Re: Four days

[Paul Wise]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 7:08 PM, Goswin von Brederlow  wrote:

> Exactly. Same here. Isn't there a gnome team? That should become more
> active in sponsoring then.

They probably have enough packages to upload and bugs to triage, best
not overload them more.

-- 
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pabs

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Re: Four days

[Goswin von Brederlow]

Michael Tautschnig  writes:

>> Asheesh Laroia  writes:
>> 
>> > The cool thing is, you (and others) can do that starting right now:
>> > Just email the debian-mentors list saying, "Hey, I'm not a DD, but I
>> > can review someone's package. First reply I get is what I'll review!"
>> > And if other people like the idea, they'll glom on.
>> 
>> I'm not a DD and I aleady follow the list and check out new or
>> interesting packages. So this is already hapening to some degree.
>> 
>
> But apparently nobody is interested in gnome packages, it seems - we've got a
> few open RFS related to gnome. Anybody out there interested in taking these?
> Myself I have no idea about gnome-specific issues and hence would prefer not 
> to
> take these.
>
> Best,
> Michael

Exactly. Same here. Isn't there a gnome team? That should become more
active in sponsoring then.

MfG
Goswin


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Re: Four days

[Michael Tautschnig]

> Asheesh Laroia  writes:
> 
> > The cool thing is, you (and others) can do that starting right now:
> > Just email the debian-mentors list saying, "Hey, I'm not a DD, but I
> > can review someone's package. First reply I get is what I'll review!"
> > And if other people like the idea, they'll glom on.
> 
> I'm not a DD and I aleady follow the list and check out new or
> interesting packages. So this is already hapening to some degree.
> 

But apparently nobody is interested in gnome packages, it seems - we've got a
few open RFS related to gnome. Anybody out there interested in taking these?
Myself I have no idea about gnome-specific issues and hence would prefer not to
take these.

Best,
Michael



pgpMyYpkKKRfT.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Four days

[Goswin von Brederlow]

Asheesh Laroia  writes:

> The cool thing is, you (and others) can do that starting right now:
> Just email the debian-mentors list saying, "Hey, I'm not a DD, but I
> can review someone's package. First reply I get is what I'll review!"
> And if other people like the idea, they'll glom on.

I'm not a DD and I aleady follow the list and check out new or
interesting packages. So this is already hapening to some degree.

MfG
Goswin


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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Sat, 9 Oct 2010, Kevin Lamonte wrote:


On Oct 5, 2010, at 2:40 PM, Don Armstrong wrote:


We probably should do a better job of identifying these packages and
responding to the RFS to tell people that it's of questionable
importance (or clearly no importance) and then channeling them into
assistance to Debian that is of greater importance. [It's also
difficult to break it to people that the work that they've done
probably isn't needed and keep them positive about contributing to the
project... though I think the sooner this happens, the less painful it
will be.]


Could this be done as a direct response to the initial ITP bug submission?

Proposal:  No RFS can be submitted to the mailing list unless the ITP is at 
least 14 days old and has a "sniff check" response, which can be either a 
pointer to the appropriate packaging team or a "first pass approval" from a 
DD.  "First pass approval" having the meaning "I think this might be 
interesting to some users, it doesn't obviously appear to duplicate an 
existing package, and it seems to fit into the general idea of Debian", i.e. 
it's permission to do the free-for-all of searching for a sponsor that 
mentees already do now.  The win for the mentees is that they can get in 
touch with the packaging team best suited to help them (if it exists), the 
win for the potential sponsors is fewer RFS for questionable/useless packages 
to wade through, and the win all around is that the meta-level questions of 
"how does this fit into the bigger picture" are answered early on before 
mentees have committed lots of hours creating something that no one appears 
to be interested in sponsoring.


If the ITP process is already supposed to be doing this, perhaps some 
attention should be focused on making that happen better?


I'm hesitant to add more hard restrictions to a process that already has 
lots of points of stressful uncertainty.


On the other hand, I see how your idea is actually about creating less 
stress, since it clarifies expectations.


I'm swamped just sticking to the "Four days" thing so far, so count me out 
of further process changes for the moment.


-- Asheesh.


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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Sat, 9 Oct 2010, Rustom Mody wrote:


On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 12:35 PM, Paul Wise  wrote:

On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Rustom Mody  wrote:


For example here are a couple of my last questions there:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55938
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55976


Both look on-topic for user support fora such as forums.d.n, the
debian-user list or ask.d.n.


As you can see the answers are either non-existent or unsatisfactory


Unfortunately.

I've just added an answer to the second one.


W!  Your answer only underscores my point: the large gap between
the expertise on this list and the lack of it there.


I think that this highlights a more general problem, one that I'm not 
going to tackle myself right now. (But if someone else does, that would be 
totally awesome.)


We don't clearly express what limited resources we (as Debian users, 
contributors, developers, maintainers, sysadmins) have, and we don't 
clearly express what we most desire help with.


If we did, we could find some mutually beneficial ways to reassign some 
tasks -- for example, a few of us mentees could say:


"I have limited time to sponsor packages. I want to sponsor packages from 
people who have invested serious time in helping Debian users answer their 
questions. So I will pay special attention to mentees who show they've 
answered lots of questions on ask.debian.net."


I'm not saying that right now; just hypothetically

-- Asheesh.


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Re: Four days

[Kevin Lamonte]

On Oct 5, 2010, at 2:40 PM, Don Armstrong wrote:


We probably should do a better job of identifying these packages and
responding to the RFS to tell people that it's of questionable
importance (or clearly no importance) and then channeling them into
assistance to Debian that is of greater importance. [It's also
difficult to break it to people that the work that they've done
probably isn't needed and keep them positive about contributing to the
project... though I think the sooner this happens, the less painful it
will be.]


Could this be done as a direct response to the initial ITP bug  
submission?


Proposal:  No RFS can be submitted to the mailing list unless the ITP  
is at least 14 days old and has a "sniff check" response, which can be  
either a pointer to the appropriate packaging team or a "first pass  
approval" from a DD.  "First pass approval" having the meaning "I  
think this might be interesting to some users, it doesn't obviously  
appear to duplicate an existing package, and it seems to fit into the  
general idea of Debian", i.e. it's permission to do the free-for-all  
of searching for a sponsor that mentees already do now.  The win for  
the mentees is that they can get in touch with the packaging team best  
suited to help them (if it exists), the win for the potential sponsors  
is fewer RFS for questionable/useless packages to wade through, and  
the win all around is that the meta-level questions of "how does this  
fit into the bigger picture" are answered early on before mentees have  
committed lots of hours creating something that no one appears to be  
interested in sponsoring.


If the ITP process is already supposed to be doing this, perhaps some  
attention should be focused on making that happen better?



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Re: Four days

[Charles Plessy]

Le Fri, Oct 08, 2010 at 05:13:22PM -0400, Asheesh Laroia a écrit :
> On Thu, 7 Oct 2010, Charles Plessy wrote:
>>
>> perhaps the list's description, that still points at 
>> http://people.d.o/~mpalmer,
>> could be updated as well? I have not figured out if this is done through
>> a bug on lists.d.o or by modifying a WML file somewhere…
>
> Try reporting a bug on lists.d.o. CC: me ont he bug.

The link was updated at the speed of light by Alexander Wirt (#599602).

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles


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Re: Four days

[Rustom Mody]

On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 12:35 PM, Paul Wise  wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Rustom Mody  wrote:
>
>> For example here are a couple of my last questions there:
>>
>> http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55938
>> http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55976
>
> Both look on-topic for user support fora such as forums.d.n, the
> debian-user list or ask.d.n.
>
>> As you can see the answers are either non-existent or unsatisfactory
>
> Unfortunately.
>
> I've just added an answer to the second one.

W!  Your answer only underscores my point: the large gap between
the expertise on this list and the lack of it there.


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Re: Four days

[Paul Wise]

On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Rustom Mody  wrote:

> For example here are a couple of my last questions there:
>
> http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55938
> http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55976

Both look on-topic for user support fora such as forums.d.n, the
debian-user list or ask.d.n.

> As you can see the answers are either non-existent or unsatisfactory

Unfortunately.

I've just added an answer to the second one.

> And obviously the questions are unsuitable for this list :-)

Indeed.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: Four days

[Rustom Mody]

As a noob-wannabe mentee I see one issue which has not been mentioned:

There's no list whose level is between this mentors list and the
debian user lists
eg http://forums.debian.net/viewforum.php?f=10

For example here are a couple of my last questions there:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55938
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55976

As you can see the answers are either non-existent or unsatisfactory

And obviously the questions are unsuitable for this list :-)


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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Thu, 7 Oct 2010, Matthew Palmer wrote:


On Wed, Oct 06, 2010 at 11:11:49AM -0400, Asheesh Laroia wrote:

On Tue, 5 Oct 2010, Matthew Palmer wrote:


To clarify: the intended point of this proposal is to solve the
perceived problem that DDs don't sponsor packages because they're
concerned that they'll end up taking responsibility for a package if
the maintainer ups and leaves?

I don't actually see that as a problem.  There are simple ways to deal
with orphaned packages, regardless of the way the upload was made, and
they work. If a package I sponsor is abandoned by the maintainer, it
gets NMUed, orphaned and assigned to debian-qa like any other, and is
then available for adoption.

The variant of this problem I do see, however, is the uploading of
surely-soon-to-be-unmaintained low-quality or near-duplicate packages,
clogging up the archive and making extra work for debian-qa et al.
*That* problem isn't going to be solved by changing the maintainer,
it's only going to be solved by not uploading the
surely-soon-to-be-unmaintained low-quality or near-duplicate packages
in the first place.


Matthew -- sounds like you've identified a commonly-asked question that
has an answer. Would you (or someone else on the list) be willing to add
that to the "For Sponsors..." section of
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq ?


I think I've had my fill of FAQ maintenance.  Someone else can do it.


Until now I didn't connect the old FAQ (that I remember reading as a 
mentee) and your name. Thanks for that, and yes, I totally understand if 
you've decided you're done with FAQ maintenance. (-:


I've added that question and answer to 
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq .


-- Asheesh.

