Re: Debian Maintainers GR Proposal
Le Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 05:52:49PM +0200, Thijs Kinkhorst a écrit :
>
> We've seen in the past that capable people can pass through NM very quickly,
> where most of the waiting is for FD, DAM approval. If the need is really
> high, people can and are already be fasttracked.
Dear Thijs, dear DDs, NMs, curious readers,
Here is my opinion from the NM queue: it all depends on what is expected
from a DD to know. I do not think that it is a quality issue, I think
that quality has to be acheived by only giving software privileges to
people who are aware of their areas of expertise and ignorance and act
in consequence. Laxism can plague easy work as well as difficult work,
it is more a question of goals that knowledge.
If Debian wants the NM queue to be a process - be it by mentoring or by
filtering - to select pluridisciplinary DDs who have a broad range of
competences, then definitely the DM concept is useful. It is by giving
people the tools to take and manage the time to raise themseves to the
DD level that the NM queue becomes useful.
For the moment, staying too long in the queue is a bit detrimental. As
time passes, the number of packages of the NM applicant grow and the
sponsoring overhead starts to kill the fun. For instance I enjoy sending
new packages to my sonsor and explaining how it fits my work plans in
Debian-Med. But when it is only for removing a ";" due to a g++
transition, or fixing other trivialties, I have a growing feeling that I
now know what I am doing, and I would be happy to do the upload by
myself.
Then the question is why not concentrating on the NM questions and
trying to exit the queue faster ? The answer is in a critisism written
earlier in this thread: paraphrasing. If the NM queue is to increase the
skills of the applicants, then strategies for answering faster defeat
this goal. Also, past school is is increasingly un-fun to do a lot of
theory without practice. (actually, in school as well, but this is
an off-topic debate ;)
So in the end, I see the DM concept as an opportunity to strenghen the
training and mentoring aspect of the NM process, if the general opinion
is that DDs should have a really high level and broad knowledge. If not,
then maybe what would do the job would simply be to refocus the NM
process to check that the applicant has integrated himself in Debian, by
interacting and working together with DDs, by sharing the spirit of the
fondamental texts, and by never lowering his aims of quality (which does
not mean never making mistakes, this is more a funciton of to the
quantity of work done).
Have a nice day,
--
Charles Plessy
http://charles.plessy.org
Wako, Saitama, Japan
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