On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 12:44:08PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: [snip] > The DAMs are not, in my opinion, entitled to keep their own counsel > about why they refuse to approve a new-maintainer applicant who has > passed all the other checks, by "losing them in the system" for several > months. At the very least, the applicant's AM should be informed of > this, and the applicant's status should be placed "on hold". In most > cases, I doubt extreme discretion is warranted, and the reason for the > applicant being placed on hold should be publicly viewable at > nm.debian.org. [snip] Seconded. I understand the DAMs may be busy, waiting for verification, suspicious, or whatever; but this information *should* be public. I don't think people are so much whining about having to wait; I think the problem is that people don't know *why* they are waiting. If the DAMs have concerns, etc., they should at least indicate so instead of keeping quiet. Even a note somewhere on nm.debian.org saying "On hold, DAM is busy" is better than just quietly letting the application sit without a reason. It's one thing to tell an applicant, e.g., "you're on hold because I need to verify your credentials", or "your application appears to need special processing which I'll get round to later", than to effectively ignore the application. And I agree that if the DAMs have any concerns about any application, they should make it public, or at least semi-public, either by posting to -private or -newmaint or some other dedicated forum, optionally accessible only to developers. Understandably, there may be legitimate concerns, but just as we don't withhold information on security problems and potential security with Debian, the DAMs shouldn't withhold information about why an application is stalling. Again, I don't see the problem as people waiting for approval; I think the real problem is that people don't know *why* they are waiting. I believe applicants have a right to know why their application is stalling. Just my $0.02. T -- Fact is stranger than fiction.
Attachment:
pgp1jHcLwSMNh.pgp
Description: PGP signature