Re: New contributor experience
Quoting Marc Haber (2025-06-04 17:44:52)
> On Wed, Jun 04, 2025 at 08:31:09AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> >The most common (not the only) reason why packages file an RFH bug, in my
> >experience, is that they are overwhelmed and unable to keep up with the
> >packaging, which unfortunately is the same state that will lead them to
> >not responed to MRs. Unfortunately, often the ideal response to an RFH bug
> >is for an experienced Debian maintainer who wouldn't require much
> >assistance to offer to be co-maintainer directly. It's hard for a newcomer
> >to offer that type of help, through absolutely no fault of the newcomer.
> >
> >Often RFH bugs are not filed until the situation is already dire and the
> >existing maintainers may not be able to mentor newcomers or perform a
> >clean handoff to anyone other than an experienced Debian developer. This
> >is very much not ideal, and I wish this were not the case, but I suspect
> >that means that, at the moment, RFH is more useful as a flag for
> >experienced developers, and newcomers will find it easier to contribute to
> >packages that, paradoxically, are not tagged as needing help.
>
> Amen to that. Maybe we should not direct newcomers to wnpp but instead
> to a list of wishlist bugs tagged help (for newbies), and optionally to
> a list of RC bugs tagged help (with the warning "not for the faint of
> the heart").
I suggest to instead more narrowly guide them towards *recent* *RFP*
bugreports rather than WNPP bugreports in general.
It will not surprise me if some newcomers find recent RFP bugreports a
total waste of their time, but I know from experience that some do not.
- Jonas
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