Re: possibly exhausted ftp-masters (Re: Do we still value contributions?

[Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>]

Hello,

On Sun 29 Dec 2019 at 09:15am +01, Enrico Zini wrote:

> I see similar things on nm.debian.org, which I ended up calling in my
> head something like "the law of inflation of bureaucracy".
>
> That is, I see that when people are asked to do some work, that later
> will be checked by someone else, over time there is a tendency for the
> perceived amount of work to inflate.
>
> I guess the incentives are such that doing one bit less feels like
> making it more likely that review will fail, and doing one bit more
> feels like making it more likely that review will pass.
>
> The result over time is an increase in the amount effort that both
> people who are doing the work and people who are doing the checking end
> up putting into the system.
>
> For example, an Application Manager in the NM process will tend to err
> for asking a question more, that DAM will have to read.
>
> I haven't yet seen easy ways of introducing a feedback mechanism to
> counter this: saying "you didn't need to do this" feels to me like
> arbitrarily undervaluing someone's work, and maybe the person really
> found it important to do it.

This is interesting.

If you contrast the work that was done with the work that might have
been done, then I don't think you would be undervaluing someone's work,
nor would there be anything arbitrary about it.

In your example, if someone had asked a few questions fewer, they might
be 20% further in their next AM process than they are now.  There's
nothing arbitrary about feedback which says "the goals you and I both
share would have been further advanced, by you, if you hadn't asked
these questions."

-- 
Sean Whitton