Re: possibly exhausted ftp-masters (Re: Do we still value contributions?
On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 04:05:20AM +0000, Mo Zhou wrote:
> However, accelerating the recruitment process of ftp team looks quite
> difficult to all participants, including the ftp-masters and the trainees:
>
> ftp-master:
> * time and energy is limited. doesn't have enough resource to provide
> too much feedbacks to the trainee
> * wants to make sure every new member will be qualified enough to take
> this important role.
>
> trainee:
> * limited time and energy. generally not able to produce a large amount
> of reviews to the NEW packages in a short period of time
> * lacks feed back. they don't know how are they actually doing in
> reviewing the NEW packages.
>
> So accelerating the recruitment process is not easy, given that we will
> not lower our quality standards.
>
An application of the principle that "adding more programmers to a late
project makes it later" (from _The Mythical Man-month_) to this
situation leaves us with possible ways forward:
1. maintain the status quo and accept that FTP master tasks will
necessarily include a very large built-in delay in completion time
2. accept a further reduction in responsiveness/slow down now and for
some, perhaps indeterminate, period of time to allow for dedicating a
certain amount of effort to train extra team members (which seems to
require a high degree of close collaboration and supervision with lots
of feedback); after some time the team's productivity should increase
and surpass its current level
Speaking as someone who has had uploads processed through NEW in a
matter of days (and been very pleasantly surprised) and also still with
a package that is approaching a year in NEW (and being a bit
disappointed with that), the second of the above scenarios seems to be
by far the more sustainable and productive approach from the long-term
perspective.
So, what can we, as the wider community of Debian Developers, do to
help?
Regards,
-Roberto
--
Roberto C. Sánchez
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