Wiki & Expansions Manager: authorising new accounts.

[Cholmondely]

What is the "product" in this scenario?
Who is the system custodian/owner?
Who is it that approves changes in functionality?
Who is responsible for implementing changes?
Who needs to be consulted when changes are being developed?
Who needs to be informed of changes made?

Do we have a bug tracker for logging incidents (i.e. things going wrong) and requests? (I would assume the answer to this is: Yes)
Does the bug tracker only cover the Oolite code base or can it be extended to track events related to supporting configuration items like the Wiki and Bulletin board? Do you even want to go down to that level of complexity?

I doubt that anything will happen anytime soon.

We have 3 websites:
Oolite.org (for download of the game itself for 3 platforms (AppleMac, Windows & Linux) and in 3 versions (Vanilla, Test Release for .oxp developers & Nightlies).
This BB
Our Wiki.
(Oolite itself is stored on GitHub)

Oolite.org is owned by Jens Ayton (Ahruman) (entirely occultated): Phkb seems to have minor rights at least for registering oxp's.
This BB is owned by Aegidian (occultated): Disembodied and Cody exercise minor rights.
Our wiki is owned by Winston (occultated, living on the Isle of Man!): Maik has major rights, Selezen has minor rights (both also occultated - Maik disappeared in July in Slovenia).

I would hope that a_c_ has minor rights across the board, on the presumption that the owners (and Maik?) are the only ones with major rights.

Those who know about this sort of thing tell me that all our three sites need https rather than http registration (if that's the jargon...).

The last update of this bulletin board regained some lost functionality but led to loss of e-mail proclamations at "pm arrival" (ask Cody). This loss, needless to say, eats away at our community.

I'm not sure what else I can tell you. In terms of our community, I would argue that a_c_, phkb & cody are our leaders. I'm just a johnny-come-lately who vandalises wikis.

[Old Murgh]

..I'm just a johnny-come-lately who vandalises wikis.

To be fair, from what I can tell you consistently change things to the better.

[Cody]

... I would argue that a_c_, phkb & cody are our leaders.

Stop it, Cholly - it hurts when I laugh! Here, have a daiquiri!

[montana05]

..I'm just a johnny-come-lately who vandalises wikis.

To be fair, from what I can tell you consistently change things to the better.

Agreed to that, Cholmondely is nowadays a real asset to this game, I didn't see that much improvement of the wiki for long time.

[montana05]

... I would argue that a_c_, phkb & cody are our leaders.

Stop it, Cholly - it hurts when I laugh! Here, have a daiquiri!

Merry Christmas (a bit late) and Happy New Year (a bit early) Cody, sorry I prefer another pint of Guiness.

[montana05]

I'm sure you can imagine that this can get very complex, very fast. I've never tried applying ITIL principles to a volunteer enterprise so this will be interesting to see what level of maturity is possible.

Working with a group of volunteers could be very challenging. However, from my personal point of view, this community is lacking people with administrator rights. I am not talking about transferring ownership of a page, simple about having currently active people giving the rights to actually improve the environment instead of fixing on bug and add another one in the same procedure.

[Cody]

Merry Christmas (a bit late) and Happy New Year (a bit early) Cody...

You too, Montana! Guiness? Yuck!

[hiran]

I'll admit you have my curiosity. What I do for work is administer what essentially boils down to a ticketing system for large enterprises. All that a large enterprise does with regards to managing their IT infrastructure won't be applicable to a volunteer enterprise such as the Oolite developer community but there may be some practices that can be put in place.

So the first question is: what problem are you trying to solve?

And perhaps to help answer that first question, you need to address other questions.

What is the "product" in this scenario?
Who is the system custodian/owner?
Who is it that approves changes in functionality?
Who is responsible for implementing changes?
Who needs to be consulted when changes are being developed?
Who needs to be informed of changes made?

Do we have a bug tracker for logging incidents (i.e. things going wrong) and requests? (I would assume the answer to this is: Yes)
Does the bug tracker only cover the Oolite code base or can it be extended to track events related to supporting configuration items like the Wiki and Bulletin board? Do you even want to go down to that level of complexity?

I'm sure you can imagine that this can get very complex, very fast. I've never tried applying ITIL principles to a volunteer enterprise so this will be interesting to see what level of maturity is possible.

Good questions you raise. And I also believe some of ITIL would do good for this project. But we cannot just turn the community inside out to match ITIL standards.
And this thread is not about the process but about having a gang of people authorized to perform stuff at all. It is the currently most-pressing problem we're trying to tackle...

[Bugbear]

Hi Hiran,
I totally agree with you - implementing ITIL practices is a tall ask even when you have a team of people who are being paid to actually do this.

I see it coming down to trust. What would it take for someone to prove to the current owners of the various config items (the BB, the Wiki) that they have the technical chops to be able to perform administrative activities competently?

If the existing infrastructure has become complex through organic growth, would it be simpler to wipe and start again. Perhaps spin up a new BB and find a way to import the existing data? Who owns our posts anyway?

I'm not asking these questions to stir up trouble, rather exploring what options are available.

[Cody]

Perhaps spin up a new BB and find a way to import the existing data?

Current database size: 855.99 MiB, database server: MySQL(i) 10.3.18-MariaDB

[hiran]

I'm not asking these questions to stir up trouble, rather exploring what options are available.

Full ack.

Have tried to get some light spilled in https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=279309#p279309

[Bugbear]

One other consideration that may be quite important - where do we stand with regards to personal information? If we were to make a copy of the database (and given it's of the order of 1GiB it's relatively small), what risks are there that the individuals copying this data could run afoul of privacy laws?

[montana05]

Merry Christmas (a bit late) and Happy New Year (a bit early) Cody...

You too, Montana! Guiness? Yuck!

Sorry, the choice of British beer is not that big in my area, Guiness is just the most popular, around 6x higher than local beer. However, phkb, was so kind to upgrade me to administrator at the manager so in future I will be happy to help if phkb is not available.

[hiran]

Sorry, the choice of British beer is not that big in my area, Guiness is just the most popular, around 6x higher than local beer. However, phkb, was so kind to upgrade me to administrator at the manager so in future I will be happy to help if phkb is not available.

I am there as well. But the work seems simple. All we can do (in addition to nonprivileged users) is to create more user accounts.