--
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
-- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare


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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Thu, 7 Oct 2010, Charles Plessy wrote:


Le Thu, Oct 07, 2010 at 06:41:18AM +1100, Matthew Palmer a écrit :

On Wed, Oct 06, 2010 at 11:11:49AM -0400, Asheesh Laroia wrote:

in the first place.


Matthew -- sounds like you've identified a commonly-asked question that
has an answer. Would you (or someone else on the list) be willing to add
that to the "For Sponsors..." section of
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq ?


I think I've had my fill of FAQ maintenance.  Someone else can do it.


Hi all,

perhaps the list's description, that still points at http://people.d.o/~mpalmer,
could be updated as well? I have not figured out if this is done through
a bug on lists.d.o or by modifying a WML file somewhere…


Try reporting a bug on lists.d.o. CC: me ont he bug.

If that isn't the right answer, we'll figure out the next step from there.

-- Asheesh.

Re: Four days

[Thomas Goirand]

Charles Plessy wrote:
> This reminds me a site that I discover today in the Dreamhost newsletter,
> http://feedbackroulette.com/. I have not found source code, but the idea is
> simple and could be translated to an anonymous package review system.
I would really love the idea. It's a fact, package review is taking a
long time.
If there was the possibility to just click, to see the debian/rules and
other
key files in a package, and through comments quickly, that would help a lot
to speed up giving advices.

> Otherwise, if anonymicity is not necessary for the review, a simple system
> could be implemented with WNPP bugs and usertags.
I don't think the above is about anonymity, it's about being able to quickly
have a look at a package, and give comments for improvements. Sometimes,
we wouldn't even need to download the package to know there's issues that
would need to be fixed... When reviewing a debian/copyright for example,
obviously, you don't need to build the package to check for it.

Thomas


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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Thu, 7 Oct 2010, Charles Plessy wrote:


Le Wed, Oct 06, 2010 at 11:08:05AM -0400, Asheesh Laroia a écrit :


It's a really good idea... maybe I should actually ask my sponsorees to 
review other people's packages on the debian-mentors list as a sort of 
social "trade" -- I upload if you join the review team.


Hi all,

This reminds me a site that I discover today in the Dreamhost 
newsletter, http://feedbackroulette.com/. I have not found source code, 
but the idea is simple and could be translated to an anonymous package 
review system. Perhaps that could be implemented with ikiwiki ? 
(http://joey.kitenet.net/blog/entry/anonymous_git_push_to_ikiwiki/)


Otherwise, if anonymicity is not necessary for the review, a simple 
system could be implemented with WNPP bugs and usertags. You can have a 
look at http://wiki.debian.org/CopyrightReview for a (not so successful) 
example.


Thank you for your efforts to improve debian-mentors. I am sure that 
everybody has good intentions, but with such a high traffic it is just 
too easy to lose momentum.


Interesting ideas. I'm not going to spearhead such an effort in the near 
future, but I like the concept (and if someone wanted to rope me in as a 
*user* of such a system, I probably would join up).


-- Asheesh.

--
You will be reincarnated as a toad; and you will be much happier.

Re: Four days

[Paul Wise]

On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 8:11 AM, Charles Plessy  wrote:

> perhaps the list's description, that still points at 
> http://people.d.o/~mpalmer,
> could be updated as well? I have not figured out if this is done through
> a bug on lists.d.o or by modifying a WML file somewhere…

and Matthew should setup a redirect from his version to the wiki.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: Four days

[Charles Plessy]

Le Thu, Oct 07, 2010 at 06:41:18AM +1100, Matthew Palmer a écrit :
> On Wed, Oct 06, 2010 at 11:11:49AM -0400, Asheesh Laroia wrote:
> >> in the first place.
> >
> > Matthew -- sounds like you've identified a commonly-asked question that  
> > has an answer. Would you (or someone else on the list) be willing to add  
> > that to the "For Sponsors..." section of  
> > http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq ?
> 
> I think I've had my fill of FAQ maintenance.  Someone else can do it.

Hi all,

perhaps the list's description, that still points at http://people.d.o/~mpalmer,
could be updated as well? I have not figured out if this is done through
a bug on lists.d.o or by modifying a WML file somewhere…

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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Re: Four days

[Matthew Palmer]

On Wed, Oct 06, 2010 at 11:11:49AM -0400, Asheesh Laroia wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Oct 2010, Matthew Palmer wrote:
>
>> To clarify: the intended point of this proposal is to solve the  
>> perceived problem that DDs don't sponsor packages because they're  
>> concerned that they'll end up taking responsibility for a package if 
>> the maintainer ups and leaves?
>>
>> I don't actually see that as a problem.  There are simple ways to deal  
>> with orphaned packages, regardless of the way the upload was made, and  
>> they work. If a package I sponsor is abandoned by the maintainer, it  
>> gets NMUed, orphaned and assigned to debian-qa like any other, and is  
>> then available for adoption.
>>
>> The variant of this problem I do see, however, is the uploading of  
>> surely-soon-to-be-unmaintained low-quality or near-duplicate packages,  
>> clogging up the archive and making extra work for debian-qa et al.  
>> *That* problem isn't going to be solved by changing the maintainer, 
>> it's only going to be solved by not uploading the  
>> surely-soon-to-be-unmaintained low-quality or near-duplicate packages 
>> in the first place.
>
> Matthew -- sounds like you've identified a commonly-asked question that  
> has an answer. Would you (or someone else on the list) be willing to add  
> that to the "For Sponsors..." section of  
> http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq ?

I think I've had my fill of FAQ maintenance.  Someone else can do it.

- Matt


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Re: Four days

[Charles Plessy]

Le Wed, Oct 06, 2010 at 11:08:05AM -0400, Asheesh Laroia a écrit :
>
> It's a really good idea... maybe I should actually ask my sponsorees to  
> review other people's packages on the debian-mentors list as a sort of  
> social "trade" -- I upload if you join the review team.

Hi all,

This reminds me a site that I discover today in the Dreamhost newsletter,
http://feedbackroulette.com/. I have not found source code, but the idea is
simple and could be translated to an anonymous package review system. Perhaps
that could be implemented with ikiwiki ?
(http://joey.kitenet.net/blog/entry/anonymous_git_push_to_ikiwiki/)

Otherwise, if anonymicity is not necessary for the review, a simple system
could be implemented with WNPP bugs and usertags. You can have a look at
http://wiki.debian.org/CopyrightReview for a (not so successful) example.

Thank you for your efforts to improve debian-mentors. I am sure that everybody
has good intentions, but with such a high traffic it is just too easy to lose
momentum.

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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Re: Four days

[Michael Gilbert]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 16:30:37 +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> > One is to use the mentors mailing list as the maintainer for mentee
> > packages.  That way the burden of quickly orphaned packages is dispersed
> > over the whole set of mentors rather than just one.  Perhaps that will
> > encourage more DD participation since they won't stick themselves with a
> > lot of orphaned packages.
> 
> To clarify: the intended point of this proposal is to solve the perceived
> problem that DDs don't sponsor packages because they're concerned that
> they'll end up taking responsibility for a package if the maintainer ups and
> leaves?
> 
> I don't actually see that as a problem.  There are simple ways to deal with
> orphaned packages, regardless of the way the upload was made, and they work. 
> If a package I sponsor is abandoned by the maintainer, it gets NMUed,
> orphaned and assigned to debian-qa like any other, and is then available for
> adoption.

OK, I've at least seen Paul Wise state this excuse as the reason to
avoid sponsoring packages, and I would bet there is a lot more of that
sentiment out there, just not expressed here.

If you can mitigate that concern via better awareness about the
orphaning process, then I think that would be great.

Best wishes,
Mike


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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2010, Matthew Palmer wrote:

To clarify: the intended point of this proposal is to solve the 
perceived problem that DDs don't sponsor packages because they're 
concerned that they'll end up taking responsibility for a package if the 
maintainer ups and leaves?


I don't actually see that as a problem.  There are simple ways to deal 
with orphaned packages, regardless of the way the upload was made, and 
they work. If a package I sponsor is abandoned by the maintainer, it 
gets NMUed, orphaned and assigned to debian-qa like any other, and is 
then available for adoption.


The variant of this problem I do see, however, is the uploading of 
surely-soon-to-be-unmaintained low-quality or near-duplicate packages, 
clogging up the archive and making extra work for debian-qa et al. 
*That* problem isn't going to be solved by changing the maintainer, it's 
only going to be solved by not uploading the 
surely-soon-to-be-unmaintained low-quality or near-duplicate packages in 
the first place.


Matthew -- sounds like you've identified a commonly-asked question that 
has an answer. Would you (or someone else on the list) be willing to add 
that to the "For Sponsors..." section of 
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq ?


That way we can help prospective sponsors feel more confident that 
it's worth their time to sponsor packages.


-- Asheesh.

--
You will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize... posthumously.


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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

Michael, thanks for suggesting new ideas even in the face of people making 
fun of you. It shows that you care about Debian, and I appreciate that.


On Tue, 5 Oct 2010, Michael Gilbert wrote:

One is to use the mentors mailing list as the maintainer for mentee 
packages.  That way the burden of quickly orphaned packages is dispersed 
over the whole set of mentors rather than just one.  Perhaps that will 
encourage more DD participation since they won't stick themselves with a 
lot of orphaned packages.


For now, I don't have much of an opinion on this -- might be good, might 
be bad. But I think it's a radical structural change, and I think that 
there's still lots of room for social changes.


We're going to need to have a supportive social system in any environment, 
and that's the part I'm focused on right now.


The other idea is to reduce DD involvement in the mentoring process 
itself by making mentees more responsible for themselves. Take a set of 
mentees, have them work together to get their packages in shape, then 
maybe once a month (or every couple weeks) have them show the set of 
packages that they have ready to the mentors list. That would also 
reduce RFS traffic on this list.  This list would become more of a 
coordination point for joining mentee teams.


I think that would be great.

The cool thing is, you (and others) can do that starting right now: Just 
email the debian-mentors list saying, "Hey, I'm not a DD, but I can review 
someone's package. First reply I get is what I'll review!" And if other 
people like the idea, they'll glom on.


If you want to chat more about ideas like that, or you want to help out 
prospective sponsorees, hang out in #debian-mentors on irc.debian.org 
(OFTC).


