Re: Four days
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On 2010-10-03 13:16, Michael Tautschnig wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>> Hey everyone,
>>
>> Niels Thykier and I were talking on #debian-mentors. I was saying
>> that I find the debian-mentors list kind of lonely and impersonal --
>> it's mostly RFSs, and so many emails don't even get an answer.
>>
>> How depressing!
>>
>
> While I can understand your feelings, I still have several questions and
> somewhat contradictory remarks. Obviously I can only speak for myself.
>
> - Briefly looking at http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2010/09/
> it seems that the number of emails not being responded to by anyone is not
> that high. Furthermore it seems there's a lot more to this list than just RFS.
> And I found only a single non-RFS email that wasn't responded to.
Manually counting all the unanswered emails to d-mentors for 2010-09 I get:
RFS QA: 1
RFS: 34
RFS NMU: 1
non-RFS: 1
or 37 unanswered emails. This includes duplicates like "2nd"/"3rd" ping.
When I counted I assumed any email that had received a reply was
answered satisfactory, btw.
Personally I would like to see that 37 drop closer to 0.
> - As a mentor, as far as RFS are concerned, I can only work on packages where I
> have some proper background. That is, I should be using those packages or work
> on related packages.
I agree that we cannot expect that any DD can sponsor any given package
dumped on d-mentor. But if we see an RFS remain unanswered we can have a
look at it and try to associate the package with the relevant teams or
keywords (e.g. as you did with vavoom -> contact games team).
> - As a mentor, I cannot look at each and every RFS, I'll have to be able to spot
> interesting packages quickly. I therefore ignore all RFS with package names
> where I cannot deduce that they could be relevant for me. Hint: it might be
> useful to add the short description of the main binary package to the subject
> (I have no idea what, e.g., "vavoom" is about).
Perhaps we can extend mentor's RFS template to recommend such a
practise? And even in the case where mentees do not do it (good enough
to easily "sort" the package) we can (as explained above) spend the
10-20 minutes to write review the email + d/control file and come with a
suggestion for whom to contact or simply reply with a "this package is
this and that" so other DDs can easier find it.
> - Although debian-mentors is a default destination for RFS, it would probably
> better to contact one of the teams that works on related packages. Again, the
> vavoom package (I now looked at the RFS): Why wasn't
> pkg-games-devel@lists.a.d.o contacted?
>
Agreed; it would be nice if we could have mentors.d.n recommend this
(particularly if it could come with educated guesses based on the source
package).
>> So I was thinking it would be nice if every email thread got a
>> public reply within four days. That's a goal that Niels and I have
>> set, and we hope maybe some of you help too. Even if we reply, "Eek,
>> I'm swamped. Try again later," I figure that is nicer than hearing
>> nothing back.
>>
>
> Would you mind to elaborate on the expected benefit of such a step? *Whom*
> would you expect to be doing such replies? Is that more than an "ACK, your
> message made it to the list" (you can check that by looking at the list archives
> as well)? I think you are only curing some symptoms, but fail to tackle the
> underlying root cause (some of which might be the points I mentioned above).
>
Personally I would hope any mentor and possibly also non-DDs with
experience could help with this. Again they do not have to sponsor ever
RFS they reply to, either promote its "keywords" or (if possible)
redirect it to a team that handles the particular type of packages.
>> In general, I encourage mentees and mentors to consider 4 days the
>> timeout on your debian-mentors conversations. So if you email your
>> usual sponsor and don't hear an answer within 4 days, try once more.
>
> I'm not sure how mentees usually handle the situation where a package has
> already been sponsored once. I'd expect mentors to be ready to handle further
> uploads, and IMHO such RFS shouldn't even pop up on the list. After a few
> rounds, people should be both ready and willing to apply for Debian-Maintainer
> status.
>
In my case I have been lucky; my sponsors always said "Feel free to send
your next RFS for this package to me directly" for my
non-team-maintained packages.
>> After another four days, email the list asking for a sponsor
>> (explaining that you have a normal sponsor).
>>
>
> Should the mentor indeed be non-responsive, this should be *clearly* indicated
> in the subject of an RFS email to debian-mentors.
>
True. If you see a RFS age away, where the mentee has forgotten to write
this in the subject and you would not sponsor it yourself (e.g. because
it is outside your domain), you could simply follow up with a "Usual
sponsor is VAC/unresponsive/$something" (provided that the mail itself
contains this information).
>> I'm hoping to take some of the uncertainty out of the process. What
>> do you guys think?
>>
>> And what other cultural improvements can we make to debian-mentors?
>> What else can we do to make this place supportive and helpful for
>> the progress of y'all mentees into sparkly Debian contributors and
>> developers?
>>
>
> IMHO one of the most important steps would be for mentees to look for
> appropriate teams already working on similar packages. It would actually be
> beneficial if people first subscribed to their respective lists to see what's
> going on there and then try to get in touch with them about a new package.
>
> Hope this helps (mentees and mentors alike),
> Michael
>
I very much agree with this one; though the question is how do we
promote this better to mentees (particularly first time mentees)? One
would be adding it to the mentors.d.n RFS template, but can you think of
other things?
I /think/ the "New Maintainers Guide" recently was updated to promote
teams as well, but I could be wrong.
~Niels
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