Who cares about seeking new maintainers if a maintainer is blocked?

IMHO, the only appropriate place to go about this is to open up an issue in the Project Ownership issue queue where you advertise that the project needs a new maintainer to keep the project maintained. I.e. finding a new maintainer should be done by means of the Project Ownership issue queue.

I already stated over there (#3094434: Seeking new maintainer for Matomo Analytics) that I disagree with summarily setting these (see related issues) to "Fixed" or "Closed (duplicate)" without a new maintainer being found.

The maintainers of the Project Ownership issue queue are tasked with making sure that projects stay supported as maintainers come and go. Obstructing that task seems pointless. Is it much better to try to resolve these issues in good faith and a co-operative spirit, instead of waiting for a critical security issue to pop-up (e.g. #3094409: Transfer ownership of admin_views) before doing anything.

I understand that this situation is a very frustrating one. While we can't discuss the details of the issue in question, I can provide some context that will hopefully lead to a path forward.

At the time that the user was suspended, we notified several involved parties, including members of the security team. We subsequently notified members of the webmaster's team and Drupal Association staff members. We informed them that the user's account had been suspended until such time as they chose to engage with us and work to address the concerns that have been raised (you can learn more about our process here). At this point we do not know when or if the user will be reinstated; that timeline is completely up to them.

Given that, we would recommend following the procedure outlined here for others to take over projects with unresponsive maintainers.

In general, it's our feeling that any project with a large number of users should have multiple maintainers, as there are a variety of reasons that a maintainer might need to step away (burnout, job changes, etc.) that have nothing to do with a CWG action.

I am not seeking information about this particular case. Nor am I asking for reinstatement of the individual.

However, I don't think this design is working – or that the design does not cover this particular use case.

Users of these projects have tried to use the Project Ownership issue queue to get new maintainers onboard. However, they are not allowed to do that because they (due to lack of time or ability) do not offer to take on the project themselves as outlined in the procedure. I think it should be permissible for a user to post an announcement that a new co-maintainer is sought despite the fact that the optimal procedure is this one.

That makes complete sense, and I would personally tend to agree that community members should be able to post an announcement if it looks like a project needs a co-maintainer, but are not able to take it on themselves.

However, the CWG cannot make any changes to the existing procedure as its charter expressly forbids the group from making technical policy decisions. Hence why I marked this issue as "works as designed", which is true as far as the CWG's jurisdiction is concerned.

AFAIK, the responsibility for abandoned projects is assigned to webmasters. When their assessment is that the project is abandoned or owner/maintainer is not responsive they have the responsibility to act accordingly. Which means acting like the owner because the owner is not responsive. Actions I have seen in the past include:
- changing owner
- assign maintainer
- assign co-maintainer
- adjust project page

Not aware of actions about seeking maintainers unless mentioned on the project page. This is the first time I hear about the possibility for owners to file an issue with Ownership project to express that they are looking for maintainers. Agree with that being for owners only and not open to any community member. Obviously, also available to webmasters that act for unresponsive owners.

Correct assessment of abandoned project is important. Even when mistakes are easily corrected by maintainers that are still active. Webmasters are expected to do due diligence. Loosing a maintainer is bad enough.

mmjvb,
any community member may express concern about the maintenance status of a project using the procedure for Reporting projects [as unsupported] without becoming a maintainer.

In the disputed issue (#3094854: Plan for dealing with projects that may be abandoned), I believe the webmasters (I am a webmaster) should assume good intent and work with the concerned community members to come up with a plan to resolve the problem, rather than slapping a bogus "Fixed" status on the issue and pretend that the reported problem does not exist.

gisle
No disagreement on either point. The disagreement is about the assessment in this situation. We each judge the situation differently. Respect is about accepting different feelings about a situation. Not enforcing your feelings on another. I respect both approaches, yours and kiamlaluna's, would probably have done it differently.

- Would have left the support issue closed and opened an issue in ownership for matamo looking for maintainers. More importantly changing the project status to no further development and asking for new owner/maintainers due to the only maintainer being blocked. Reach out to active participants to consider becoming owner/maintainer/co-maintainer. Reach out to mfb of Matomo Noscript.

- Would have changed the Link module as no further development

- Would have looked into formulating a policy to avoid this situation for the future, including other situations that cause the poor state the ecosystem is currently in. Probably reaching out to Community Liaison to escalate to DA. Clearly responsibilities are not properly assigned or not properly communicated. Possibly not properly executed. Haven't found documentation, may not be publicly available.

- Would have looked at the situation of the ecosystem concerning poor maintained or even abandoned projects. Take the active issue list of D8CPT, oldest first and assess their status, adjusting the project accordingly

Obviously, picking the things I like doing the most within my capabilities.

Just for the record, I am having this conversation out of respect for the current webmasters involved here. Wouldn't engage otherwise.