It's a really good idea... maybe I should actually ask my sponsorees to 
review other people's packages on the debian-mentors list as a sort of 
social "trade" -- I upload if you join the review team.


Actually, that sounds like fun. I will ask that of my sponsorees, going 
forward!


-- Asheesh.

--
Every cloud engenders not a storm.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"


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Re: Four days

[Don Armstrong]

On Sun, 03 Oct 2010, Paul Wise wrote:
> Another demotivator is people who treat the archive as a dumping
> ground for their pet package; do a one-shot upload to get it in and
> essentially leave it orphaned after that. I tried to avoid that by
> having a policy of not sponsoring anything, but I still have a few
> such packages on my DDPO page. I'm not sure how to avoid that but
> actually upload stuff regularly.

This is actually my biggest concern with many RFS, and why I rarely
sponsor packages. We need some sort of method to indicate to sponsees
that the reason why their package isn't being sponsored is because
people think that it's not suitable for the archive instead of that
people are just ignoring it.

We probably should do a better job of identifying these packages and
responding to the RFS to tell people that it's of questionable
importance (or clearly no importance) and then channeling them into
assistance to Debian that is of greater importance. [It's also
difficult to break it to people that the work that they've done
probably isn't needed and keep them positive about contributing to the
project... though I think the sooner this happens, the less painful it
will be.]

It'd probably also be good to know in the RFS whether it's a new
package or an upload for an existing package. [The latter should
always get sponsored; the former may need guidance.]


Don Armstrong

-- 
LEADERSHIP -- A form of self-preservation exhibited by people with
autodestructive imaginations in order to ensure that when it comes to
the crunch it'll be someone else's bones which go crack and not their
own. 
 -- The HipCrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan 
(John Brunner _Stand On Zanzibar_ p256-7)

http://www.donarmstrong.com  http://rzlab.ucr.edu


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Re: Four days

[Michael Tautschnig]

[...] (great ideas w/ color codes)

> 
> If you want to write up a script (I would use Python), I can imagine
> how you'd go about doing it... except I don't know how you can
> download MBOX archives of Debian lists. (I actually struggled with
> this in the summer of 2006, now that I think about it.)
> 

[...]

Well, you probably couldn't do that back in 2006, but as you're a DD you can
just go to master.debian.org and look at /home/debian/lists/debian-mentors/

:-)

Best,
Michael


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Description: PGP signature

Re: Four days

[Vincent Carmona]

2010/10/5 Johan Van de Wauw :
> On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 1:00 AM, Asheesh Laroia  wrote:
>
> Not something that is implemented overnight, but I think there should
> be a solution for new packages which are often useful for users, but
> not (yet?) up to debian high standards. I really like the way ubuntu's
> launchpad ppas are set up: anyone with an account can create an
> archive and upload his source packages.
>  If such an archive gives the chance to users to report bugs and also
> the usage (eg popcon, download stats) of packages in that archive, it
> could be used by sponsors to pick packages which actually have users.
> And if it is not picked up by a sponsor at least the users can enjoy
> the packaging work which was done.
> Apart from that, I believe users in some cases better reviewers than
> sponsors. A sponsor may complain about the standards version which is
> not up to date with the latest version and/or some lintian errors, but
> may not notice bugs which really limit the usability of the
> application.
>
> One could argue that such a packages - if they had a copyright review
> - could go to experimental, but if a system like launchpad ppas would
> exist (where you can upload new versions of a package without needing
> a sponsor) the barrier is lowered even more.
>
> What I dislike about this ppa system (and coming more on topic) is
> that it does not really encourage towards becoming an official package
> and also doesn't learn about how to work with these official packages.
> Eg closing bugs by doing an upload, ...
>

My first package was accepted recently.
I think I would not attempt packaging for debian if ppa does not existed.

My experience goes through 3 steps:

build a simple deb file by in vocking "dpkg-deb --build" on "destdir" install.
Use ppa to learn the process of packaging (d/rules...). My ppa
packages are ugly but they install wanted files.
Join a team and begin to learn clean packaging.

-- 
Vincent Carmona


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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Mon, 4 Oct 2010, Michal Čihař wrote:

Lack of interested mentors is indeed an issue. Nobody has unlimited time 
and chooses what attracts him. For me it usually means things I know and 
test or which I find interesting after reading RFS email.


It is. At the same time, I think that we can increase the number of DDs 
who want to sponsor or review packages by asking nicely on debian-devel 
and making this list more fun to be on.


Well it would be definitely useful having better tracked package reviews 
and problems found on earlier upload, so that it is clearly visible if 
there are still some not fixed issues.


That makes sense. We can solve that through some technology, like "REVU" 
.


I'm running out of cycles to maintain more technology, so instead I will 
try to reconfigure the expectations on the mailing list so that mentees 
know what to expect. So mentees -- if you think you've solved the problems 
raised on the list, and you think someone should upload it, but no one did 
-- reply within the thread four days later to say that your expectations 
have been broken. (-:


Remember: Communicate! (And all, thanks for such an interesting thread.)

-- Asheesh.

--
Q:  What's tiny and yellow and very, very, dangerous?
A:  A canary with the super-user password.

Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2010, Johan Van de Wauw wrote:


On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 1:00 AM, Asheesh Laroia  wrote:



And what other cultural improvements can we make to debian-mentors? What
else can we do to make this place supportive and helpful for the progress of
y'all mentees into sparkly Debian contributors and developers?


Not something that is implemented overnight, but I think there should
be a solution for new packages which are often useful for users, but
not (yet?) up to debian high standards. I really like the way ubuntu's
launchpad ppas are set up: anyone with an account can create an
archive and upload his source packages.
If such an archive gives the chance to users to report bugs and also
the usage (eg popcon, download stats) of packages in that archive, it
could be used by sponsors to pick packages which actually have users.
And if it is not picked up by a sponsor at least the users can enjoy
the packaging work which was done.
Apart from that, I believe users in some cases better reviewers than
sponsors. A sponsor may complain about the standards version which is
not up to date with the latest version and/or some lintian errors, but
may not notice bugs which really limit the usability of the
application.

One could argue that such a packages - if they had a copyright review
- could go to experimental, but if a system like launchpad ppas would
exist (where you can upload new versions of a package without needing
a sponsor) the barrier is lowered even more.

What I dislike about this ppa system (and coming more on topic) is
that it does not really encourage towards becoming an official package
and also doesn't learn about how to work with these official packages.
Eg closing bugs by doing an upload, ...


That's a really good set of ideas. I really like the point that users know 
what's wrong with a program! And you make a good point that packaging 
work, even if it is not ready for the archive, can help users quite a bit.


http://debexpo.workaround.org/ is the homepage for a 2008 Summer of Code 
project that was a redesigned mentors.debian.net website. I'm trying to 
get to know the codebase so I can write up some guides for how people can 
help.


I think that the plan for debexpo is to have that sort of personal package 
archive functionality in there.


I bet that we can get debexpo finished and usable within a month (even if 
that means disabling features that aren't usable yet). So this is the 
Asheesh promise of October: debexpo by November 5.


And I can use y'all's help in succeeding at it. (-: If you want to grab 
the source now, then by all means go ahead. First things first, you should 
grab it and try to see if the test suite passes.


-- Asheesh.

--
You need more time; and you probably always will.


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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2010, Michael Tautschnig wrote:


[...]



I think a possibly good solution would be to set up a
mentors.debian.net bug page (similar to other debian resources such as
[0]).  That would make it much clearer which mentoring tasks are still
open.  It would also make it possible categorize new submissions, which
would help potential mentors focus on their areas of interest.



What about something similar to the wnpp weekly newsletter? Now this would
either need to be done using some information from mentors.d.n or, and maybe
preferrably, by checking the list archives. And no, unfortunatly I'm not going
to implement any of this, but maybe someone else likes this idea as well and
finds the time...


Your idea hinges on getting mailing list archives automatically. I have a 
similar idea that I know I'm not going to get to any time in the next few 
months. But it's a pretty simple script.


It would be really cool to have a web page that listed the subject lines 
of threads on debian-mentors that have gotten no response. Different 
colors indicate different ages:


* Black: The message is between 0 and 2 days old
* Yellow: The message is between 2 and 4 days old
* Red: The message is older than 4 days
* Green: The message has already gotten a reply

If you want to write up a script (I would use Python), I can imagine how 
you'd go about doing it... except I don't know how you can download MBOX 
archives of Debian lists. (I actually struggled with this in the summer of 
2006, now that I think about it.)


Does anyone know where an mbox archive of the debian-mentors list can be 
found? If so I can provide further tips to someone who wants to help us 
visualize the "Four days" goal. (-:


I don't have time to write it myself, but if there's an easy way to make 
the mbox list archives available to people, I would happily mentor someone 
who wanted to write such a thing. We could publish the resulting HTML page 
on my people.debian.org/~paulproteus/ site.


-- Asheesh.

--
You are always busy.


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Re: Four days

[Johan Van de Wauw]

On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 1:00 AM, Asheesh Laroia  wrote:

>
> And what other cultural improvements can we make to debian-mentors? What
> else can we do to make this place supportive and helpful for the progress of
> y'all mentees into sparkly Debian contributors and developers?

Not something that is implemented overnight, but I think there should
be a solution for new packages which are often useful for users, but
not (yet?) up to debian high standards. I really like the way ubuntu's
launchpad ppas are set up: anyone with an account can create an
archive and upload his source packages.
 If such an archive gives the chance to users to report bugs and also
the usage (eg popcon, download stats) of packages in that archive, it
could be used by sponsors to pick packages which actually have users.
And if it is not picked up by a sponsor at least the users can enjoy
the packaging work which was done.
Apart from that, I believe users in some cases better reviewers than
sponsors. A sponsor may complain about the standards version which is
not up to date with the latest version and/or some lintian errors, but
may not notice bugs which really limit the usability of the
application.

One could argue that such a packages - if they had a copyright review
- could go to experimental, but if a system like launchpad ppas would
exist (where you can upload new versions of a package without needing
a sponsor) the barrier is lowered even more.

What I dislike about this ppa system (and coming more on topic) is
that it does not really encourage towards becoming an official package
and also doesn't learn about how to work with these official packages.
Eg closing bugs by doing an upload, ...


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Re: Four days

[Michael Tautschnig]

[...]

