18:11:16 <flexlibris> #startmeeting
18:11:16 <MeetBot> Meeting started Wed May 31 18:11:16 2017 UTC.  The chair is flexlibris. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
18:11:16 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
18:11:26 <flexlibris> who wants to start us off with their update?
18:11:36 <ChillyPhoul> I can
18:11:42 <flexlibris> great go ahead ChillyPhoul
18:13:51 <ChillyPhoul> I have written more answers for the support portal, they can be seen at https://gitweb.torproject.org/support-portal.git/. I received edits for the operator document today from kat and (I think) anadahz (sorry if im wrong here, only saw email address), will be reviewing those today. Also have been answering tickets on RT, and Transifex. arma2 and I are also planning to do an ask-me-anything for
18:13:57 <ChillyPhoul> LocalizationLab sometime in May, and have been interacting with Dragana to plan this. I've also been reaching out to translators for email addresses so we can get them some shirts, loclab provided me with the list of most active translators for our hub yesterday.
18:14:50 <Samdney> Sometime  in May?
18:14:55 <ChillyPhoul> err, June.
18:14:56 <ChillyPhoul> Sorry
18:15:03 * ChillyPhoul needs more coffee
18:15:41 <flexlibris> :)
18:15:51 <ChillyPhoul> Thats all from me for now.
18:16:02 <flexlibris> any questions or comments for ChillyPhoul?
18:16:11 <kat5> If multiple of us are working on operator docs, should we coordinate who's doing what?
18:16:36 <ChillyPhoul> I havent looked at either set of edits yet, so not sure if they conflict. But yeah, we should make sure we stay in sync.
18:16:41 <kat5> My plan was to go through the FAQ next and see what should be edited/updated/ported over.
18:17:36 <kat5> Okay. Maybe we should coordinate over email after you've had a chance to look?
18:18:22 <ChillyPhoul> For sure! Will email both of you after I take a look. anadahz if that second email was yours, can you just confirm you're OK being CC'ed on that?
18:18:48 <anadahz> ChillyPhoul: Yes and sure!
18:19:06 <ChillyPhoul> Great!
18:20:16 <flexlibris> okay, anyone else want to go next with an update?
18:20:21 <kat5> Sure.
18:20:25 <flexlibris> great kat5
18:21:39 <kat5> I made a wiki page so that we can easily update what shirts we have. Now fewer people will feel betrayed when they find out they can't have that awesome Italian plum. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/CommunityTeam/Tshirts
18:22:10 <kat5> Other than that, I've been working on relay op docs. :-)
18:22:14 <kat5> That's all.
18:22:34 <flexlibris> thanks for making this wiki page kat5
18:23:01 <flexlibris> I love that you have all the options up here
18:23:28 <ChillyPhoul> Thats awesome! I didnt actually know about one of those colors :P
18:24:25 <flexlibris> any other questions or comments for kat5?
18:24:30 <anadahz> kat5: nice!
18:24:51 <kat5> :-)
18:24:56 <anadahz> perhaps we should add the Tor hoodie that has a white outline to complete the collection ;)
18:25:08 <flexlibris> yeah, but we don't give hoodies for relay operation
18:25:12 <anadahz> it's not a t-shirt though
18:25:18 <flexlibris> so we don't want to make false promises :)
18:25:51 <anadahz> it looks nice and it will be a nice addition to the wiki
18:26:09 <anadahz> :)
18:26:11 <kat5> Yeah, this is specifically for "you get a tshirt, here are your choices".
18:26:36 <ChillyPhoul> I agree with flexlibris / kat5 in this case, showing the hoodie if they cant pick it for a choice seems like it will lead to confusion.
18:26:56 <flexlibris> okay, anyone else with an update? if not, I will give my update
18:27:25 <Samdney> go ahead. I have nothing for an update
18:27:40 <flexlibris> okay great
18:27:58 <flexlibris> during the month of May I've done a lot of trainings in the US and have been spending most of my other time working on grants
18:28:12 <flexlibris> one grant is to fund Library Freedom Project for two years, and then another is much smaller and would contribute to Global South outreach
18:28:37 <flexlibris> I continue to look for other funding for Global South outreach, too
18:29:04 <kat5> If you ever want editing/proffreading help, hmu.
18:29:08 <flexlibris> right now, we have a small fund for that work, and we've been using it to support Tor trainers in different parts of the world by paying for their travel as they do trainings
18:29:12 <flexlibris> kat5, I will, thank you!
