Ron Teitelbaum wrote:

All,

There are two ways to tell what your current certification is. The first way is to read what is on the second line of your page on squeak people. Your certification is printed there. It looks like this:

This person is currently certified at Apprentice level.

The second way is to look at Others have certified this person as follows:

section. You can see who certified you there. A person can only certify people to a level that is at or below their own certification. So for you to get an Apprentice Level you need someone with at least an Apprentice Level to certify you.

If you have questions please feel free to contact me or anyone on the elections team,

Ron Teitelbaum Squeak Elections Team Member

The interface of SqueakPeople is a little hard to navigate.

-It would be nice if the menu options reflected the level of certification you can make. If you are Apprentice and approve someone as Master that certification will be ignored, so why have that option?

-It's often no link back to the start pages and I have to use the back button in the browser.

-It could be nice if it was possible to sort the people list after certification.

Karl

Bert Freudenberg skrev:

On Feb 20, 2007, at 19:09 , Karl wrote:

...

-It would be nice if the menu options reflected the level of certification you can make. If you are Apprentice and approve someone as Master that certification will be ignored, so why have that option?

Because your certification is visible. Even if it does not lead to promotion using the current algorithm, it still shows that you acknowledge someone to be a significant contributor, for example. Like, many people certified Dan Ingalls as Master for obvious reasons, even though they are not Masters themselves. It shows their support. For an explanation of the levels, see

http://people.squeakfoundation.org/certs.html

It's similar on a personal level like the appreciation of projects, which you also can do on the people site.

• Bert -

But if I as apprentice was the only one certifying Dan as anything, and I certified him as master would he be able to vote in the Squeak election? Or would he only enjoy my appreciation ;-) Karl

Bert Freudenberg skrev:

On Feb 20, 2007, at 21:37 , karl wrote:

...

Bert Freudenberg skrev:

...

On Feb 20, 2007, at 19:09 , Karl wrote:

...

-It would be nice if the menu options reflected the level of certification you can make. If you are Apprentice and approve someone as Master that certification will be ignored, so why have that option?

Because your certification is visible. Even if it does not lead to promotion using the current algorithm, it still shows that you acknowledge someone to be a significant contributor, for example. Like, many people certified Dan Ingalls as Master for obvious reasons, even though they are not Masters themselves. It shows their support. For an explanation of the levels, see

http://people.squeakfoundation.org/certs.html

It's similar on a personal level like the appreciation of projects, which you also can do on the people site.

• Bert -

But if I as apprentice was the only one certifying Dan as anything, and I certified him as master would he be able to vote in the Squeak election? Or would he only enjoy my appreciation ;-)

Both :)

• Bert -

Good. Karl

Ken Causey skrev:

On Tue, 2007-02-20 at 21:37 +0100, karl wrote:

...

But if I as apprentice was the only one certifying Dan as anything, and I certified him as master would he be able to vote in the Squeak election? Or would he only enjoy my appreciation ;-) Karl

To put it simply, if yours is the only certification for someone else then that other person will be certified up to either your level or the level you specified for them, whichever is lowest. So if you are an apprentice, and you certify Dan as Master (and yours is the only certification) then Dan will be certified as an Apprentice. Apprentice is sufficient to allow voting.

Ok, good to know I don't waste any appreciation :-)

It gets more complex than this when there is more than one certification, but in any case getting Apprentice status is a very low bar for receiving voting privileges. I am in the habit of certifying anyone up to Apprentice level who

A. I either recognize from the mailing list or squeak-dev IRC or some other Smalltalk-related context.

B. Includes a comment that shows some knowledge of Squeak or Smalltalk in general.

C. Links to a webpage that at least mentions Squeak or Smalltalk in a reasonable way. Note that I go so far as to find references in foreign languages I can't even read and tend to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Ken

---

It's really vital that people that don't participate on the list's etc. leave some info on Squeak People so there is a chance to apply trustmetric.

karl

Ken Causey skrev:

On Tue, 2007-02-20 at 22:36 +0100, karl wrote:

...

It's really vital that people that don't participate on the list's etc. leave some info on Squeak People so there is a chance to apply trustmetric.

karl

Indeed, I even wrote an article on that very subject:

http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/68.html

Ah, nice. I went trough the list of Observers and certified a few that had some info. It would be nice to have a date the person created their account. karl

I just wanted to say that I at least consider SqP (or something like it) to be a very important experiment.