> 
> I think a possibly good solution would be to set up a
> mentors.debian.net bug page (similar to other debian resources such as
> [0]).  That would make it much clearer which mentoring tasks are still
> open.  It would also make it possible categorize new submissions, which
> would help potential mentors focus on their areas of interest.
> 

What about something similar to the wnpp weekly newsletter? Now this would
either need to be done using some information from mentors.d.n or, and maybe
preferrably, by checking the list archives. And no, unfortunatly I'm not going
to implement any of this, but maybe someone else likes this idea as well and
finds the time...

Sorry,
Michael



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Description: PGP signature

Re: Four days

[Matthew Palmer]

On Tue, Oct 05, 2010 at 12:14:36AM -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 13:52:09 +1100 Matthew Palmer wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Oct 04, 2010 at 10:32:24PM -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> > > On Mon, 4 Oct 2010 17:37:19 -0700 PJ Weisberg wrote:
> > > 
> > > > On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> > > > > On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 06:30:22 +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> > > > >> Yeah, that's a great idea!  We should setup a mailing list where 
> > > > >> they can
> > > > >> get together and ask questions of each other and request someone to 
> > > > >> sponsor
> > > > >> their packages!
> > > > >
> > > > > What's so crazy about that?  What would be so wrong with empowering
> > > > > mentees to help themselves?
> > > > 
> > > > I think you missed his point. ;-)  Such a list already exists.  It's
> > > > called debian-mentors.
> > > 
> > > OK, I see the attempt at irony now; although that really misses my
> > > original idea, which is to revamp the mentoring process with more of a
> > > team-based focus.
> > 
> > On the contrary; what is different about a team of people within Debian who
> > wish to assist and mentor potential new developers, as opposed to the
> > membership of the debian-mentors mailing list?
> 
> A lot.  The current process is individualized mentorship, not team
> mentorship.???

Not to my knowledge.  Whilst some new maintainers may have an invitation
from certain DDs to e-mail them privately with their questions, in general
the intended process is that questions are asked on this mailing list, and
answers are given and discussed by anyone who feels qualified to answer --
DD, DM, "mentee", or interested bystander.

> One is to use the mentors mailing list as the maintainer for mentee
> packages.  That way the burden of quickly orphaned packages is dispersed
> over the whole set of mentors rather than just one.  Perhaps that will
> encourage more DD participation since they won't stick themselves with a
> lot of orphaned packages.

To clarify: the intended point of this proposal is to solve the perceived
problem that DDs don't sponsor packages because they're concerned that
they'll end up taking responsibility for a package if the maintainer ups and
leaves?

I don't actually see that as a problem.  There are simple ways to deal with
orphaned packages, regardless of the way the upload was made, and they work. 
If a package I sponsor is abandoned by the maintainer, it gets NMUed,
orphaned and assigned to debian-qa like any other, and is then available for
adoption.

The variant of this problem I do see, however, is the uploading of
surely-soon-to-be-unmaintained low-quality or near-duplicate packages,
clogging up the archive and making extra work for debian-qa et al.  *That*
problem isn't going to be solved by changing the maintainer, it's only going
to be solved by not uploading the surely-soon-to-be-unmaintained low-quality
or near-duplicate packages in the first place.

On a practical point, making d-mentors the maintainer would clog the list
with large quantities of (mostly) bug-related e-mail, a la debian-boot,
making the list far worse for discussion.  However a separate mailing list
could be created to avoid that problem (at the cost of requiring people to
subscribe to the other list, splitting attention, etc).

> The other idea is to reduce DD involvement in the mentoring process
> itself by making mentees more responsible for themselves. Take a set of
> mentees, have them work together to get their packages in shape, then
> maybe once a month (or every couple weeks) have them show the set of
> packages that they have ready to the mentors list. That would also
> reduce RFS traffic on this list.  This list would become more of a
> coordination point for joining mentee teams.

There's nothing stopping that from happening now on this list.  I don't see
that "batching" RFSes is going to either (a) reduce RFS traffic (because
nothing's stopping people from still posting them here, and even the batch
will have to be sent out some time), or (b) improve sponsorship rates (in
fact it'd probably decrease them, because checking 1 package a day every day
is far less daunting than checking 14 packages once a fortnight).

However, if you want to give it a go, don't let me (or anyone else) stop
you.  Take Asheesh's lead and just start something, don't ask or wait for
official endorsement of your idea, because it will never come.  Do it, and
if it works it'll catch on, and if it doesn't then... try something else.

- Matt


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Re: Four days

[Ben Finney]

Michael Gilbert  writes:

> A lot.  The current process is individualized mentorship, not team
> mentorship.

How so? Anyone can provide input on a question asked here, and
frequently a question will get a team of mentors descending to mentor
the querent.

You might be talking, not about mentors, but about *sponsorship*. Yes,
of course there needs to be some individual sponsoring a particular
release for upload into Debian.

But sponsoring is done per release per package. That's not the
mentorship process, which happens in the open, in a team environment,
here in discussions in this forum.

> One is to use the mentors mailing list as the maintainer for mentee
> packages.

With this wording it's becoming clear that you don't mean “mentor”, but
rather mean “sponsor”. I'll proceed on that basis.

> That way the burden of quickly orphaned packages is dispersed over the
> whole set of mentors rather than just one.

I think it's a mistake to make a mailing list take on the role of
sponsor; not everyone on this list is in a position to sponsor packages
(I am not), and you get the problem that responsibility for sponsorship
would be diluted.

Teams should form around areas of interest and expertise in a particular
kind of package. I don't think there's a useful expertise of “packages
maintained by people who aren't yet Debian members”, so it's not
sensible to make such a team.

So I don't think a “team sponsor” would be a good idea. Rather, if
packages deserve team maintenance or not, that's orthogonal to whether
the package needs its releases sponsored into Debian.

> The other idea is to reduce DD involvement in the mentoring process
> itself by making mentees more responsible for themselves. Take a set
> of mentees, have them work together to get their packages in shape,
> then maybe once a month (or every couple weeks) have them show the set
> of packages that they have ready to the mentors list. That would also
> reduce RFS traffic on this list. This list would become more of a
> coordination point for joining mentee teams.

That doesn't need a separate forum though; people already come here to
‘debian-mentors’ as a forum to ask advice about packaging, and they do
in fact get that advice, from Debian members and non-members alike.

I agree that advice should be sought much more commonly before the RFS
is sent; I think this forum is already good for that purpose. How do you
propose encouraging that behaviour, though?

-- 
 \ “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, |
  `\   neat, and wrong.” —Henry L. Mencken |
_o__)  |
Ben Finney


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Re: Four days

[Michael Gilbert]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 13:52:09 +1100 Matthew Palmer wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 04, 2010 at 10:32:24PM -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> > On Mon, 4 Oct 2010 17:37:19 -0700 PJ Weisberg wrote:
> > 
> > > On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 06:30:22 +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> > > >> Yeah, that's a great idea!  We should setup a mailing list where they 
> > > >> can
> > > >> get together and ask questions of each other and request someone to 
> > > >> sponsor
> > > >> their packages!
> > > >
> > > > What's so crazy about that?  What would be so wrong with empowering
> > > > mentees to help themselves?
> > > 
> > > I think you missed his point. ;-)  Such a list already exists.  It's
> > > called debian-mentors.
> > 
> > OK, I see the attempt at irony now; although that really misses my
> > original idea, which is to revamp the mentoring process with more of a
> > team-based focus.
> 
> On the contrary; what is different about a team of people within Debian who
> wish to assist and mentor potential new developers, as opposed to the
> membership of the debian-mentors mailing list?

A lot.  The current process is individualized mentorship, not team
mentorship.‬ Again, there are two new ideas that I am suggesting.

One is to use the mentors mailing list as the maintainer for mentee
packages.  That way the burden of quickly orphaned packages is dispersed
over the whole set of mentors rather than just one.  Perhaps that will
encourage more DD participation since they won't stick themselves with a
lot of orphaned packages.

The other idea is to reduce DD involvement in the mentoring process
itself by making mentees more responsible for themselves. Take a set of
mentees, have them work together to get their packages in shape, then
maybe once a month (or every couple weeks) have them show the set of
packages that they have ready to the mentors list. That would also
reduce RFS traffic on this list.  This list would become more of a
coordination point for joining mentee teams.

Best wishes,
Mike


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Re: Four days

[Matthew Palmer]

On Mon, Oct 04, 2010 at 10:32:24PM -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Oct 2010 17:37:19 -0700 PJ Weisberg wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> > > On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 06:30:22 +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> > >> Yeah, that's a great idea!  We should setup a mailing list where they can
> > >> get together and ask questions of each other and request someone to 
> > >> sponsor
> > >> their packages!
> > >
> > > What's so crazy about that?  What would be so wrong with empowering
> > > mentees to help themselves?
> > 
> > I think you missed his point. ;-)  Such a list already exists.  It's
> > called debian-mentors.
> 
> OK, I see the attempt at irony now; although that really misses my
> original idea, which is to revamp the mentoring process with more of a
> team-based focus.

On the contrary; what is different about a team of people within Debian who
wish to assist and mentor potential new developers, as opposed to the
membership of the debian-mentors mailing list?

- Matt


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Re: Four days

[Michael Gilbert]

On Mon, 4 Oct 2010 17:37:19 -0700 PJ Weisberg wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> > On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 06:30:22 +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> >> Yeah, that's a great idea!  We should setup a mailing list where they can
> >> get together and ask questions of each other and request someone to sponsor
> >> their packages!
> >
> > What's so crazy about that?  What would be so wrong with empowering
> > mentees to help themselves?
> 
> I think you missed his point. ;-)  Such a list already exists.  It's
> called debian-mentors.

OK, I see the attempt at irony now; although that really misses my
original idea, which is to revamp the mentoring process with more of a
team-based focus.

Mike


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Re: Four days

[PJ Weisberg]

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Michael Gilbert
 wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 06:30:22 +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
>> Yeah, that's a great idea!  We should setup a mailing list where they can
>> get together and ask questions of each other and request someone to sponsor
>> their packages!
>
> What's so crazy about that?  What would be so wrong with empowering
> mentees to help themselves?

I think you missed his point. ;-)  Such a list already exists.  It's
called debian-mentors.


