New member process performance and issues (Fwd: SPI Member application for Filipus Klutiero)

Hi,
On 2015-06-28, I applied for SPI membership. I did not obtain any
followup until 2016-02-03, when I received the forwarded mail.

After such a delay, my interest in SPI was low. I thought that was a big
incident, and felt comforted to think that the processing time for my
application was not representative. I thought my application would now
be processed swiftly.

Yesterday, my application, managed by Martin Zobel-Helas, was finally
processed, and I was invited to vote in the 2016 board election, which
revived my interest in SPI and prompted me to visit its discussion
forums. To my surprise, I could not find any mention of the issue
discovered in February, even checking on spi-general (although there are
a couple of mails titled "New members website / inactive contributing
member cleanup", which, while they apparently do not treat this issue,
seem related). This is why I am hereby forwarding the mail I received in
February, even though I have no idea how many applications were affected.

I rarely apply for membership in a software project, but it was
unprecedented for me to apply to an opaque process like the SPI's
without being requested to do so. I wanted to send a mail to report my
experience, but I now realize that SPI actually has statistics about the
process's performance on https://members.spi-inc.org/stats

These statistics follow:

NC Applicants Pending Email Approval a
NC Members b
Contrib Membership Applications c
Contrib Members d
Application Managers 11

I do not precisely understand what each of these metrics means, but this
would certainly be most relevant for those wondering whether they should
apply for membership. Unfortunately, this page is not accessible when
not logged in. Could this be intentional?

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: SPI Member application for Filipus Klutiero
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2016 11:03:57 +0000
From: SPI Membership Committee <membership(at)spi-inc(dot)org>
To: chealer(at)gmail(dot)com

Dear Filipus Klutiero,

It has come to our attention that at some point (possibly some time ago)
you application for SPI contributing membership. However due to an issue
in the way the membership site worked it was possible to do this before
you had verified your email address and thus become a non-contributing
member.

This has now been rectified, both to make it clearer when logging in
that email verification is pending and also to prevent a contributing
membership application before that stage is complete. However your
application is still in this limbo state.

Should you wish to proceed with your SPI contributing membership
application please click on the following link to verify your email
address:

https://members.spi-inc.org/verifyemail?emailkey=a808a96634dd9102c7f144ba8e27d5e8

Alternatively go to:

https://members.spi-inc.org/verifyemail

And enter a808a96634dd9102c7f144ba8e27d5e8 as the verification code.

There is no need to resubmit your contributing application itself; once
you have validated your email it will enter the queue of applications
for the membership committee to process.

If you do not wish to proceed with SPI membership you can ignore this
email.

Apologies for the delay getting this issue resolved.

--
The SPI Membership Committee <membership(at)spi-inc(dot)org>

On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 11:31:23AM -0400, Filipus Klutiero wrote:

> On 2015-06-28, I applied for SPI membership. I did not obtain any followup
> until 2016-02-03, when I received the forwarded mail.
>
> After such a delay, my interest in SPI was low. I thought that was a big
> incident, and felt comforted to think that the processing time for my
> application was not representative. I thought my application would now be
> processed swiftly.
>
> Yesterday, my application, managed by Martin Zobel-Helas, was finally
> processed, and I was invited to vote in the 2016 board election, which
> revived my interest in SPI and prompted me to visit its discussion forums.
> To my surprise, I could not find any mention of the issue discovered in
> February, even checking on spi-general (although there are a couple of mails
> titled "New members website / inactive contributing member cleanup", which,
> while they apparently do not treat this issue, seem related). This is why I
> am hereby forwarding the mail I received in February, even though I have no
> idea how many applications were affected.

I sent out these mails; there were fewer than 10 affected - I don't have
the exact numbers to hand, but it was a sufficiently low number that I
felt contacting those affected directly was sufficient. Additionally in
my work on the replacement members site I've had a very low amount of
feedback to anything I've posted to the lists, so I haven't felt it was
worth my while pointing out the inadequacies of the old system which are
now rectified.

