Not wanting to start yet another thread, but I not knowing where to tack it on... How about moving from the one-step application (one is non-dd or dd) two a two stage process: introduce the 'Debian Contributor' brand with very easy entry level, and only DC's (older than a month or something like that - fast-forwarding of course possible when there's a reason) would qualify to apply for maintainership. How would that work: - every DD, or perhaps any two DDs, can name new DCs - there is an DC database, where DCs can maintain their track history what they have done in Debian (linkls to mailing list archive & bug reports). Important here: DCs have to maintain this themselves. The two main purposes are that (1) once the DC wants to become DD, the people in the NM process can easily see what the person has done in Debian so far[1]. (2) when a DD feels that there are some tasks to do / searches a co-maintainer / whatever he can spam the DCs - they are, after all, people specifically looking for more work ;-) Oh yes, and (3) since a DC has already proved his ability to contribute to Debian in a meaningful way, maybe maintainers will be less prone to just ignore contributions (from that thread I feel that *is* a problem. But I also see that opinions differ on this.) - DC status automatically expires when somebody doesn't add to his DCDB entry for more than a year (or whatever). This is the same as with rejected applications: the candidate can reapply when he starts to contribute again. - the problem of people hanging on to their DC status by adding nonsense entries to the db just so it doesn't expire shouldn't be grave: when looking at these DB entries, anybody should be able to see quite quickly that this DC didn't really contribute. DC status is, of course, a vanity thing, too, but I guess with not giving out mail addresses, homepage (beyond the DCDB entry) and accounts, it's usefulnes for bragging about it is somewhat limited. How would this change things? Vanity applications would probably be stopped at the DC stage already, so the people in the NM process don't take that load. OTOH the apparent problem at the DAM stage wouldn't get away. Just my €.02 on a hot Friday evening... -- vbi [1] obviously, the information needs to be taken with a grain of salt since each DC maintains his db entries himself (or her, of course). -- featured product: GNU Privacy Guard - http://gnupg.org
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