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Re: Four days

[Michael Gilbert]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 06:30:22 +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 04, 2010 at 11:42:59AM -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> > On Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:35:04 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> > > Michael Gilbert  writes:
> > > 
> > > > As someone who has attempted to go through the mentoring process, I
> > > > agree very much that it is rather depressing.
> > > 
> > > How much of that is actually a problem, though? How much is an integral
> > > part of gaining humility as to the state of the packaging work, and the
> > > pain of learning new conventions and processes?
> > 
> > The depressing part is that almost no one is interested in being a
> > mentor,
> 
> A state which isn't helped by the regular complaint that "there's nobody to
> sponsor my packageees!".  When I *do* sponsor something, I'm pretty much
> guaranteed to get at least one (other) person e-mail me personally with an
> RFS that's never seen the light of day here, and it's pretty much always for
> something I'd never touch (for some reason, it seems I see a lot of Java
> packages that way).  Neither state of affairs encourages me to sponsor
> anything.
> 
> > so its almost impossible to get your work into Debian, which
> > makes the effort seem pointless.
> 
> Because having a nice package you can use yourself or put on a website
> somewhere has *no* value at all, naturally.
> 
> > Note that I've actually succeeded many
> > times, but I've also failed many times as well.  And the failures are
> > all due to lack of an interested mentor, not due to package quality (a
> > bunch of my packages are on mentors.debian.net and lintian clean).
> 
> Those are not the be-all and end-all gauges of quality.

Of course, but if there are actually problems in my packages, I've
addressed them rapidly.  At this point, I have no outstanding issues
other than lack of an interested mentor.

> > I think that the efficiency of mentoring is the problem that needs to
> > be solved.  That could possibly be improved by treating mentoring tasks
> > as bugs.  It may also possibly be improved by treating mentoring as a
> > team task.  I see the complaint that DDs choose not to mentor because
> > they end up stuck with unmaintained packages.  Well, it would be less
> > of a burden if those were team maintained (make new mentees part of
> > those teams as well).
> 
> Because packages that are unmaintained by a team that are indifferent are
> not any different, practially speaking, than those that are unmaintained by
> one person who is indifferent.

That's not the point I was making.  The idea would be to form a mentors
team that includes all mentors that act as a collaborative mentor,
rather than an individual mentor.  This would of course help the
quickly orphaned package issue.

> > Maybe mentorship should be a team effort?  Start
> > a new group of mentees every month that work together perhaps?
> 
> Yeah, that's a great idea!  We should setup a mailing list where they can
> get together and ask questions of each other and request someone to sponsor
> their packages!

What's so crazy about that?  What would be so wrong with empowering
mentees to help themselves?  Especially when there are so many
complaints from DDs not having time themselves.  Change the DD role to
watching the mentees work together, and only step in when needed.  This
also would help the quickly orphaned package issue since packages will
come in with group maintainership right away.

Anyway, I'm thinking about how to improve this rather depressing
situation.  It doesn't help my motivation when I get my ideas shot down
just because they're new/different.

Mike


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Re: Four days

[Matthew Palmer]

On Mon, Oct 04, 2010 at 09:17:24PM +0200, Joachim Wiedorn wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Michal ??iha??  wrote on 2010-10-04 18:14:
> 
> > Lack of interested mentors is indeed an issue. Nobody has unlimited
> > time and chooses what attracts him. For me it usually means things I
> > know and test or which I find interesting after reading RFS email.
> 
> I will mention another point: We have Maintainer, Debian Maintainer (DM)
> and Debian Developer (DD). DD's and DM's is allowed to upload packages
> directly (DM's only their own packages). But the other Maintainer always
> need an sponsor - for every upload. It seems that the most problems are
> packages which are maintained by this group of Maintainer. 
> 
> Is there a way to reduce the number of usual Maintainer? This could help.

Get more people into being DMs.  No better way to learn than to get bug
reports from irate users whose data you've just hosed.

- Matt


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Re: Four days

[Matthew Palmer]

On Mon, Oct 04, 2010 at 11:42:59AM -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> On Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:35:04 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> > Michael Gilbert  writes:
> > 
> > > As someone who has attempted to go through the mentoring process, I
> > > agree very much that it is rather depressing.
> > 
> > How much of that is actually a problem, though? How much is an integral
> > part of gaining humility as to the state of the packaging work, and the
> > pain of learning new conventions and processes?
> 
> The depressing part is that almost no one is interested in being a
> mentor,

A state which isn't helped by the regular complaint that "there's nobody to
sponsor my packageees!".  When I *do* sponsor something, I'm pretty much
guaranteed to get at least one (other) person e-mail me personally with an
RFS that's never seen the light of day here, and it's pretty much always for
something I'd never touch (for some reason, it seems I see a lot of Java
packages that way).  Neither state of affairs encourages me to sponsor
anything.

> so its almost impossible to get your work into Debian, which
> makes the effort seem pointless.

Because having a nice package you can use yourself or put on a website
somewhere has *no* value at all, naturally.

> Note that I've actually succeeded many
> times, but I've also failed many times as well.  And the failures are
> all due to lack of an interested mentor, not due to package quality (a
> bunch of my packages are on mentors.debian.net and lintian clean).

Those are not the be-all and end-all gauges of quality.

> I think that the efficiency of mentoring is the problem that needs to
> be solved.  That could possibly be improved by treating mentoring tasks
> as bugs.  It may also possibly be improved by treating mentoring as a
> team task.  I see the complaint that DDs choose not to mentor because
> they end up stuck with unmaintained packages.  Well, it would be less
> of a burden if those were team maintained (make new mentees part of
> those teams as well).

Because packages that are unmaintained by a team that are indifferent are
not any different, practially speaking, than those that are unmaintained by
one person who is indifferent.

> Maybe mentorship should be a team effort?  Start
> a new group of mentees every month that work together perhaps?

Yeah, that's a great idea!  We should setup a mailing list where they can
get together and ask questions of each other and request someone to sponsor
their packages!

- Matt


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Re: Four days

[Joachim Wiedorn]

Hello,

Michal Čihař  wrote on 2010-10-04 18:14:

> Lack of interested mentors is indeed an issue. Nobody has unlimited
> time and chooses what attracts him. For me it usually means things I
> know and test or which I find interesting after reading RFS email.

I will mention another point: We have Maintainer, Debian Maintainer (DM)
and Debian Developer (DD). DD's and DM's is allowed to upload packages
directly (DM's only their own packages). But the other Maintainer always
need an sponsor - for every upload. It seems that the most problems are
packages which are maintained by this group of Maintainer. 

Is there a way to reduce the number of usual Maintainer? This could help.

Have a nice day,

Joachim (Germany)



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Re: Four days

[Michal Čihař]

Hi

Dne Mon, 4 Oct 2010 11:42:59 -0400
Michael Gilbert  napsal(a):

> On Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:35:04 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> > Michael Gilbert  writes:
> > 
> > > As someone who has attempted to go through the mentoring process, I
> > > agree very much that it is rather depressing.
> > 
> > How much of that is actually a problem, though? How much is an integral
> > part of gaining humility as to the state of the packaging work, and the
> > pain of learning new conventions and processes?
> 
> The depressing part is that almost no one is interested in being a
> mentor, so its almost impossible to get your work into Debian, which
> makes the effort seem pointless. Note that I've actually succeeded many
> times, but I've also failed many times as well.  And the failures are
> all due to lack of an interested mentor, not due to package quality (a
> bunch of my packages are on mentors.debian.net and lintian clean).

Lack of interested mentors is indeed an issue. Nobody has unlimited
time and chooses what attracts him. For me it usually means things I
know and test or which I find interesting after reading RFS email.

The level of this of course depends how heavy I am loaded with other
tasks (what currently means that it is unlikely that some new package
would attract my attention).

> I think that the efficiency of mentoring is the problem that needs to
> be solved.  That could possibly be improved by treating mentoring tasks
> as bugs.

Well it would be definitely useful having better tracked package reviews
and problems found on earlier upload, so that it is clearly visible if
there are still some not fixed issues.


[1]:http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2010/07/msg00183.html


-- 
Michal Čihař | http://cihar.com | http://blog.cihar.com


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Re: Four days

[Michael Gilbert]

On Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:35:04 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> Michael Gilbert  writes:
> 
> > As someone who has attempted to go through the mentoring process, I
> > agree very much that it is rather depressing.
> 
> How much of that is actually a problem, though? How much is an integral
> part of gaining humility as to the state of the packaging work, and the
> pain of learning new conventions and processes?

The depressing part is that almost no one is interested in being a
mentor, so its almost impossible to get your work into Debian, which
makes the effort seem pointless. Note that I've actually succeeded many
times, but I've also failed many times as well.  And the failures are
all due to lack of an interested mentor, not due to package quality (a
bunch of my packages are on mentors.debian.net and lintian clean).

I think that the efficiency of mentoring is the problem that needs to
be solved.  That could possibly be improved by treating mentoring tasks
as bugs.  It may also possibly be improved by treating mentoring as a
team task.  I see the complaint that DDs choose not to mentor because
they end up stuck with unmaintained packages.  Well, it would be less
of a burden if those were team maintained (make new mentees part of
those teams as well).  Maybe mentorship should be a team effort?  Start
a new group of mentees every month that work together perhaps?

Best wishes,
Mike


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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Mon, 4 Oct 2010, Ben Finney wrote:


Asheesh Laroia  writes:


On Mon, 4 Oct 2010, Ben Finney wrote:


So when we identify a point of pain, I think it's essential to ask:
is this pain necessary to the learning process for this person?


Ben, I'm not sure what you're saying. It sounds like you're saying,
"The silent treatment is a useful way to teach people humility."


No, I wasn't speaking only of the lack of responses. (I disagree with
your characterisation of it as “the silent treatment”; that carries the
strong connotation that it is a deliberate punishment on the part of
people who actively choose not to reply to each message. That's not a
point I was making in earlier messages, though.)

The discussion has brought in mention of points of pain other than lack
of responses. I am cautioning against a naive and, in my view, incorrect
focus of finding and removing points of pain as though they are
universally bad.


Ben, I agree with you in general. Not all pain is bad. It is true that we 
should not go around willy-nilly, removing all pain points.


