Re: Done

[Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>]

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:26:47 +0200, Marek Habersack <grendel@debian.org> said: 

> On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 06:42:53AM +0200, Thomas Hood scribbled:
>> On Thu, 2003-09-11 at 05:17, Marek Habersack wrote:
>> > On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 09:00:02PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava
>> > scribbled: [snip]
>> > >  Hell no. When you signed up to maintain packages, you signed
>> > >  up to respond when people come and point out flaws in the
>> > >  package. You may not agree with every bug, but the least you
>> > >  can do is investigate, and if a certain modicum of effort
>> > >  makes things better for the person who cared enough to file
>> > >  the bug, you do indeed improve the package.
>> >
>> > See, this is something I don't understand in your reasoning. This
>> > is a community, right? Isn't a community a kind of a fellowship
>> > where people are supposed to help each other? Walking around and
>> > pointing fingers at other's mistakes without suggesting any
>> > solution is a waste of time, is in no way helpful.
>>
>> I disagree.  If someone takes the trouble to point out a
>> shortcoming in one of your packages then you should thank him for
>> the trouble and not complain that he or she didn't do even more.
> But _what_ is the shortcoming? As Joey said before and I repeated
> after, maintaiers can be genuinely convinced that the description is
> correct - as they know the package in and out. And sole saying "this
> is wrong" helps nothing, since they only know that somebody doesn't
> understand something.  But what is the something? What do they fail
> to understand?


	The maintainers ought to be clued enough to realize that they
 do know the package well, and should be able to project some of the
 things the user may want to know.

	And this is not about a bad or opaque description: this is
 about expanding a description up from a single line. As Matt pointed
 out, *ANYONE* can do it in a short time; surely the maintainer ought
 to be able to do this in their sleep.

>> This talk of "pointing fingers" makes it sound to me as if you are
>> taking these bug reports too personally.  I know from experience,

> No. Let me explain. "Pointing fingers" is saying "this is wrong, my
> friend."  without providing an explanation. The bug reports, IMO,
> fulfilled only part of their purpose - they stated something was
> wrong, that's about 25% along the way to fixing the problem.

	They stated exactly what was wrong -- thet the descriptions
 were not long enough to merit being called long, and the chances were
 that novice users would not get enough data.

	If the script was mistaken (and in 99% of the cases it was
 not), you could just close the bug.

	How can you argue that the bug filing was wrong when it made
 you fix 18 packages and thus improve Debian?

	manoj

-- 
I'm sorry if the correct way of doing things offends you.
Manoj Srivastava   <srivasta@debian.org>  <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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