18:29:18 <kat5> (hahahaha)
18:29:24 <ChillyPhoul> Likewise, though I have very little experience with grants :)
18:29:34 <flexlibris> after another week or two I will get a break from grantwriting :)
18:29:47 <flexlibris> and then I will start working on the community team roadmap, which we can discuss in a minute
18:30:22 <flexlibris> the last thing I've been doing is getting the finishing touches on our membership guidelines, which will soon go to the Tor internal list for a vote
18:30:41 <flexlibris> the hope is that these guidelines will make it easier for people to become core contributors to Tor
18:30:52 <flexlibris> that's it for me, any questions or comments?
18:30:58 <Samdney> where can I read the membership guidlines?
18:31:17 <flexlibris> you mean the current draft or when it's finalized?
18:31:27 <Samdney> both
18:32:14 <arma2> i had a question for phoul above. i have been looking at the answers as they get checked in. some of them are way oversimplified compared to some of the points i think we should make. but i imagine other people think making more than the oversimplified point is bad. i don't want to just bust in and say "no this is how it should be". what should i do?
18:32:19 <flexlibris> I am making some final changes now so this copy is not up to date: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22082
18:32:37 <flexlibris> after we vote, it will be included on the community documents page of wiki
18:32:52 <Samdney> ok. thanks flexlibris
18:33:31 <flexlibris> any other questions/comments?
18:33:50 <arma2> maybe i should redirect my above question to everybody? :)
18:34:03 <ChillyPhoul> arma2: in those cases, would you mind emailing me with what you think should be there, or just that you think I stripped it down too much? I agree that some of them are likely over simplified, however the way they were written currently was too complex (recevied questions about them even after reading faq entry, etc..).
18:34:57 <arma2> ok. i think more generally it might be wise for us to try to...do something more together and collaborative for the answers, to try to get the past experience of people answering the questions into one place
18:35:06 <arma2> right now it's sort of piecemeal "stuff shows up on tor-commits"
18:35:19 <ChillyPhoul> The plan is to put the whole list out for review before anything happens with them.
18:35:22 <arma2> which is fine to build up the answers, but it feels like there should be a next step where we make them what we want them to be
18:35:41 <arma2> i wonder if there is a way to get a group of people in a room for a weekend or whatever and do it
18:35:48 <flexlibris> arma2: we definitely want to have a review period for the support portal answers once we have a test site
18:35:49 <kat5> I think this is a philosophical question that needs to be hashed out. Probably at another time.
18:36:01 <ChillyPhoul> arma2: id definitely be interested in doing that, it would make the process a lot faster.
18:36:09 <flexlibris> yes I am in favor of doing this in person too
18:36:15 <flexlibris> but I also think Kat has a point
18:37:10 <arma2> sounds good. i'll consider my point raised. thanks. :)
18:37:38 <flexlibris> arma2: maybe we can check in again about this once we have some confirmation about the funding for the website?
18:37:47 <flexlibris> because that is when we will be able to make a plan about the test site
18:38:00 <arma2> man, i hope we aren't actually waiting for sida before having a support portal
18:38:08 <arma2> it's been years. surely it won't be years more. surely. but.
18:38:12 <kat5> Unsurprisingly, I have.. opinions. :-)
18:38:27 <flexlibris> arma2: I don't know if we have much of a choice.
18:39:02 <flexlibris> unless we can just hire someone to do the coding
18:39:18 <flexlibris> the support portal theoretically could go up before work on the rest of the website happens
18:39:30 <arma2> yeah. or before it looks pretty.
18:39:36 <arma2> or whatever it is the coding person would do :)
18:39:59 <arma2> maybe that is a terrible idea. maybe it is too important to matter that it's terrible.
18:40:06 <flexlibris> I think it's not just about prettiness but having search functionality
18:40:24 <flexlibris> we could make something that's not pretty and doesn't function as well and put that up sooner
18:40:38 <flexlibris> maybe what we actually need to do is set a deadline for when we will stop waiting on this funding and just put something up
18:40:57 <arma2> the upside of that is that actual users will be helped. the downside is that people could get distracted, and some people will misunderstand what we plan for the future.
18:41:05 <ChillyPhoul> I'm still able to do the not-so-pretty no-search version, if we decide on that.
18:41:26 <ChillyPhoul> Its good to know the SIDA thing may not be as close as it sounded
18:42:05 <flexlibris> ChillyPhoul: it's honestly a mystery
18:42:08 <arma2> (i'm not in the group that's interacting with sida, so listen to them before listening to me. but, sida was going to give us this money, for this project, back when andrew was execdir. for context.)
