail end of their bandwidth.

The voting process was important to solidify the team approach. Where we take it from here will depend on the needs. Having a coordinator(s) to look to for guidance and direction will be a huge help.

Yeah @muninn the minutia of Loomio governance aside the Techy aspect of this proposal was a big hurdle of engagement its self. All the more reason we have a structure that is both empowered and accountable that can both handle and communicate the tech needs of instance.

@wulee on budgeting the next big endeavor I'm going to working on is a allocations based budget proposal that could begin to anticipate and address the budgeting needs of the different Ops teams starting with the most critical (Tech). I laid some groundwork for this a couple months back but will now need to spin out a more focused proposal to run through the collective GOVERNANCE GAUNTLET.

@wulee Thanks for the many "nudges", quite flattering. I have thought long an hard about being part of the team. Unfortunately, I have to decline ... A large part of me wants to be involved in this new structure, especially as there wasn't before. However, I have other quite important ambitions/projects that have taken a sideline and if I am to be serious about them I need to cutback on my volunteering. That being said, I will always be available for consultation or to jump in for emergencies during transition.

hi all - has there been a formal handover to the new tech admin ops team? regardless, and if it's not too late, i would be happy to help out. i've done a bunch of sysadmin/ops work at my job, and as of friday i'm unemployed so i'll have time for this.

is it fair if i start a yes/no poll here for me to join the ops team? i figure that an extra pair of hands now > waiting 6 months for the next vote, but i don't want to go too far outside the standard process.

Currently you just ask and we rubber-stamp you in :)

Which I've done. However, this touches on a topic @mayel and I were discussing, of how careful we need to be with the tech working group, as even carelessness in the wrong place can make big problems for the co-op as a whole.

However, being able to access our tech group in git.coop just means you can read the documentation/issues and contribute there. It doesn't get you root access to the servers, for example! We need to figure out a workable solution to allow people to contribute (we need the help!) whilst not putting our users' data at risk.

I've been meaning to create another thread to discuss this, but I'm at work today and have already spent a couple of hours on social.coop administrivia, and there's a risk of overwhelming our readers if I create too much traffic, so this should probably wait a until later today at least. :)