That thread has been ported to my attention, I read it carefuly. I want to avoid to answer to everybody (it would'nt be very useful anyway), and here are the remarks I'd like to do. First of all, I'm a relatively new DD, since my account was created on 2005-05-18 [1]. I'll start with my experience of the NM queue (those who are bored can jump directly to my conclusions): == my experience of the NM queue == My application started when I was advocated on 2004-07-19. I had to wait 2 monthes to have an AM (hi Marc !) which was quite a short time, time that tends to go nearer to 6 monthes theses days. That looked like an eternity to me. AM mails took me 36 hours top. Then I needed 5 monthes to be approved by the DAM. And (how many times I blamed myself for that) inbetween, one of my gpg subkeys expired, and I stupidely forgot to update the key on public keryrings. that stupididty costed me another **3** monthes of delay (whereas it took me 10 minutes to fix the problem !!!) to have my account created. those 8 monthes to have my account created looked like hell: I had to depend on my sponsor for every single package I had. I'm also a member of the kde team, that is now full of DD's, but at the time there was only a couple of them, and only one really reliable. so during 8 monthes I've been depending on others to upload packages. Of course I still could work on my packages, answer to bug reports, … but that state is highly frustrating. Especially on packages where your sponsor sometimes answer in more than a month to your mails. == my conclusions/suggestions about the NM queue == first some general thoughts: the whole NM process is very frustrating as a candidate, because its slow, administrative, … we should do some efforts about that. Especially, the most negative point of NM is that it's not a FIFO, and that is MORE than painful for the applicant. the NM process is *not* a school, meaning that it does not learn you how to package, though it allow the NM's to learn things they don't already know. E.g. it forces you to answer on questions about perl packaging or other things that I'll certainly never do, but that is good for the overall culture. So I'd say NM queue is a school for already educated candidates. NM is very time consuming for the people who deal with applicants, so we should do efforts to only "submit" candidates that are good, and we should have an official policy, that is readable enough from the outside, on how we deal each step of the application. my (or not only mine, but I like them) ideas about that: 1) NM has to become a FIFO at each step: AM assigning, DAM verification, ... because this is *predictable*. If someone does not deserves to have an AM assigned or asks for time (because he takes a trip over the world, or any other reason), those have to be put in a side queue, or have a "frozen" attribute, that makes the time they have spent in a particular queue be stopped (and of course, queues have to be sorted by time passed in that queue). That looks stupid, but for the guy who is there since 4 or 5 monthes, I can assure you it's not. I spent a whole month on the last damn line of the « Applicants waiting for Front Desk approval » step on [2]. And it was really a pain to see the queue move forward, and see people that were in that step since less time that I was go through. That contributes to the bad reputation of NM queue a **LOT**. 2) we should ask NM's to show proofs of their work *before* having an AM. I've heard many people speak of asking an applicant to be able to show work they have done in debian. Packaging, work in a team, whatever. E.g. I've heard proposals where applicant would be asked to write a wiki page, with *links* that show their work (bugs sorting, RC bug fixes, uploads, works with a sponsor, ...) with links to the relevant BTS/PTS/Mail-lists posts/... entries. And a candidate that has not enough to show HAS TO BE PUT ON HOLD. If the rule is clear, nobody will complain. 3) The full process is heavy for AM too. and afaict, if an AM has no more time, or wants to step back, the NM he deal with can be slowed down a LOT. ==> I'd suggest that the whole NM process could use a special email address, on @newmaint.debian.org for example, that put the mail into a mbox that any AM can have access to. So that if a NM complains about his AM beeing absent or too slow, everybody can *look* at it, and know if the complain is legitimate. this also easy the validating task more incremental, as each NM could be followed by many persons. E.g. it would makes really sense to have some read-only (viewable only by persons that are involved with newmaint work) imap/nntp/... accounts, so that anybody could check them when they have time, and eventually report problems even before the DAM/FD has to review those applications. 4) thanks to 3, we could also involve sponsors and DD that work regulary with some given NM to his NM-mailbox. If a DD sponsors someone, given the time and involvment it represents (I sponsor 3 persons atm, so I know what I'm speaking of), it does not looks that stupid to try to involve those in the application of their pupil. I'm not sure on what they could do, but I'm confident someone more used to the NM process could have brilliant ideas about that. 5) I read Pascal Hakim's mail about what beeing DD means with big interest. a short (~50-60 lines) mail should be sent to any applicant, explaining that beeing a DD is a big responsability, and that the NM queue is not about giving a reward, but about checking that the applicant can handle that responsability well. So that applicants that are too weak on some points can be sent back to that text, and can't pretend they weren't informed in the first place. is that beeing elitist ? certainly. But I don't see any problems in beeing elitist. If the process is readable, that the rules are clear enough, and the results predictable, then nobody can honnestly contest anything very long. 6) we should NEVER put any restrictions on time of any sorts. the point 1) sets the rules: either you are the one that spent the most time in that step, and you are the next to be processed, and thanks to the wonderful work of FD, you know that will happen. either you don't qualify, and you will be put on hold (with an explanation) or freezed (on your own request). I'd also suggest that candidates that are in "freeze" or on "hold" at any stage could unfreeze/unhold themselves alone, that should put them back in the queue where they belong (remember, one stage, sorted by ascending time you spent in that stage, hold/freeze time substracted). and if you abuse that (e.g. you un-hold yourself without improving/solving the reason you were put on hold) that could be a reason for expulsion from the NM queue, or putting back at the stage 0 or ... that's in fact a scheduling algorithm. It as a fairness property that is vital for the sanity of the queue. Sorry for the very long mail. PS: I'd be really interested to work as an AM, and I've not found on nm.d.o what I have to do to apply for that... [1] https://nm.debian.org/nmstatus.php?email=pierre.habouzit@m4x.org [2] https://nm.debian.org/nmlist.php -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O madcoder@debian.org OOO http://www.madism.org
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