18:42:10 <anadahz> is there a ticket or something related to the new/ideal support portal?
18:43:04 <flexlibris> does someone have that ticket number? since the ux-team tag is gone I lost it (I had it on the community team wiki before)
18:43:47 <ChillyPhoul> I found https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/UX/SupportPage but not the ticket
18:43:54 <flexlibris> arma2: I have been more involved and we do seem much closer than we were then, but maybe we are living Zeno's Paradox
18:44:54 <ChillyPhoul> anadahz: I think that wiki page is likely more detailed than the ticket was. Still looking.
18:45:06 <anadahz> ChillyPhoul: thx!
18:45:19 <anadahz> meanwhile can I post some updates?
18:46:16 <flexlibris> anadahz: go ahead!
18:46:22 <anadahz> (mainly from the #tor-south)
18:46:30 <anadahz> here we go:
18:46:41 <anadahz> * Documentation on how to automagically setup and configure new relays (Deploying Tor Relays within Minutes) is now available in Portuguese --thanks acacs
18:46:44 <anadahz> * 2 new relays added in Brazil (https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/0EBC53D0558E14BEC545DD114D4818479377466C , https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/45B3C4D398E964DB48736F9EBB6F909B5C573F77) --thanks ggus
18:46:46 <anadahz> * Send a git patch to Colin with updates to the operator doc
18:46:48 <anadahz> * Meet the responsible for the network at a north east university in Brazil that has excess of network bandwidth. I will need some kind of a document that mentions what is a Tor relay and why a university should engage into running one (in Portuguese).
18:47:37 <flexlibris> ChillyPhoul: do we have those materials in Portuguese? I'm guessing not
18:47:51 * Samdney thinks that she found the support portal ticket 22118
18:48:05 <flexlibris> #22118
18:48:10 <flexlibris> yup!
18:48:39 <ChillyPhoul> flexlibris: I dont think so. I dont think we have them in English either, if they were translated.
18:49:08 <ChillyPhoul> anadahz: when you say automagically, is this the ansible configuration that ilv linked a few weeks ago?
18:51:03 <anadahz> ChillyPhoul: it's a ansible role from nusenu --ansible is an automation to automate software deployment
18:51:57 <ChillyPhoul> Is that document available publicly anywhere?
18:52:00 <arma2> anadahz: for why a university should run a relay, you might find https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/tor-on-campus.html useful
18:52:40 <anadahz> ChillyPhoul: imho it's one of the easiest, error-free, and secure way to deploy relays
18:53:37 <anadahz> arma2: thx, we will decide how would better translate/accomodate this text in the Brazilian university standards
18:54:36 <arma2> anadahz: oh, and i long ago wrote https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorGuideUniversities
18:54:46 <arma2> so do steal from that or fix it or burn it to the ground or whatever seems smartest :)
18:55:23 <ChillyPhoul> anadahz: not disagreeing, just curious to look at what acacs wrote for documentation. :)
18:55:28 <arma2> there is also a tiny but useful community of north american relay operators at universities
18:55:45 <arma2> (linked from the top of that url)
18:56:06 <anadahz> arma2: thx it will be useful somehow
18:56:22 <anadahz> though too "organized" for this university ;)
18:56:52 <anadahz> ChillyPhoul: oh I forgot to add the link to (Deploying Tor Relays within Minutes) https://medium.com/@acacs/implantando-relays-tor-em-minutos-deef22d71248
18:57:29 <ChillyPhoul> Thanks :)
18:58:20 <anadahz> I guess if I take full responsibility of running these relays there will not be a problem, but still we will need to go through a lot of bureacracy
18:59:19 <anadahz> flexlibris: you mentioned about some trainers around the area, please let me know where and what they plan on doing. I may be able to help them.
18:59:38 <arma2> i bet isa knows some too
19:02:15 <ChillyPhoul> So we are just over the hour mark, did anyone else have updates they wanted to give?
19:03:06 <catalyst> no updates, but i did have something we might want to discuss (but if people want to end the meeting now that's ok too)
19:03:52 <Samdney> what's the topic?
19:04:21 <catalyst> making our support channels more welcoming?
19:05:10 <ChillyPhoul> catalyst: Sure, what did you have in mind?
19:05:42 <ChillyPhoul> Do you mean IRC in this case? Or... all the mechanisms by which we provide support?