Since we agree on that general point, can you be the watchdog -- that is, 
if we try removing pain points that are necessary or useful, can you 
specifically identify them and remind us why they're worth keeping?


I think that the point of your response is to make a general point and not 
to specifically urge any change in action, but I'm not quite sure. I just 
want to make sure I'm using your messages as you intend them.


Yayfully,

-- Asheesh.

--
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Mon, 4 Oct 2010, Ben Finney wrote:


Asheesh Laroia  writes:


Since we agree on that general point, can you be the watchdog -- that
is, if we try removing pain points that are necessary or useful, can
you specifically identify them and remind us why they're worth
keeping?


Thanks for the offer, but no. I think responsibility for that rests with
each of us: to reject the view that something uncomfortable is
necessarily bad, and to instead look for whether it is serving a useful
purpose.


Sure -- I'll always try to, too.

I think that the point of your response is to make a general point and 
not to specifically urge any change in action, but I'm not quite sure. 
I just want to make sure I'm using your messages as you intend them.


Yes, I want only to ensure that the naive interpretation of “this is 
uncomfortable for newcomers” is examined more thoroughly before action 
is taken.


Got it. Yeah, I believe I examined it in this situation. Let's rush to 
give people pain through direct, actionable feedback to their packages 
rather than pain through silence. That's the idea. If you think it's not 
good then let me know and we'll see if some other plan is better.


-- Asheesh.

--
You may my glories and my state dispose,
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.
-- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"

Re: Four days

[Ben Finney]

Asheesh Laroia  writes:

> Since we agree on that general point, can you be the watchdog -- that
> is, if we try removing pain points that are necessary or useful, can
> you specifically identify them and remind us why they're worth
> keeping?

Thanks for the offer, but no. I think responsibility for that rests with
each of us: to reject the view that something uncomfortable is
necessarily bad, and to instead look for whether it is serving a useful
purpose.

> I think that the point of your response is to make a general point and
> not to specifically urge any change in action, but I'm not quite sure.
> I just want to make sure I'm using your messages as you intend them.

Yes, I want only to ensure that the naive interpretation of “this is
uncomfortable for newcomers” is examined more thoroughly before action
is taken.

-- 
 \ “Perhaps our role on this planet is not to worship God — but to |
  `\  create Him.” —Arthur C. Clarke, 1972 |
_o__)  |
Ben Finney


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Re: Four days

[Ben Finney]

Asheesh Laroia  writes:

> On Mon, 4 Oct 2010, Ben Finney wrote:
>
> > So when we identify a point of pain, I think it's essential to ask:
> > is this pain necessary to the learning process for this person?
>
> Ben, I'm not sure what you're saying. It sounds like you're saying,
> "The silent treatment is a useful way to teach people humility."

No, I wasn't speaking only of the lack of responses. (I disagree with
your characterisation of it as “the silent treatment”; that carries the
strong connotation that it is a deliberate punishment on the part of
people who actively choose not to reply to each message. That's not a
point I was making in earlier messages, though.)

The discussion has brought in mention of points of pain other than lack
of responses. I am cautioning against a naive and, in my view, incorrect
focus of finding and removing points of pain as though they are
universally bad.

Not all pain is bad. As an example: the pain of having one's work
criticised is, in my view, necessary to improving one's work and must be
endured — and, preferably, welcomed as an exercise in learning humility
and considering such criticism in future work.

Rather, points of pain in the process are only bad if they are
unnecessary to the purpose of the process: to teach people to become
better maintainers, as part of the broader purpose of improving Debian.

> If you find that the emails I send to the list are off-topic or
> otherwise bad for the list, then by all means let me know and I'll
> work to improve my behavior.

Not at all, the discussion is good to have.

-- 
 \  “The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the |
  `\ world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports |
_o__)  the strong probability that yours is a fake.” —Henry L. Mencken |
Ben Finney


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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Mon, 4 Oct 2010, Ben Finney wrote:


Michael Gilbert  writes:


As someone who has attempted to go through the mentoring process, I
agree very much that it is rather depressing.


How much of that is actually a problem, though? How much is an integral
part of gaining humility as to the state of the packaging work, and the
pain of learning new conventions and processes?

I'm all in favour of lowering *unnecessary* barriers. But not at the 
expense of the necessary parts of the mentoring process itself: to teach 
prospective maintainers to stand on their own feet and learn what 
doesn't work, as a necessary part of learning what does work.


So when we identify a point of pain, I think it's essential to ask: is 
this pain necessary to the learning process for this person?


Ben, I'm not sure what you're saying. It sounds like you're saying, "The 
silent treatment is a useful way to teach people humility."


I think that our silence teaches a terror based on the unpredictability of 
response on the list. By not responding to people's emails, we create the 
perception that our prospective mentees are not in control over the 
outcome of a situation. A related concept in psychology is "learned 
helplessness", which you can read about at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness if you want.


Often, we don't provide enough feedback to people to say what the problems 
are; so they don't know how to improve things. Even if the problem is just 
"Debian developers are too busy," at least prospective mentees know the 
problem isn't (necessarily) their package -- they now need to get better 
at finding prospective mentors. Maybe they can reach out to their local 
community instead, or they can read the Debian wiki harder and discover 
teams relevant to their package.


Anyway, it's just something Niels and I (and anyone else who wants to) are 
committed to. If you don't want to send any extra emails to the list, 
that's totally fine with me. The point of this thread is to tell mentees 
that they can expect a response within four days. It might be from me, or 
Niels, or anyone else, but my goal is that they'll get one. It doesn't 
create any extra work for you.


If you find that the emails I send to the list are off-topic or otherwise 
bad for the list, then by all means let me know and I'll work to improve 
my behavior.


I hope I've explained a little bit what I mean. It's 1 a.m., so I'm not 
entirely confident. I hope this email comes off with the positive attitude 
that I intend it to!


-- Asheesh.

--
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
-- Dean Martin


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Re: Four days

[Holger Levsen]

Hi,

(order of quotes changed to make things clearer.)

On Montag, 4. Oktober 2010, Asheesh Laroia wrote:
> Even if the "ACK, your message made it to the list" is all people get, to
> many people it means more than that -- it's "a human read it, and
> sympathizes with your lack of sponsorship". Also, the four-days thing
> helps people say, "Well, if this list isn't working for getting a sponsor,
> maybe I should try a different strategy." Just like how you can set a
> timeout on a socket, and if the socket appears to be dead, code can take a
> different action.

I'm ready to applaud your efforts, I think it's a good idea.

> I expect that Niels and I will do it, as I tried to say in my email. We
> will hold the line at 4 days, and hopefully others will reply.

Especially as *you* plan to do it, and don't ask others to! :-)

> I say that because I remember sending out RFS emails to this list and
> getting no answer and feeling less excited about contributing to Debian. I
> see excitement and dedication to Debian as scarce resources.

Absolutly.

I also sympathise with Michaels concerns, but dont think those invalid yours.


cheers,
Holger


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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

Hi Michael! Just a few responses... I think the thread that followed 
answered a lot of your general questions, but I wanted to be sure you 
understood where I am coming from.


On Sun, 3 Oct 2010, Michael Tautschnig wrote:


- As a mentor, as far as RFS are concerned, I can only work on packages where I
 have some proper background. That is, I should be using those packages or work
 on related packages.
- As a mentor, I cannot look at each and every RFS, I'll have to be able to spot
 interesting packages quickly. I therefore ignore all RFS with package names
 where I cannot deduce that they could be relevant for me. Hint: it might be
 useful to add the short description of the main binary package to the subject
 (I have no idea what, e.g., "vavoom" is about).


Indeed! I don't do a lot of sponsoring myself, though I have bit by bit.

The subject line change is a good idea!


- Although debian-mentors is a default destination for RFS, it would probably
 better to contact one of the teams that works on related packages. Again, the
 vavoom package (I now looked at the RFS): Why wasn't
 pkg-games-de...@lists.a.d.o contacted?


Yup -- that's the kind of feedback people deserve in their RFSs, and if we 
find ourselves saying it a lot on the list, someone can come up with a FAQ 
and work on integrating changes to the mentors.debian.net software.


In effect, I want to expose the process problems we have so loudly that 
more people see them, and then they can help come up with solutions.



So I was thinking it would be nice if every email thread got a
public reply within four days. That's a goal that Niels and I have
set, and we hope maybe some of you help too. Even if we reply, "Eek,
I'm swamped. Try again later," I figure that is nicer than hearing
nothing back.


Would you mind to elaborate on the expected benefit of such a step? 
*Whom* would you expect to be doing such replies? Is that more than an 
"ACK, your message made it to the list" (you can check that by looking 
at the list archives as well)? I think you are only curing some 
symptoms, but fail to tackle the underlying root cause (some of which 
might be the points I mentioned above).


I expect that Niels and I will do it, as I tried to say in my email. We 
will hold the line at 4 days, and hopefully others will reply.


Even if the "ACK, your message made it to the list" is all people get, to 
many people it means more than that -- it's "a human read it, and 
sympathizes with your lack of sponsorship". Also, the four-days thing 
helps people say, "Well, if this list isn't working for getting a sponsor, 
maybe I should try a different strategy." Just like how you can set a 
timeout on a socket, and if the socket appears to be dead, code can take a 
different action.


I say that because I remember sending out RFS emails to this list and 
getting no answer and feeling less excited about contributing to Debian. I 
see excitement and dedication to Debian as scarce resources.


Eventually I got that excitement back when a friend of a friend (Mako) 
took interest in sponsoring my packages. If I had reached out to him 
sooner, then I would have become a DD sooner!



In general, I encourage mentees and mentors to consider 4 days the
timeout on your debian-mentors conversations. So if you email your
usual sponsor and don't hear an answer within 4 days, try once more.


I'm not sure how mentees usually handle the situation where a package has
already been sponsored once. I'd expect mentors to be ready to handle further
uploads, and IMHO such RFS shouldn't even pop up on the list. After a few
rounds, people should be both ready and willing to apply for Debian-Maintainer
status.


And yet they do! I find it pretty odd, too. There's perhaps some process 
problem that we don't know about, and I want to help people figure that 
out.


So when the "(updated package)" emails come to the list, and we look at 
those people weird, we can let them know that they should reach back to 
their usual sponsor. Or we can just know that and not tell them.


