📝 docs(council): Rewrite Community Architect charter #253
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This PR rewrites the Fedora Community Architect (FCA) charter to reflect the role's actual, expanded scope of work. The previous charter described the FCA in broad "community manager" terms; this version documents concrete governance, financial, and ecosystem-stewardship responsibilities, and states plainly how the role's Red Hat sponsorship relates to its duty to the Fedora Project.
Key changes
Where to focus review
The fiduciary framing in Decision-Making, the new CentOS Ecosystem responsibilities, and the removal of Community Initiative Support are the most consequential changes — they represent real shifts in what the charter says the role does, not just wording cleanup. Everything else (metadata fixes, section reordering, cross-references) is lower-stakes and mechanical.
Scope
Shaun McCance is added as a document author in recognition of his close consultation on this revision. The "Meet the FCA" biography and "Previous Fedora Community Architects" list are intentionally unchanged in this PR.
Assisted-by: Claude Sonnet 5 (1M context)
My target timeline to merge this Pull Request is on Thursday, July 3rd, before the Friday US Holiday.
Well one thing I support is the FCA getting a chunk of money at the beginning of the financial year and then being responsible for dispersing it.
This was the first time OSPO was mentioned and the abbreviation was expanded.
Now the first time OSPO is mentioned, it's abbreviated only, until later in the text. Which is confusing for folks who don't know what OSPO is (which I assume only some Red Hat folks know).
Shouldn't curating the conference program be delegated to a group and only overseen by the Community Architect?
selected how? by whom?
Is this image URL pointing outside of the Fedora Docs stable? What is the license of the photo?
I suspect you probably don't want to encourage mailing list usage, but by omitting it, you are excluding a significant portion of Fedora contributors.
I presented this PR with my rewritten role description in today's Fedora Council meeting. The updated role document provides a more specific list of responsibilities to clarify what the community can request my help with. A key change is formally dedicating my time to provide general support, such as for documentation and communications, for all official Fedora Community Initiatives. I am tentatively planning to merge this PR tomorrow, pending final, blocking feedback from reviewers.
Thanks @theprogram and @churchyard for weighing in here already! I will make some new commits to update the draft based on feedback so far.
My overall take is that this encodes too many leadership duties into the FCA job description: Council member, Flock chair, CommOps chair, Mindshare chair, CoC committee chair, alongside the budget duties. While it's important for the FCA to interface w/ all these groups, leading them is too much to load onto one role.
Metadata Update from @jflory7:
Metadata Update from @jflory7:
*blows off dust*
This PR is eleven months old. It was moved over from Pagure. Now that Flock is in the rearview mirror, I intend to spend more time on this PR and getting into a state that warrants a Council-wide review.
I will put this on the Council meeting agenda project board once it is ready for discussion and feedback.
92816a41c0to5074933380The Fedora Community Architect charter has undersold the role's actual scope, and this commit sharpens the page's introduction and document metadata to better reflect current responsibilities. The description and opening paragraph are rewritten to describe the FCA as one of three permanent Red Hat seats on the Fedora Council, with institutional, governance, and financial accountability spanning Council business, budget, Flock, and ecosystem stewardship (CentOS is now named explicitly). The "Community Initiatives" reference is removed, since the Council paused that program pending a redesigned process built with community input. This commit also fixes a document metadata bug found while previewing the build locally: the semicolon-separated author line only registers with Asciidoctor when it is the very first line after the document title, with no attribute entries ahead of it. The existing file had `:page-authors:` first, so `{author}`, `{author_2}`, `{author_3}`, and `{author_4}` never resolved, and Asciidoctor logged "skipping reference to missing attribute" warnings on every build. Reordering the header fixes the byline. The `:page-authors:` attribute itself is dropped because nothing in this repository or the rendered page consumes it — the UI reads the `{author}` family of attributes directly. Shaun McCance is also added as a document author in recognition of his close consultation on this revision. The document is versioned as v5.0-alpha to mark it as a working draft. It will become v5.0 once merged to main, with a possible `-beta` stage before then. Assisted-by: Claude Sonnet 5 (1M context) Signed-off-by: Justin Wheeler <jwheel@redhat.com>af13a92f41tode4a3f12a3Great structure. Very readable. Here are some changes to lessen the formal CentOS reponsibilities.
@ -71,2 +61,3 @@Participate in planning and organizing Fedora’s Flagship events each year, including:[[roles-centos]]=== CentOS Ecosystem StewardshipLet's drop the word "Stewardship".
Done — renamed to "CentOS Ecosystem" in
0a7886b.@ -76,1 +65,3 @@* Fedora contributor hackfests* Represent Fedora's interests within the CentOS project, engaging with the CentOS Board on governance, elections, and community transitions.* Serve as a bridge between the Fedora and CentOS communities, sharing lessons, tooling, and processes across the upstream/downstream relationship.* Organize CentOS Connect, the project's annual contributor conference, coordinating logistics and programming with the CentOS community."Assist with CentOS Connect, the project's annual contributor conference, ensuring a strong Fedora presence."
Done — adopted your wording verbatim in
0a7886b.@ -77,0 +66,4 @@* Serve as a bridge between the Fedora and CentOS communities, sharing lessons, tooling, and processes across the upstream/downstream relationship.* Organize CentOS Connect, the project's annual contributor conference, coordinating logistics and programming with the CentOS community.* Advocate for CentOS Stream partners and users, surfacing their needs and feedback to the Fedora community and to Red Hat engineering.* Support open, transparent communication between CentOS Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and the broader partner ecosystem.Let's change "broader partner ecosystem" to "Fedora partner ecosystem" so it's more clearly Fedora-aligned.
Done — changed to "Fedora partner ecosystem" in
0a7886b.@ -91,0 +86,4 @@* Decisions related to budget allocation and official project documentation are made with the xref:council::index.adoc[{team_name}].* Decisions related to Flock planning are made in collaboration with the Flock organizing team and relevant community stakeholders.* Decisions related to CentOS ecosystem stewardship are made in collaboration with the CentOS Board and the broader CentOS community.Let's just drop this line entirely. FCA is not a decision-making role in CentOS.
Done — removed the CentOS decision-making bullet in
0a7886b.@ -91,0 +124,4 @@* *CentOS Board*:Represent Fedora's interests in CentOS governance, elections, and community transitions.* *CentOS Connect Organizing Team*:Coordinate conference logistics and programming for CentOS Connect.s/Coordinate/Assist with/
Done — changed to "Assist with" in
0a7886b.@ -129,0 +171,4 @@=== 2026 role changesIn 2026, this charter was substantially rewritten to describe the FCA's actual scope of work, rather than the broader "community manager" framing it had carried since the role's earliest days.<<roles,_Roles and Responsibilities_>> was reorganized around four concrete areas — <<roles-governance,_Council governance_>>, <<roles-budget,_budget and fiduciary stewardship_>>, the <<roles-flock,_Flock conference_>>, and <<roles-centos,_CentOS ecosystem stewardship_>> — with CentOS added as a newly explicit responsibility, reflecting the deepening relationship between Fedora and its sibling project.Drop "stewardship".
Done — dropped "stewardship" from the section reference in
0a7886b.Thanks for the thorough look, @shaunm! Accepted all your suggestions in
0a7886bcae. Re-requesting your review now.Assisted-by: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context)
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