To do various things (such as elections) as a community, we need mechanisms (voting). Whenever the things we want to do have a chance of being important, we need our mechanisms to take account of trust in some way.

Most traditional ways of handling trust (membership lists, payments, ...) simply *suck* in the sense of requiring lots of centralized manual work. SqP, while requiring some work of newcomers and the users that certify them, is not creating that work, but just spreading it around.

It also has the advantage that it has a chance of scaling, and by its nature it allows us to spread trust relatively quickly, while protecting us somewhat against a possible hostile takeover. IIRC, there's an API to it, so other applications can reuse the same effort for completely different purposes. All of these latter advantages are somewhat iffy - that's the experiment.

But it has a better chance of working in these ways than other methods we've found on the elections list, and it definitely allows us to decentralize the work of managing trust, preventing the elections process from being so much of a chore nobody wants to do it.

So please do use it. Do not feel embarrassed about asking for certification, its a result of the mechanism we chose, not your own ego. Do give people solid reasons to certify you - they want to do justice to the trust invested in them, so point at your projects, interests and so forth. And in turn, if anyone you know joins the community, go ahead and certify them proactively.

Thanks, Daniel Vainsencher

Ken Causey wrote:

On Tue, 2007-02-20 at 23:44 +0100, karl wrote:

...

I went trough the list of Observers and certified a few that had some info. It would be nice to have a date the person created their account. karl

Thanks for taking the time.

Earlier today someone else (perhaps it was you then) requested changes to SqP. Here's the deal: SqP is an instance of Advogato and is built on top of an Apache1 module (mod_virgule). It's C code. Frankly no one here wants to touch it. Redoing this site in Squeak has been long discussed. But frankly there are a lot of things to do and few available hours.

But anyone who is interested in re-implementing SqP in Squeak (or something of similar functionality) is more than welcome to do so. And if it is any good at all I suspect we will be happy to transfer over.

Ken

---

Cees de Groot wrote:

On 2/20/07, Karl karl.ramberg@comhem.se wrote:

...

The interface of SqueakPeople is a little hard to navigate.

[...]

It is. SqP is a C-based Apache module, so I'm not spending maintenance time on it. Someone needs to step up and help moving the thing to a Squeak-based site, then we can start working on the various wish-lists I have laying around :)

I'd be happy to "help" move it to a Pier-based site.

OK, so you've misplaced/forgotten your SqP password. Shame on you for not using the account more. ;) But this is not unusual.

At this time there is no automatic method for handling this but here is what you do:

Send email from the email address you specified when you setup your SqP account to box-admins@lists.squeakfoundation.org requesting that your password be reset. Be sure to specify your SqP account name. Also specify whether you would prefer that I send you your existing password or generate a new random password. If you do not specify I will generate a new random password. I will then email the address specified under the account with the password.

Ken

On Wed, 2007-02-21 at 00:26 -0800, Blake wrote:

How does one retrieve one's password for Squeak People login.

I signed up years ago but haven't logged in--maybe ever. :-)

Stéphane Rollandin skrev:

Herbert König wrote:

...

My reason not to vote is that I'm sensitive to labels tacked onto me. The only SqPeople status I'm comfortable with is Observer. The possibility of anybody sticking one of the other labels (including master) at me keeps me from having an account there.

I had very similar feelings until this very morning, when I eventually thought that if I was to wait for things to be perfect before I allow myself to participate it was going to be a tad longuish.

so I subscribed to SqPeople and now I can vote.

but I do agree that some unnecessary pressure is being put on a SqPeople member. to me the most annoying at this time is the idea that I should myself start rating other people/projects, else I'm risking to pass for a misanthropic caveman.

Isn't the entry level (apprentice) just a bot filter ? Karl

Hello Stéphane,

SR> I had very similar feelings until this very morning, when I eventually actually I only wanted to start a discussion about things that might keep people from voting. Because I remembered people searching SqPeople and urging others to look there for someone they could certify.

And I wanted to avoid questions "Hey you started this discussion, why didn't you vote then?".