> I rarely apply for membership in a software project, but it was
> unprecedented for me to apply to an opaque process like the SPI's without
> being requested to do so. I wanted to send a mail to report my experience,
> but I now realize that SPI actually has statistics about the process's
> performance on https://members.spi-inc.org/stats
>
> These statistics follow:
>
> NC Applicants Pending Email Approval a
> NC Members b
> Contrib Membership Applications c
> Contrib Members d
> Application Managers 11
>
>
> I do not precisely understand what each of these metrics means, but this
> would certainly be most relevant for those wondering whether they should
> apply for membership.

a = those who have applied, but failed to confirm their email address by
clicking on the link in the initial email sent on sign up. If you
are in this state and login it should be clear your address is not
verified.
b = Non-contributing members. Those who've completed email verification
but either not applied to or not completed the contrib membership
process.
c = Applications for contributing membership that are still in progress.
All of these members will be included in "b".
d = Members who have completed the contributing membership process and are
permitted to be subscribed to -private and vote.

Application Managers are those who are capable of handling applications
sitting in "c". Most of them are inactive.

> Unfortunately, this page is not accessible when not logged in. Could
> this be intentional?

All of the membership system other than signup requires a login; it is
trivial to obtain this so perhaps there's an argument to open up the
stats to non-authenticated logins but I've never seen a request for it.

J.

--
xmpp:noodles(at)earth(dot)li
You'll never find it, in all that loose clothing.

Hi Jonathan,

On 2016-07-17 15:46, Jonathan McDowell wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 11:31:23AM -0400, Filipus Klutiero wrote:
>
>> On 2015-06-28, I applied for SPI membership. I did not obtain any followup
>> until 2016-02-03, when I received the forwarded mail.
>>
>> After such a delay, my interest in SPI was low. I thought that was a big
>> incident, and felt comforted to think that the processing time for my
>> application was not representative. I thought my application would now be
>> processed swiftly.
>>
>> Yesterday, my application, managed by Martin Zobel-Helas, was finally
>> processed, and I was invited to vote in the 2016 board election, which
>> revived my interest in SPI and prompted me to visit its discussion forums.
>> To my surprise, I could not find any mention of the issue discovered in
>> February, even checking on spi-general (although there are a couple of mails
>> titled "New members website / inactive contributing member cleanup", which,
>> while they apparently do not treat this issue, seem related). This is why I
>> am hereby forwarding the mail I received in February, even though I have no
>> idea how many applications were affected.
> I sent out these mails; there were fewer than 10 affected - I don't have
> the exact numbers to hand, but it was a sufficiently low number that I
> felt contacting those affected directly was sufficient. Additionally in
> my work on the replacement members site I've had a very low amount of
> feedback to anything I've posted to the lists, so I haven't felt it was
> worth my while pointing out the inadequacies of the old system which are
> now rectified.

Thank you

>
>> I rarely apply for membership in a software project, but it was
>> unprecedented for me to apply to an opaque process like the SPI's without
>> being requested to do so. I wanted to send a mail to report my experience,
>> but I now realize that SPI actually has statistics about the process's
>> performance on https://members.spi-inc.org/stats
>>
>> These statistics follow:
>>
>> NC Applicants Pending Email Approval a
>> NC Members b
>> Contrib Membership Applications c
>> Contrib Members d
>> Application Managers 11
>>
>>
>> I do not precisely understand what each of these metrics means, but this
>> would certainly be most relevant for those wondering whether they should
>> apply for membership.
> a = those who have applied, but failed to confirm their email address by
> clicking on the link in the initial email sent on sign up. If you
> are in this state and login it should be clear your address is not
> verified.
> b = Non-contributing members. Those who've completed email verification
> but either not applied to or not completed the contrib membership
> process.
> c = Applications for contributing membership that are still in progress.
> All of these members will be included in "b".
> d = Members who have completed the contributing membership process and are
> permitted to be subscribed to -private and vote.
>
> Application Managers are those who are capable of handling applications
> sitting in "c". Most of them are inactive.

Thank you

>> Unfortunately, this page is not accessible when not logged in. Could
>> this be intentional?
> All of the membership system other than signup requires a login; it is
> trivial to obtain this so perhaps there's an argument to open up the
> stats to non-authenticated logins but I've never seen a request for it.

I did that in thread "Issue #1 - Allow public access to membership statistics": http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-general/2016-July/003496.html

--
Filipus Klutiero
http://www.philippecloutier.com