On Sun, Feb 20, 2005 at 06:21:16PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 19, 2005 at 01:20:09PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>
> > In the short term, the easiest way to deal with this is probably to have
> > somebody else mediate information flow. The DPL is an obvious choice,
> > but a more realistic choice may be to have people working with
> > individual teams and passing information back and forth. Separating the
> > people doing the job from the people providing updates removes the
> > direct criticism flow.
>
> Sure, why not? Let's give it a try. I am not an ftpmaster, but through
> personal conversations I know that:
>
> - most processing of the NEW queue has of late been done by a single
> ftpmaster, who has not been actively doing NEW processing this year. I
> don't know the reason, and haven't asked; I assume that he has succumbed to
> real-world time constraints, and that the other ftpmasters are aware of
> this.
>
> - another ftpmaster has been moving house this month, with much of the usual
> network-related pain and anguish that goes with it.
>
> - the ftpmasters are generally aware that there is a manpower problem here,
> as some consideration has been given to a candidate for augmenting the
> existing team. I don't know if there is currently a timeline for confirming
> him as an ftpmaster, or what steps lie between now and final approval, but
> the ftpmasters have certainly not been sitting idly by waiting to be flamed
> before taking action.
>
> So, does this quench the flames, or fan them?
[ I'm really, really trying not to flame in the following, but rather, ]
[ to reply with useful discussion. If it's still being too much, please ]
[ accept my apologies and smack me on the head, publically or privately ]
[ as you see fit. ]
My main reaction would be: OK, steps are in process to get additional
manpower; that's good. I'm vaguely worried that that still leaves us with
only 1 person doing NEW queue, which means s/he is subject to sudden loss.
Would people be willing to review the proposals that just got re-stated
here in the past day or so (vis, multiple signatures for NEW packages, or a
NEW queue team without full ftpmaster access but handling the majority of
the grunt work) and consider whether they are worth implementing, and if
so, implement one or both?
I can certainly understand the situation where someone might be willing to
do the scriptwork and other such duties of an ftpmaster, excepting the NEW
queue, since the tasks are very different (and are even, in some cases,
perhaps better suited to different personality types). It seems like one
reasonable answer might be to split things so that 'needs to be willing
to deal with the obnoxious bits of NEW queue' and 'needs access to the
full account set and to deal with scripting and <etc>' are no longer the
same thing (especially since it sounds like, in practice, this split is
already in existance), which is why I think the NEW queue (pre-filter?)
team is perhaps a solution more likely to be useful than just requiring two
developers to sign off on something that's still crap, rather than just
one.
--
Joel Aelwyn <fenton@debian.org> ,''`.
: :' :
`. `'
`-
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