19:06:28 <catalyst> often on IRC people will ask questions that seem vague, confusing, or lacking in context. how do we encourage contributors to elicit more uesful details from these questioners without seeming hostile or condescending?
19:07:05 <ChillyPhoul> Ahh, that is actually potentially a fairly long conversation. I'd be happy to have it, but it might make sense to discuss that outside of the meeting.
19:07:07 <catalyst> ChillyPhoul: i primarily pay attention to IRC (and not mailing lists)
19:07:20 <Samdney> I think that's more a psychological question, or?
19:08:18 <kat5> I think it's an important question.
19:08:20 <catalyst> i'm wondering if we can introspect some and think about ways to change our habits to improve things
19:09:01 <catalyst> to some extent this is a function of the wider technical culture we're embedded in
19:09:21 <Samdney> It's important but you will find not THE ONE answer to this
19:09:46 <Samdney> We should move this to after meeting ;)
19:09:48 <ChillyPhoul> There are ways of interacting with people that can be calming vs increasing hostility, that might be worth having a separate meeting / conversation on. Unfortunately I need to AFK for a couple minutes, but will be back shortly.
19:09:54 <catalyst> Samdney: i agree. i see it as an ongoing process (or collection of processes)
19:10:14 <catalyst> ChillyPhoul: i'm happy to have this conversation outside of the meeting if people want
19:10:27 <Samdney> o/
19:10:35 <kat5> Maybe we could schedule a time to talk about it. Or put aside 1/2 of the next meeting. And in the meantime, think about it?
19:11:46 <catalyst> kat5: that seems reasonable
19:13:02 <Samdney> catalyst: you could send an introdution email to this to the mailing list with the most important points, for the beginning. As basis for discussion.
19:13:24 <arma2> catalyst: another piece of it is that all of the support stuff is tied together. if all the websites and so on where people ought to get support are not doing it, then different people will end up on irc, with a different mindset.
19:14:31 <Samdney> Can we end the meeting?
19:14:42 <catalyst> arma2: good point
19:15:21 <arma2> catalyst: see also the list on https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2016WinterDevMeeting/Notes/TakeBackCommunityChannels of various places that people might think are our support channels.
19:15:35 <arma2> (don't let me stop you from ending the meeting. i guess that's flexlibris since she started it?)
19:16:28 <arma2> catalyst: for other context, https://www.torproject.org/about/contact used to have a whole lot of contact addresses on it
19:16:39 <arma2> and one by one, people asked for theirs to be removed, because they were getting swamped by people contacting them
19:16:58 <arma2> the remaining ones couldn't handle the increased load, and now the only address still there is donations and execdir
19:17:05 <arma2> which now get...mail not really suited for donations and execdir.
19:17:59 <ChillyPhoul> #endmeeting
19:18:05 <ChillyPhoul> ah darn, flexlibris will have to call it.
19:19:28 <arma2> the meeting that never ends!
19:20:04 <Samdney> let's hope that flexlibris not went out for a walk ;)
19:20:20 <ChillyPhoul> hehe, might be a long meetbot log. :P
19:20:50 <Samdney> Is there no way to kill the meetbot?
19:21:12 <ChillyPhoul> Maybe some type of meetbot admin can end the session, but seems like other than that flexlibris will need to call it.
19:21:19 <MeetBot> arma2: Error: Can't start another meeting, one is in progress.
19:21:37 * arma2 enters single combat (i bet we could kick the bot)
19:21:56 <GeKo> lol
19:21:56 <arma2> we'll give flexlibris more time to come back from her walk first though
19:23:05 <arma2> catalyst: but yes, more generally, if you are coming into this thinking "man, those support people are mean and overworked", you should take a step back and think "wait, do we have support people?"
19:23:36 * ChillyPhoul admits he also doesnt look at #tor as often as he should.
19:24:14 <Samdney> Do we have support people?
19:24:36 <Samdney> I think yes.
19:24:49 <ChillyPhoul> We have me, but for paid support outside of me, that ended over a year ago.
19:24:50 <Samdney> But sometimes, giving support can be very hard
19:25:05 <flexlibris> ah god I'm so sorry I don't know what's wrong with me today
19:25:13 <flexlibris> someone asked me a question and I forgot where I was here
19:25:16 <arma2> help, we're still meeting!
19:25:19 <arma2> save us
19:25:27 <flexlibris> I want to blame jet lag but I don't know why it's deteriorating my brain lol
19:25:30 <flexlibris> #endmeeting