Re: How to Increase Contributions from Volunteers
On Mon, 2 Jan 2006 23:59:41 +0100, Moritz Muehlenhoff <jmm@inutil.org> said:
> Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>>> I suspect a similar system for Debian might increase visibility
>>> and commitment from a large set of users.
>>
>> Lacking quality control of the input, I am not at all convinced
>> that this is desirable. You know the "old adage of computer men",
>> GIGO.
> All the given examples (like secure-testing, d-i, debian-kernel and
> lots of other Alioth projects) have far better precautions against
> crap entering the archive than the traditional one-man-show
> approach. Peer review through an svn-commits mailing list is the
> best that can happen to a sub-project or package.
Given the choice between having to double check work done by
potentially inexperienced folks, and ensuring that the package is
done by people who can do some of the double checking on their own,
and make less errors, I'd go for the latter every time.
Debugging/proof reading other peoples work is always more
thankless, error prone, and often less thorough than following good
practices and minimizing errors the first time around. And that comes
with experience.
Now, if you had a bunch of actual peers we were talking about,
then sure, more eyes do make for lighter work. But that is not what
we are discussing. We are talking about letting almost anybody
commit, and hope that the experienced person will catch all the
mistakes. I am not convinced that the mistake shall not grow in the
end product in this case.
manoj
--
"Pull the wool over your own eyes!" J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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