Re: Delegations
On 05/05/13 at 17:21 +0200, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sun May 05, 2013 at 04:09:19 +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> > Additionally, I need to do the bits.d.o delegation, and check the status
> > on a possible addition to policy editors.
>
> Can you explain to me why this needs a delegation?
(on IRC, Martin clarified that his question was more generally about
delegations for tasks that do not strictly require a delegation)
I think that there are four reasons for that:
0) generally, assuming that people will magically show up and do the
work does not work very well. It's easier when you have someone clearly
in charge. (similarly to what we do with Maintainer: / Uploaders:
fields)
1) it facilitates the monitoring of teams manpower
* it is crucial that some teams stay healthy
* ensuring that teams stay healthy is generally considered a DPL task.
I think that the logic behind that is that unhealthy teams usually
require more mediation, so it makes sense to take a proactive
approach.
* one aspect of ensuring that teams stay healthy is monitoring their
manpower.
* for that, one need to know who is active.
* maintaining lists of delegates is a good way of tracking who is active
2) not everybody has a high self-confidence, and having an official "job
assignment" makes it easier to speak on behalf of the project (case of
press and bits.d.o delegations), manage how other developers' packages
appear in Debian (ftpmasters), etc.
3) the delegations describe what the delegation is about. clarifying the
role and the limits of the role (what's not included) is also useful.
I agree that none of those reasons strictly justify delegations, and
that we could have another procedure (not backed by the constitution) to
handle such "job assignments". But delegations are a quite lightweight
process, so I don't think there's much to gain here.
Also, I'd like to clarify that in the general case (teams functionning
normally, which AFAIK is currently the case for all our teams), I do not
plan to make any delegation without first consulting the relevant team
and making sure that the consensus inside the team is that this
delegation is a good thing.
Lucas
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