Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006
Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk>
> On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 16:35:38 +0100 MJ Ray wrote:
> > Of your last 20 recorded uses of the word "Maintainer" on
> > debian lists before this thread that I found, you use it once
> > in another meaning (webmaster) and that was uncapitalised.
>
> Which makes "Maintainer" unsuitble for translation maintainers how,
> exactly?
If 95% of the time, people (including you, as described) use
Maintainer to mean package maintainer, then people will not
read Maintainer and think "...or translator or tech writer..."
in this context. Many people (including me) would not even
think of using Maintainer to refer to a translator.
Yes, you can argue that people are buggy, but what else is
this language for, if not to communicate well with people?
> > What are the contributors doing if not helping to maintain
> > the package, in your opinion?
>
> I do not talk about "contributors", but several different kinds of
> "maintainers".
You did write about contributors.
> What eg. Translation Maintainers are doing besides helping maintain
> some package is maintaining _consistency_ across packages, and across
> pseudo-packages like our website.
Isn't it easier and more common to call them translators, not
Translation Maintainers?
> > In the debian context, I think Maintainer is commonly
> > understood as a package maintainer. We have a less confusing
> > word for a developer ("Developer"), so why not use it?
>
> They are both fine words. Why _avoid_ one of them for some uses,
> only due to them being less common?
That's not the reason. Nice strawman, though.
We should avoid it because it apparently communicates the
wrong thing to many people in this context. There seem to be
willing developers who support debian's aims that we could
attract more easily if we address this bug.
Clear?
--
MJR/slef
Laux nur mia opinio: vidu http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Bv sekvu http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct
Reply to: