On Tue, May 22, 2001 at 08:02:17PM +0100, Julian Gilbey wrote:
> If you have the time to sit down and do the jobs you've just listed,
> fantastic, please do it [...]
Well, I already have my hands full with release trivia, but there are
definitely some things I can do. My concern has been that the main thing
I have worked on (the must/should change) has been partially undone
essentially behind my back (the couple of shoulds that mysteriously
changed to musts); accompanied with the feeling that policy is more
focussed on (what I consider) trivia rather than useful stuff, that's
not particularly motivating.
> I agree with all of the above thoughts, but more volunteers are needed
> to help them get done quickly.
Well, considering Manoj's proposal for this way of handling policy
presumed four to six policy editors (or maybe more), and we've only got
two, that sounds pretty likely. I wouldn't bet on you being able to get
another couple of people willing to be full on editors (least of all
after I've been flaming y'all on and off for the past couple of months)
but maybe we can get a few people doing random things to clean up policy.
What're the most important things that need to be done? AFAICS:
* Fix up any outright errors in policy (where it tells you to
do something you just plain shouldn't; or where it tells you
one thing in one place and the opposite somewhere else)
* Fix the musts and shoulds (ie change musts that should be
shoulds to shoulds and shoulds that should be musts to musts),
so -qa can get a handle on what they're doing
* Go through all the old proposals and either:
+ close the report because there's not been any consensus
+ write a patch and get seconds for the idea
+ contact whoever should be implementing something and see
what's going on
* Reword policy so it's more accessible (ie, merge/rearrange
sections, change the must/should split to something else)
The first two are important for -qa to have some common reference when
doing bugsquashes and such during the freeze [0]. The third is probably
somewhat important for woody (depending on the particular report) but
doesn't need to be completely finished. The fourth can probably wait as
long as it needs too; but that would mean the first three shouldn't be
delayed until the fourth is finished.
Well?
Does that make sense? Is anyone else going to have time to do some of
this stuff?
Cheers,
aj
[0] During potato's freeze, I spent a *lot* of time recategorizing bug
reports since there was no real reference except in my head. So far,
with a reference (ie policy's musts) that's written down (even though
it's somewhat buggy) I haven't had to do this anywhere near as much.
(Which seems due to either submitters reading the reference and
getting it right first time, or maintainers/qa reading the reference
and being able to fix it themselves)
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``_Any_ increase in interface difficulty, in exchange for a benefit you
do not understand, cannot perceive, or don't care about, is too much.''
-- John S. Novak, III (The Humblest Man on the Net)
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