After another four days, email the list asking for a sponsor 
(explaining that you have a normal sponsor).


Should the mentor indeed be non-responsive, this should be *clearly* 
indicated in the subject of an RFS email to debian-mentors.


Agreed.

I'm hoping to take some of the uncertainty out of the process. What do 
you guys think?


And what other cultural improvements can we make to debian-mentors? 
What else can we do to make this place supportive and helpful for the 
progress of y'all mentees into sparkly Debian contributors and 
developers?




IMHO one of the most important steps would be for mentees to look for 
appropriate teams already working on similar packages. It would actually 
be beneficial if people first subscribed to their respective lists to 
see what's going on there and then try to get in touch with them about a 
new package.


Hope this helps (mentees and mentors alike),


Thanks -- it was helpfu

Re: Four days

[Ben Finney]

Michael Gilbert  writes:

> As someone who has attempted to go through the mentoring process, I
> agree very much that it is rather depressing.

How much of that is actually a problem, though? How much is an integral
part of gaining humility as to the state of the packaging work, and the
pain of learning new conventions and processes?

I'm all in favour of lowering *unnecessary* barriers. But not at the
expense of the necessary parts of the mentoring process itself: to teach
prospective maintainers to stand on their own feet and learn what
doesn't work, as a necessary part of learning what does work.

So when we identify a point of pain, I think it's essential to ask: is
this pain necessary to the learning process for this person?

-- 
 \ “I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now that I should |
  `\   have been more specific.” —Jane Wagner, via Lily Tomlin |
_o__)  |
Ben Finney


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Re: Four days

[Michael Gilbert]

On Fri, 1 Oct 2010 19:00:36 -0400 (EDT) Asheesh Laroia wrote:

> Hey everyone,
> 
> Niels Thykier and I were talking on #debian-mentors. I was saying that I 
> find the debian-mentors list kind of lonely and impersonal -- it's mostly 
> RFSs, and so many emails don't even get an answer.
> 
> How depressing!
> 
> So I was thinking it would be nice if every email thread got a public 
> reply within four days. That's a goal that Niels and I have set, and we 
> hope maybe some of you help too. Even if we reply, "Eek, I'm swamped. Try 
> again later," I figure that is nicer than hearing nothing back.
> 
> In general, I encourage mentees and mentors to consider 4 days the 
> timeout on your debian-mentors conversations. So if you email your usual 
> sponsor and don't hear an answer within 4 days, try once more. After 
> another four days, email the list asking for a sponsor (explaining that 
> you have a normal sponsor).
> 
> I'm hoping to take some of the uncertainty out of the process. What do you 
> guys think?
> 
> And what other cultural improvements can we make to debian-mentors? What 
> else can we do to make this place supportive and helpful for the progress 
> of y'all mentees into sparkly Debian contributors and developers?

As someone who has attempted to go through the mentoring process, I
agree very much that it is rather depressing.

I think a possibly good solution would be to set up a
mentors.debian.net bug page (similar to other debian resources such as
[0]).  That would make it much clearer which mentoring tasks are still
open.  It would also make it possible categorize new submissions, which
would help potential mentors focus on their areas of interest.

Best wishes,
Mike

[0] http://bugs.debian.org/release.debian.org


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Re: Four days

[Michael Tautschnig]

[...]

> > 
> > - Briefly looking at http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2010/09/
> >   it seems that the number of emails not being responded to by anyone is not
> >   that high. Furthermore it seems there's a lot more to this list than just 
> > RFS.
> >   And I found only a single non-RFS email that wasn't responded to.
> 
> Manually counting all the unanswered emails to d-mentors for 2010-09 I get:
> 
> RFS QA: 1
> RFS: 34
> RFS NMU: 1
> non-RFS: 1
> 
> or 37 unanswered emails. This includes duplicates like "2nd"/"3rd" ping.
> When I counted I assumed any email that had received a reply was
> answered satisfactory, btw.
> 
> Personally I would like to see that 37 drop closer to 0.
> 

See also pabs' messages: Working on RFS as mentors can apparently be just as
depressing. In other (more drastic) words: I see no good reason to respond to
SPAM/UBE (the sheer amount of RFS makes them bulk email, and low quality makes
them unsolicited). I just feel it's only mentors being blamed for not responding
in time, but did any of today's RFS submitters (and potential mentees) actually
read this thread? 

> > - As a mentor, as far as RFS are concerned, I can only work on packages 
> > where I
> >   have some proper background. That is, I should be using those packages or 
> > work
> >   on related packages. 
> 
> I agree that we cannot expect that any DD can sponsor any given package
> dumped on d-mentor. But if we see an RFS remain unanswered we can have a
> look at it and try to associate the package with the relevant teams or
> keywords (e.g. as you did with vavoom -> contact games team).
> 

Maybe mentors.d.n could include a link to http://wiki.debian.org/Teams? 

> > - As a mentor, I cannot look at each and every RFS, I'll have to be able to 
> > spot
> >   interesting packages quickly. I therefore ignore all RFS with package 
> > names
> >   where I cannot deduce that they could be relevant for me. Hint: it might 
> > be
> >   useful to add the short description of the main binary package to the 
> > subject
> >   (I have no idea what, e.g., "vavoom" is about).
> 
> Perhaps we can extend mentor's RFS template to recommend such a
> practise? And even in the case where mentees do not do it (good enough
> to easily "sort" the package) we can (as explained above) spend the
> 10-20 minutes to write review the email + d/control file and come with a
> suggestion for whom to contact or simply reply with a "this package is
> this and that" so other DDs can easier find it.
> 

Well, I cannot easily afford that time of spending 10 minutes or more for each
and every (or, say, every fith) RFS. This isn't kindergarten. For example, I
would expect people sending something to this list to have been lingering around
for a while, just a netiquette suggests. Under this assumption people sending
and RFS later today should have read our conversation here. Either they ignored
it or didn't even read it (I actively refuse to read what "RFS: nesc" or "RFS:
fritzing" are about, but those RFS have received attention anyhow).

> > - Although debian-mentors is a default destination for RFS, it would 
> > probably
> >   better to contact one of the teams that works on related packages. Again, 
> > the
> >   vavoom package (I now looked at the RFS): Why wasn't
> >   pkg-games-de...@lists.a.d.o contacted?
> > 
> 
> Agreed; it would be nice if we could have mentors.d.n recommend this
> (particularly if it could come with educated guesses based on the source
> package).
> 

See suggested link above.

[...]

> 
> I very much agree with this one; though the question is how do we
> promote this better to mentees (particularly first time mentees)? One
> would be adding it to the mentors.d.n RFS template, but can you think of
> other things?
>   I /think/ the "New Maintainers Guide" recently was updated to promote
> teams as well, but I could be wrong.
> 

How do people actually find their way to this list? It seems that mentors.d.n is
widely adopted, so adding information to the template or even a checklist before
the RFS template is shown could be very effective. 

I might sound a bit harsh in several points; I don't (yet) share pabs'
frustration, but maybe just because I do only pick up a very small number of
RFS. I just felt the initial post in this thread completely left out the aspect
that also mentees could do better. Sure, mentors could do a lot better, but this
must be a collaborative effort.

Best,
Michael



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Re: Four days

[Raymond Wan]

Hi Paul,

Thank you for answering my queries so quickly; obviously, I didn't
know many of the things you listed.


On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 01:20, Paul Wise  wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 12:07 AM, Raymond Wan  wrote:
>> following the checklist, then maybe consider a temporary "black
>> list"...i.e., they can't ask for a sponsor for a fixed amount of time
>> or a particular package is blocked for a fixed amount of time.  Seems
>> worrying if mentors' time is being abused...maybe it is ok now [???]
>> but if things continue, then their time could be used for other things
>> (i.e., replying on this mailing list, which was the start of this
>> thread?).
>
> There are many checklists, none automated, except for lintian, which
> is used in many RFS mails, but many folks rely on the outdated version
> on mentors.d.n that doesn't run the full battery of lintian tests.


Ah!  Thanks for the links!  I guess one point is that there is neither
a "reward system" or a "penalty system" (i.e., temporary black list?)
for people to get it right before asking a mentor to sponsor a
package.  Maybe that's harsh...but the workload should be moved down
the hierarchy...not up.  :-)


> Yes, (many many) packages are removed:
>
> http://ftp-master.debian.org/#pending
> http://ftp-master.debian.org/#removed
> http://wiki.debian.org/ftpmaster_Removals
>
> Some of these are useful and others not. Personally I'd like to see
> more removals and automated removals to motivate folks to keep their
> stuff in shape.


Thanks!  I didn't know about the list of removals.

Looking at the Wiki page, it seems the conditions for removal are
pretty low.  It would be nice if "no longer maintained" was added to
the list.  (Maybe calculated from when it was last touched and how
many outstanding bugs are there and how long have they not been
addressed, with some kind of grace period.)  Of course, if it hasn't
been touched for a while but is "problem free", then there is no
reason to remove it.

I presume this is what you mean by "keep their stuff in shape"...

Thanks again for the info!

Ray


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Re: Four days

[Paul Wise]

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 12:07 AM, Raymond Wan  wrote:

> But about Paul's message, one thing that would be nice to have is a
> checklist or a "decision tree" for people to submit proposed packages.
>  I did look through the documentation on how to create a package and
> it is complete...but as with all things that are complete, it is also
> a bit verbose.  :-)  But besides the checklist already there, perhaps
> have one which has "yes/no" questions and if they are all yes', then
> it's time to find a sponsor.  If a mentor finds out they were lax in
> following the checklist, then maybe consider a temporary "black
> list"...i.e., they can't ask for a sponsor for a fixed amount of time
> or a particular package is blocked for a fixed amount of time.  Seems
> worrying if mentors' time is being abused...maybe it is ok now [???]
> but if things continue, then their time could be used for other things
> (i.e., replying on this mailing list, which was the start of this
> thread?).

