Re: [Debconf-discuss] suggestion to add visa details needed in the web-form itself
> On 7 Dec 2016, at 20:19, shirish शिरीष <shirishag75@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 07/12/2016, Giacomo Catenazzi <cate@cateee.net> wrote:
>> Hello Shirish
>>
>
> Hello Cate,
>
> <snipped>
>
>>
>> I’m not sure it will work.
>>
>> 1-
>>
>> visa@ requires some mail exchange to establish the purpose of visa: There
>> are many “random” requests from user who have absolutely no idea what it is
>> Debian or Free Software. Such users check conference calendars and send
>> request of invitation to all of them.
>
> Maybe I'm mis-understanding what you are saying. Are you saying that
> "random" people send requests straight to visa@d.o. or are you saying
> that people register without knowing or having a stake in how/what
> happens to free software .
There is usual spam, but I mean people who are completely unrelated to Debian, they don’t know what it is Debian, but they want just the invitation, to get abroad.
> If you are talking about the latter i.e. "random registrations" , that
> is completely understandable and believable as well.
>
> I don't think that part can be automated in any way.
>
> All and any tricky questions could be easily defeated by a good
> hacker/slacker who is able to frame good search-engine queries and get
> away with it
>
> Deserving people/candidates who might not have the best web skills but
> have the passion may be left behind, so current methods seem the only
> way.
Yes, but if we implement the fields you requested, then visa team should contact all people who request the visa.
As I wrote in previous mail, for special needs we have difficulties to have reply from people, which mean we never know how e.g. many wheelchair rooms we need, until very end.
Note: visa team usually lack of man power (and usually need some local person to sign invitation), so
the problem will be more important.
OTOH if visa team needs some automation, we can easy provide them.
>
>> Additionally, on past we started the process in the web-interface and
>> continued via email (for special needs, etc.), but it has show that it
>> doesn’t work and it cause too much extra work on organisation side. People
>> tend not to reply to emails, or just ignoring us. So we must let a lot of
>> time before to close the “ticket”.
>
> Actually I have been partly at fault
I’m not blaming you (and I’m not in visa, so I don’t know), but in registration this is a problem.
Maybe it is interesting to hear about bursaries. They do an hybrid way (both via web-form and via email), so possibly they found a efficient way to do the work.
>>
>
>> Note: now we don’t have anymore the problem: although the visa procedure is
>> different every year (because of different country laws), now it will not
>> add debconf-specific special fields. (but we were not so good either on
>> other fields, unfortunately).
>
> Could you be more specific by what you meant above ?
>
I think in past there were a similar request, but because fields were variable, but developers (penta and summit) wanted to have a generic registration tools, working without much effort for many different DebConf. [which proved an impossible requirement, BTW]
ciao
cate
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