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Re: Various things



Hello

On Fri, Jul 29, 2005 at 10:38:54PM -0300, Margarita Manterola wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> >> I think it's mainly people who know, or can search and then produce
> >> the answers, but feel that they are wasting their time on that.
> 
> > If you do not know the answer it will of course take so much time to
> > learn first.
> 
> Well, in my case I spent more time writing down the messages that actually
> researching and learning.  And that was the point of my previous message: when
> a test becomes a test on how well you do a write-up, on how nicely you can
> rephrase something that is already online, it becomes a tedius essay instead of
> a good test.

Well that is your opinion.

> >> Completing the 4 templates takes many many hours, hours that could be
> >> spent bugfixing, packaging, writing code, etc.
> 
> > Yes, ANY checks will take time from other things.
> 
> Well, yes of course, but if instead of explaining how the BTS works you
> actually go and fix some bugs, you are both fulfilling the test and fixing bugs
> at the same time.

The BTS quiestions are normally something that many that I have been an
AM for have failed on. Just fixing a bug do not say enough.

> >> In my case, my P&P questions came in the middle of a BSP, I promptly
> >> stopped fixing bugs to answer these questions.  In the end, I stole
> >> something like 12 hours of the BSP to answer P&P questions...  Isn't
> >> that like a big big waste?
> 
> > No it is not. If you had known the answers you had answerd this mail in
> > less than say 30 minutes. As you did not (or was unsure enough to check)
> > you had to learn. Do not take this personally. Maybe you knew but wanted
> > to double-check. It is fully acceptable but will of course take some time.
> 
> Know the answers?  Let's have a look at a couple of questions.
> 
> In the first P&P template:
> 
> 5. At http://people.debian.org/~joerg/bad.licenses.tar.bz2 you can
>     find a tarball of bad licenses. Please compare the graphviz and three
>     other (your choice) licenses with the first nine points of the DFSG
>     and show what changes would be needed to make them DFSG-free.
>     There's no need to compare word for word (which would be impossible
>     for some licenses anyway), but you should spot the biggest mistakes.
> 
> This forces the person in NM to write a VERY long essay on the differences of
> the licences, how they relate to the DFSG, their bugs, etc.  This is no easy
> writing, you can't "know the answer", since you have to _compose_ whatever you
> are going to write. I mean, even if you are a frequent poster of debian-legal,
> you'd still need to take some time to read the licences that you are going to
> speak about and then write your opinions about them.

Arn't you contradicting yourself now?

Above you stated that you just have to do some rephrazing of things
already available in some other form. Now you say that you actually have
to use your mind to compare something that you could not just
copy and rephraze.

I think this is an excellent question.

And no you do not have to write a VERY long essay on this. A paragraph
of a couple of sentences can probably summary up all the main problems
in the license.

I think this license question could be better though. Asking just to ask if
this license is ok or not and why.

> In the second template, you first have:
> 
>  2. Please tell me 3 different methods to close a bug in the BTS, the
>     difference between them, and when to use which method.
> 
> Which is fine, even if it's a bit tedious.  And then, near the end:

This is where most people fail at the beginning.

> 24. Again, something BTS related: Consider you have a package, with a
>     set of open bugs. Some of them fixed by the new upstream version
>     (which you are about to upload), some of them aren't really bugs, or
>     are not relevant anymore (because they were fixed ages ago, for
>     example). How would you handle them?
> 
> Which is almost repeating the answer in 2, but rephrasing to fit 
> this question.  Which is really bothering.

AM:s are allowed to use parts of the templates if they want.

> Also, if you count both P&P1 and P&P2 (I'm not counting the T&S templates), you
> have around 40 questions.  There's no way you could answer them in half an
> hour.  All questions take time, no matter how perfectly you know the answers.
> It takes time to phrase the answer, it takes time to check for typos, it takes
> time to recheck the whole mail once it's finished.
> 
> Finally, just as a sample, of how much my p&p mails weight:
> 
> $ cat pyp1 pyp2 | grep -v '>' | wc
>  683    5184   30033
> 
> This is to say, while writing my P&P messages, I wrote 30kb of information.
> Would you agree that it's sort of difficult to produce this much _useful_ 
> information in half an hour?

You do not have to write that much to fulfil the questions. Ok, maybe half
an hour was a bit too little time but it do not take much more.

> > I can agree on this that it is more interesting to "do do actual things"
> > but it is very important that all Debian developers know the basic
> > policy and procedures. What would happen if we accept people after
> > making some checks that the person can patch packages or write manual
> > pages without checking if they know anything about Debian policy or
> > what the procedures are?
> 
> No one is saying that we should start accepting anybody that wants to enter
> into Debian.  What we are saying is that actually _doing_ some of the stuff
> that is asked about in the NM templates might be better, both for the Applicant
> and for Debian as a whole.

We currently require both _doing_ stuff and _theory_ part as of
the questions. And Debian work can sometime be very tedious.

You do not need a Debian account to parcipiate in bug squasing parties
or give solutions to problems. You only need it for actual uploads.

But you all have a point and that is that the templates can
be made better. Some questions may not be perfectly relevant, others
are wrong (because of changes in the process) etc. But many of them
are good.

Regards,

// Ola

> -- 
>  Bezos,     (o.
>      Marga. (/)_



-- 
 --------------------- Ola Lundqvist ---------------------------
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