Re: I suspend my...

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

Sorry for my late chime (the privileges of being behind a freakin
asinine proxy/firewall) - plus what a debate/fight without me in the
middle - how could this happen :-)

--- Muhammad Alkarouri <malkarouri at yahoo dot co dot uk> wrote:
>  --- Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com> wrote:
>
> > else I don't quite understand why someone of you caliber and
> > someone that we fully respect and NEED no less is "leaving" (the same
> > goes to 90% of the people on this list BTW).
> 
> Theoretically. We don't need developers. We need some people with PhD in
> political sciences, or at least working no less than 5 years working in
> aljazeera.

I don't quite follow - if someone has done you wrong, by all means stand
up and point fingers and argue the topic (BEST IDEA WINS in my book always).

> I have spent some energy trying to integrate here. I can reconsider if
> and when things do change.

Taking this in a philosophical mindset - I'm not sure why anyone would
really have to spend any energy to integrate.  I'm not sure we have any
areas in which developers/contributers are asked to bend backwards to
do what they'd like to do.  Keep in mind that Arabeyes is an environment
and NOT the people.  The idea was/is always that Arabeyes is far more
important and that it needs to survive without some of us (since its
goals and mandates are held in higher regard).  If on the other hand
some of what is taking shape is not upto par with what you (or others)
expect - feel free to bring it out in the open for a clear/frank
discussion (we're all adults here and we VERY much try to stick to the
subject without veering into non-topical fields).

With regard to the various points noted (here is my minimalistic take
on things and I really _hate_ to do this on 'developer' since I value
everyone time/bandwidth on this list - but I'm hoping this will settle
things).

 + MiniBidi/FriBidi - post various discussions it kinda became apparent
   that we needed to have a solution that logically encompassed both
   scenarios that we saw.  We all agreed that fribidi needs to be the
   main focus and the main push (hey, where's that shaping :-) yet we'd
   be kidding ourselves to have ignored genuine external needs and remarks.
   Keep in mind that some of us view the need to 'facilitate' Arabic
   inclusion as compared to others that shoot for "perfection".  Forking
   external projects is _way_ overkill given our size and turn-over rate,
   etc.

 + QAC - I'm not involved in that :-)  But from the few emails I read on
   the 'doc' list, seems like a bunch of eager people trying to find their
   bearings (seems rather fluid to me).

 + Core - is a management group that is open to all (our meetings, agendas,
   minutes, discussions are all open - come join in _please_).  This group
   of people was in the past an invite-only group due to a couple of main
   reasons,
   a. We needed to insure forward progress and what best way to do that
      than to tap into the hardest working people around you that care
      the most.  Ask Youcef and Anmar how they got asked to join in and
      they will tell you that they were so busy with Arabeyes duties
      already that they didn't think it would make sense - but our initial
      goals/work was very concentrated on setup/bring-up.
   b. We needed to get ALOT of work done and various people fit the mold
      and interest at the time (website development is a good example of
      that for instance).  Commitment and a sense of stability (we've seen
      WAY too many flaky, promise-and-never-deliver people) was/is a must
      and we very much tried to develop an eye for that.
   With that said, I think Arabeyes has grown enough now to where we can
   open the process up for elections in which people can simply nominate
   themselves and a vote process takes place to select X number of people.
   The process/procedure is still being worked on since we need to make
   sure Arabeyes (again it needs to survive no matter what) will be taken
   care of no matter what the circumstances are or will be (safeguards
   need to be in place, etc).

Hope I covered all that I read.  I certainly don't mean to reignite any
topics (or rehash anything), I did want to simply say that Arabeyes is
an open, always looking for improvement, society that is keen on results
which should foster a sense of professionalism and FUN.  Keep in mind that
this is not a tutoring community (although we'd love it to kinda move in
that direction) - we very much are self-paced and self-taught but where
the opportunity comes is in touching/working on something that others
require (for instance, OCR - the community knows very little about the
topic yet it very much would love to see a force move in that direction,
this need fosters a means to learn more about the topic to bring forth a
solution given the technical motivation is there, etc).  Or should have
I said "blah blah blah" ;-)

Salam.

 - Nadim


	
		
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