Re: Proposal for reform of the Debian membership process
> From my experience of NM (for which I kept a log[3]) and from looking at other
> people's comments I have identified a number of problems which may need
> addressing (in no particular order):
>
> - it takes too long
total time spent: 4hrs 29mins - that's not long.
Of course that time really depends on the candidate, for some people the
questions are very easy, others have problems with it. But imho spending
5 hours on the questions and tasks is not long at all. My experience was
that I finished all questions surprisingly fast, I had expected to
receive much more complicated questions. If you want you'll be DD until
the end of your life - do you really think that one month is a long time
to achieve this?
Please remember that AMs have other things to do than to read trough
your answers... I'm sure you were able to find enough Debian related
work to do while waiting for your AM to reply.
> - there is too much waiting in queues (AM assignment, DAM) when the
> applicant is not the bottleneck
That's the only place where the process takes too long. But being able
to wait and still work on packages for Debian shows if somebody really
wants to become DD. As I mentioned before - you're able to stay DD for
the rest of your life - are a few months really a problem? Do you want
to become DD to support Debian or to have a @debian.org address?
> - not everyone wants to be a full DD
> - don't need all the package management stuff
> - don't want the political side
> - etc
So you want to have DDs which are not allowed to vote in GRs because
they didn't have to read all parts of SC/....!? Nobody is forced to
discuss things, but voting is something every full project Member should
be allowed to do.
> - some people don't need any upload privs at all, but should still
> be recognised as project members.
There should be a difference to DDs, though. If you have to talk to
somebody with an @ubuntu.com address, you never know if you're talking
to some random fool or a serious person, you get an email addy there way
too easy. This should not happen in Debian.
> - reviewing just a small set of questions and work doesn't really
> give a good impression of the applicant
The best impression gives the way an applicant maintains his packages
and handles bugs, and how he communicates with other people. Imho the
questions should make sure that the applicant has a high enough basic
knowledge, and that is was the current set of questions does.
> - people apply when they aren't ready, and hold up people who are, and should
> be fast-tracked through
Probably adding the requirement to have two advocates could help to stop
non-ready people from applying. I could imagine that some DDs advocate
their friends, or people they don't know enough about, just to be nice.
> The two proposals at the moment try and solve some of these by creating
> different 'classes' of member,
The idea of putting people into 'classes' gives me a weird feeling. What
I like on Debian is that all DDs are equal, they have the same rights,
they can do the same things, and they're supposed to know at least the
same basic parts. That's something which should not be changed without a
good reason.
Cheers,
Bernd
--
Bernd Zeimetz
<bernd@bzed.de> <http://bzed.de/>
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