@schneems This is a sponsored event ran by a company worth tens of millions of dollars, and it's mismanaged. Don't cry "community" at me.
I think you're assuming evil intentions when simple understaffing is at cause.
Code School started the Ruby Heroes, I can't speak on it's origins, i'm sure that it was intentionally intended to be a marketing tool. It's why companies sponsor things, it's why Heroku sponors RailsConf, A) We have a marketing message we want to get out B) We benifit from the community when the community is doing well, by sponsoring RubyCentral, we are putting some cash back into the community.
Code School pays for the custom awards that are handed out every year, they also pay for developer time to develop and organize the website, and for time to manage and promote the process. They also pay for travel and accomadations of the person attenging RailsConf to oversee the award process. Last year they also paid for hundreds of "Ruby Heroes" shirts to be handed out to the crowd.
To fault Code School for taking the iniative to start the program and then to not seek recognition for its efforts isn't exactly fair.
If you want paid travel for winners, maybe bring on additional sponsors who would be willing to pay for it. Probably $1k a person, 12 people a year would be $12k a year. Then they could get some extra sponors on the page. The time and effort of running the event still falls on Code School, so it would always be "brought to you by Code School". List additional sponsors on the page and thank them at the event.
This whole process is effectively being kept alive by 1 person. It is kept alive because that person believes that it is important to recognize people in the community for their efforts. This is similar to my community efforts I undertake while working for Heroku. I take time off of work to work on Keep Ruby Weird and Heroku allows me to, so they "sponsor it" and tollerate my involvement. This also isn't unlike my open source work, when I want to work on a feature in Rails that can't be completed in my free time I must make two arguments. One to the community that such a feature is good and worthwhile, the other argument is to my company that it's worth me working on this problem. I would venture a guess that while working on Ruby Heros that the organizer must battle for an appropriate amount of time to work on the project. They are working on this as a "for the community" effort, that is how they see themselves. You are treating this effort as though it is an entirely for profit buisness and that you're the customer. The buisness must meet your demands or cease to exist. They obviously care about this subject and want to make it better, time and efforts are limited.
If this was a greenfield conversation I would suggest asking the maintainer what their blockers are, is there anything stopping them from making the changes you're asking for? Yes, you've asked for changes, do you understand why things exist the way they do today? Maybe it was a simple matter of time. The maintainer only has enough time to operate the existing app, they're overworked as is. I would continue to push for involvement with the project. Getting access to the raw data, doing the leg work to get consent for your changes and then either implementing them or finding another 3rd party who would be able to.
Maybe bringing on a committee would help to aleviate some of your issues, the work could be shared and the decisions spread out. It's one possible suggestion.
I argue with people in open source, almost full time. When I'm not doing that I argue with people in comment sections, sometimes when I play StarCraft. I argue with co-workers about implementing solutions. Right now I'm not arguing with you, don't construe my observations as judgements they're not. I respect you and I respect the maintainer of this project, that's why I took the time to write this.
Most arguments come down to feelings. You feel you're correct in your criticisms. The maintainer feels attacked and invalidated. If a resolution exists, we would have to address both of these things. The maintainer needs to validate your criticisms, and make a path forwards. You have to let them be able to do that by not putting them on the defensive.
We are at an impass right now, there's no way you're getting the maintainer to dismantle the entire program based on this conversation. You can continue to try to raise community support for the program's downfall, but I don't think it's overwhelming enough for people to grab burning torches and show up at RailsConf demanding heads. If you want to accomplish anything other than sowing dissent, fostering burnout, and alienating a hard working Ruby dev that truly loves this community - you'll need to re-establish trust and work together. If you give the maintainer an excuse to work with you, I believe good things can be accomplished.
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