Was on SqPeople again and it still is hard to access. Couldn't find the descriptions what the certificates mean for example.

BTW Kim Rose just joined there awaiting certification to vote on the SqF Board.

SR> myself start rating other people/projects, else I'm risking to pass for SR> a misanthropic caveman. In some places I pass for worse and I don't care that much :-))

Cheers

Herbert mailto:herbertkoenig@gmx.net

Stéphane Rollandin lecteur@zogotounga.net writes:

Herbert König wrote:

...

My reason not to vote is that I'm sensitive to labels tacked onto me. The only SqPeople status I'm comfortable with is Observer. The possibility of anybody sticking one of the other labels (including master) at me keeps me from having an account there.

I had very similar feelings until this very morning, when I eventually thought that if I was to wait for things to be perfect before I allow myself to participate it was going to be a tad longuish.

Add me to the list. I would prefer us to have a registration process with clear criteria for who gets to vote. These decisions are hard but important. They define what our community is.

Is posting on the mailing list enough? Do you have to contribute code? What about editing documentation? What if you are a big-wig with some *other* Smalltalk system?

We would do better to talk about it and decide.

Lex

"Cees de Groot" cdegroot@gmail.com writes:

On 20 Feb 2007 19:13:59 -0500, Lex Spoon lex@lexspoon.org wrote:

...

We would do better to talk about it and decide.

Personally, I'm not going to participate in this discussion. Because we talked about it and we decided, last year. Nothing changed so far, no need to spend time on this discussion.

Clearly, "we" made no such decision, as evidenced by this very thread.

People are posting that they do not like using an automatic reputation system to define who is in the group. It is especially bad to use a system whose properties are neither known [1] nor discussed [2].

Community membership is the heart of a community. Are we going to bother? Who does the SqueakFoundation represent?

-Lex

[1] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/elections/2005-December/000010.h...

[2] There is no 2. We are still just doing whatever.

Daniel Vainsencher danielv@tx.technion.ac.il writes:

"We": you and I in particular participated in this discussion on the elections team mailing list [1]. You were not convinced, but this is the available solution that the elections team decided on [2].

I agree with you that is an important issue. Just for clarity's sake - the decision on what system to use for *this* election will not be changed 4 days before voting begins. If you want to vote, please do register on SqP.

Certainly, I would not suggest it.

I just objected to Cees apparently declaring the issue beyond discussion.

-Lex

Hi Herbert,

I know I'm late but I had to hack that damed DNN customer site today :(

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 19:04:55 +0100, you wrote:

Hello Ron and elections team,

sorry this should go to the list.

RT> You are only eligible to vote for the Squeak Foundation Board RT> 2007 ifyou have a certified squeakPeople account. as the iirc vast majority of squeak dev subscribers didn't vote last time you might want to look into more exotic reasons for not voting.

My reason not to vote is that I'm sensitive to labels tacked onto me. The only SqPeople status I'm comfortable with is Observer. The possibility of anybody sticking one of the other labels (including master) at me keeps me from having an account there.

Let me try to encourage you (and perhaps other reluctant people) to get you an SqP account. This is the only way to be visible to other Squeakers when they poke around in the SqP information.

That you or somebody else may indeed get an unwanted label is just the way how life is organized, sh*t happens. Unfortunately there can be no method in TestCase for checking the label for consistency, or even ethics, etc. But there is an facility called email and one can send a note to anyone else who went too far (in the positive or negative direction).

After all, all the people who already are on SqP have *exactly* the same problem and you are *not* an exception :)

/Klaus

I would not mind a voter certification saying "enough certified squeakers trust this one enough to let him vote for SQF Board".

Others might have different reasons, including "to complicated (embarrsing if not) to get certified". Programmers *are* strange at times. (me being always strange :-)

Just my 2c and I'm happy enough not voting.

Cheers

Herbert mailto:herbertkoenig@gmx.net

Done.

I've certified you.

Cheers. gsa.

2007/2/22, Aaron Reichow revaaron@bitquabit.com:

Ron, etc-

Would someone who might know of my work or my time with Squeak (since 1999) could rate me? My username is revaaron. Thanks! If I don't get a response, I'll start tracking some of you guys down... >:-)

Regards, Aaron