Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> wrote on 27/08/2022 at 20:24:55+0200: > [[PGP Signed Part:No public key for 695B7AE4BF066240 created at 2022-08-27T20:24:55+0200 using RSA]] > Hello, > > On Sat 27 Aug 2022 at 04:22PM +02, Vincent Bernat wrote: > >> >> On 2022-08-27 15:53, M. Zhou wrote: >> >>> That's why I still hope ftp team to recruit more people. This is >>> a very direct and constructive way to speed up everything. >>> More volunteers = higher bandwidth. >>> Recruiting more people doesn't seem to have a serious disadvantage. >> >> It does not seem to work. Either people don't want to do that, either the FTP >> team is too picky on the candidates. > > Some combination of both, but I don't think I'm suffering from bias if I > say that it's at least 80% the former. Very few people who say they'd > like to be trained confirm they'd still like to once they've had a look > at the docs for trainees, and after that, hardly any do enough trainee > reviews for the other team members to feel confident they can let them > at it on their own. > > I am the only trainee who made it through in recent years and that's > because I was highly systematic about doing lots of reviews each month. > > There are some technical improvements that would be possible. For > example, feedback to trainees is entirely done via IRC; I would much > prefer us to be doing that by e-mail. But other team members disagree > with me, I think, and I do recognise I like e-mail more than most people > do. There are ways the tools could be better. > > In general, however, existing team members, including myself, are pretty > sceptical that technical improvements would be worth the time it would > take to implement them effectively. dak as a whole is less well > maintained than other core Debian software, but the NEW queue parts are > pretty good! > > So, the bulk of the problem boils down to project members not being > interested in doing the work. I certainly understand this. It feels > just like grading student essays. Everyone finds that highly draining > at first, until you develop a sort of detachment from the activity, > where your mind is going through the motions of the activity sort of > like how your hands can be going through the motions of something like > food preparation for a familiar dish -- you have to learn that you won't > make worse judgements if you become detached in this way, just like how > you won't prepare a worse version of the dish if you do it in the > detached way. Then I just applied what I'd learned from grading to the > NEW queue, and then it's pretty fun and even relaxing when you're not in > a frame of mind to do harder thinking. But like I said, most people > don't want to do any of this, and of course being a trainee is *not* > like that. > > And then recruitment is less efficient -- not enough feedback on trainee > reviews -- because there aren't enough team members. The usual > compounding effect. Hi, I have been a trainee at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020. What drove me away is that it was taking some bandwith because I was not used to the exercise (and TBH I kind of dislike MC which is needed a lot for the job), and I got no feedback on my reviews. Not that did plenty of them, but I did quite some. After something like 3 to 4 months I went to try being useful (I honestly felt useless as I got no feedback) somewhere else (MIA/NM FrontDesk Team). The job is not really a pleasure, it's true, but the team *needs* to find a way to be more reactive when trainees try to do it, otherwise they lose interest. My 2 cents. -- PEB
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