There are many checklists, none automated, except for lintian, which
is used in many RFS mails, but many folks rely on the outdated version
on mentors.d.n that doesn't run the full battery of lintian tests.

http://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html
http://wiki.debian.org/SponsorChecklist
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsNet#Metrics

> I also have another question as someone who is just a user and
> probably doesn't know much.  But are packages that are uploaded into
> Debian ever removed?  I've used Debian for many years and I think it
> is great how all the packages work together flawlessly, but one minor
> annoyance is the number of packages that do the same thing.  Having a
> choice is always great, but one cannot tell if a package is actively
> maintained or was someone's "pet package" that isn't looked after
> anymore.

Yes, (many many) packages are removed:

http://ftp-master.debian.org/#pending
http://ftp-master.debian.org/#removed
http://wiki.debian.org/ftpmaster_Removals

Some of these are useful and others not. Personally I'd like to see
more removals and automated removals to motivate folks to keep their
stuff in shape.

Looking at the package's PTS page is one of the best ways to find out
if a package is actively maintained:

http://packages.qa.debian.org/common/index.html

> Or maybe there is an option to "aptitude" that lists the packages in
> order of last update?

That wouldn't be that helpful unless it could differentiate
maintainer-uploads from one-shot NMUs to fix RC bugs.

> Even so, I haven't heard of a way for neglected packages to leave
> Debian.  Is it possible or is it because distribution by CDs and even
> DVDs is disappearing, it doesn't matter anymore?

See above.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: Four days

[Raymond Wan]

Hi all,

I'm not involved in either mentoring nor creating...just lurking on
the mailing list.  :-)


On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 00:21, Paul Wise  wrote:
> An expansion...
>
> I used to do regular reviews of every unanswered recent RFS. Mostly I
> stopped doing those due to lack of time. After a while doing them got
> demotivating due to the amount of problems with most packages and the
> lack of response to issues, or if there was a response there were a
> few things fixed but everything else ignored. During this my policy
> was to not sponsor any packages, just to improve their quality.
>
> If mentors.d.n were to gain the quality metrics stuff planned for
> debexpo, perhaps the average quality of RFS entries would go up and
> reviewing and uploading packages would be enjoyable again. If that
> were to happen I would definitely set the metrics I would like to see
> in my profile and look at packages that met those criteria.


But about Paul's message, one thing that would be nice to have is a
checklist or a "decision tree" for people to submit proposed packages.
 I did look through the documentation on how to create a package and
it is complete...but as with all things that are complete, it is also
a bit verbose.  :-)  But besides the checklist already there, perhaps
have one which has "yes/no" questions and if they are all yes', then
it's time to find a sponsor.  If a mentor finds out they were lax in
following the checklist, then maybe consider a temporary "black
list"...i.e., they can't ask for a sponsor for a fixed amount of time
or a particular package is blocked for a fixed amount of time.  Seems
worrying if mentors' time is being abused...maybe it is ok now [???]
but if things continue, then their time could be used for other things
(i.e., replying on this mailing list, which was the start of this
thread?).


> Another demotivator is people who treat the archive as a dumping
> ground for their pet package; do a one-shot upload to get it in and
> essentially leave it orphaned after that. I tried to avoid that by
> having a policy of not sponsoring anything, but I still have a few
> such packages on my DDPO page. I'm not sure how to avoid that but
> actually upload stuff regularly.


I also have another question as someone who is just a user and
probably doesn't know much.  But are packages that are uploaded into
Debian ever removed?  I've used Debian for many years and I think it
is great how all the packages work together flawlessly, but one minor
annoyance is the number of packages that do the same thing.  Having a
choice is always great, but one cannot tell if a package is actively
maintained or was someone's "pet package" that isn't looked after
anymore.

Or maybe there is an option to "aptitude" that lists the packages in
order of last update?

Even so, I haven't heard of a way for neglected packages to leave
Debian.  Is it possible or is it because distribution by CDs and even
DVDs is disappearing, it doesn't matter anymore?

Just a few thoughts...thanks!

Ray


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Re: Four days

[Paul Wise]

An expansion...

I used to do regular reviews of every unanswered recent RFS. Mostly I
stopped doing those due to lack of time. After a while doing them got
demotivating due to the amount of problems with most packages and the
lack of response to issues, or if there was a response there were a
few things fixed but everything else ignored. During this my policy
was to not sponsor any packages, just to improve their quality.

If mentors.d.n were to gain the quality metrics stuff planned for
debexpo, perhaps the average quality of RFS entries would go up and
reviewing and uploading packages would be enjoyable again. If that
were to happen I would definitely set the metrics I would like to see
in my profile and look at packages that met those criteria.

Another demotivator is people who treat the archive as a dumping
ground for their pet package; do a one-shot upload to get it in and
essentially leave it orphaned after that. I tried to avoid that by
having a policy of not sponsoring anything, but I still have a few
such packages on my DDPO page. I'm not sure how to avoid that but
actually upload stuff regularly.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: Four days

[Paul Wise]

It probably would help most if more DDs had time for and interest in
sponsoring and mentoring new people.

Maybe you and others could blog about your rewarding experiences in
helping folks out on -mentors in order to encourage other DDs to help
out.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: Four days

[Niels Thykier]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On 2010-10-03 13:16, Michael Tautschnig wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
>> Hey everyone,
>>
>> Niels Thykier and I were talking on #debian-mentors. I was saying
>> that I find the debian-mentors list kind of lonely and impersonal --
>> it's mostly RFSs, and so many emails don't even get an answer.
>>
>> How depressing!
>>
> 
> While I can understand your feelings, I still have several questions and
> somewhat contradictory remarks. Obviously I can only speak for myself.
> 
> - Briefly looking at http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2010/09/
>   it seems that the number of emails not being responded to by anyone is not
>   that high. Furthermore it seems there's a lot more to this list than just 
> RFS.
>   And I found only a single non-RFS email that wasn't responded to.

Manually counting all the unanswered emails to d-mentors for 2010-09 I get:

RFS QA: 1
RFS: 34
RFS NMU: 1
non-RFS: 1

or 37 unanswered emails. This includes duplicates like "2nd"/"3rd" ping.
When I counted I assumed any email that had received a reply was
answered satisfactory, btw.

Personally I would like to see that 37 drop closer to 0.

> - As a mentor, as far as RFS are concerned, I can only work on packages where 
> I
>   have some proper background. That is, I should be using those packages or 
> work
>   on related packages. 

I agree that we cannot expect that any DD can sponsor any given package
dumped on d-mentor. But if we see an RFS remain unanswered we can have a
look at it and try to associate the package with the relevant teams or
keywords (e.g. as you did with vavoom -> contact games team).

> - As a mentor, I cannot look at each and every RFS, I'll have to be able to 
> spot
>   interesting packages quickly. I therefore ignore all RFS with package names
>   where I cannot deduce that they could be relevant for me. Hint: it might be
>   useful to add the short description of the main binary package to the 
> subject
>   (I have no idea what, e.g., "vavoom" is about).

Perhaps we can extend mentor's RFS template to recommend such a
practise? And even in the case where mentees do not do it (good enough
to easily "sort" the package) we can (as explained above) spend the
10-20 minutes to write review the email + d/control file and come with a
suggestion for whom to contact or simply reply with a "this package is
this and that" so other DDs can easier find it.

> - Although debian-mentors is a default destination for RFS, it would probably
>   better to contact one of the teams that works on related packages. Again, 
> the
>   vavoom package (I now looked at the RFS): Why wasn't
>   pkg-games-de...@lists.a.d.o contacted?
> 

Agreed; it would be nice if we could have mentors.d.n recommend this
(particularly if it could come with educated guesses based on the source
package).

>> So I was thinking it would be nice if every email thread got a
>> public reply within four days. That's a goal that Niels and I have
>> set, and we hope maybe some of you help too. Even if we reply, "Eek,
>> I'm swamped. Try again later," I figure that is nicer than hearing
>> nothing back.
>>
> 
> Would you mind to elaborate on the expected benefit of such a step? *Whom*
> would you expect to be doing such replies? Is that more than an "ACK, your
> message made it to the list" (you can check that by looking at the list 
> archives
> as well)? I think you are only curing some symptoms, but fail to tackle the
> underlying root cause (some of which might be the points I mentioned above). 
> 

Personally I would hope any mentor and possibly also non-DDs with
experience could help with this. Again they do not have to sponsor ever
RFS they reply to, either promote its "keywords" or (if possible)
redirect it to a team that handles the particular type of packages.

>> In general, I encourage mentees and mentors to consider 4 days the
>> timeout on your debian-mentors conversations. So if you email your
>> usual sponsor and don't hear an answer within 4 days, try once more.
> 
> I'm not sure how mentees usually handle the situation where a package has
> already been sponsored once. I'd expect mentors to be ready to handle further
> uploads, and IMHO such RFS shouldn't even pop up on the list. After a few
> rounds, people should be both ready and willing to apply for Debian-Maintainer
> status. 
> 

In my case I have been lucky; my sponsors always said "Feel free to send
your next RFS for this package to me directly" for my
non-team-maintained packages.

>> After another four days, email the list asking for a sponsor
>> (explaining that you have a normal sponsor).
>>
> 
> Should the mentor indeed be non-responsive, this should be *clearly* indicated
> in the subject of an RFS email to debian-mentors.
> 

True. If you see a RFS age away, where the mentee has forgotten to write
this in the subject and you would not sponsor it yourself (e.g. because
it is outside your domain), you could simply follow up with a "Usual
sponsor i

Re: Four days

[Michael Tautschnig]

Hi all,

> Hey everyone,
> 
> Niels Thykier and I were talking on #debian-mentors. I was saying
> that I find the debian-mentors list kind of lonely and impersonal --
> it's mostly RFSs, and so many emails don't even get an answer.
> 
> How depressing!
> 

While I can understand your feelings, I still have several questions and
somewhat contradictory remarks. Obviously I can only speak for myself.

- Briefly looking at http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2010/09/
  it seems that the number of emails not being responded to by anyone is not
  that high. Furthermore it seems there's a lot more to this list than just RFS.
  And I found only a single non-RFS email that wasn't responded to.
- As a mentor, as far as RFS are concerned, I can only work on packages where I
  have some proper background. That is, I should be using those packages or work
  on related packages. 
- As a mentor, I cannot look at each and every RFS, I'll have to be able to spot
  interesting packages quickly. I therefore ignore all RFS with package names
  where I cannot deduce that they could be relevant for me. Hint: it might be
  useful to add the short description of the main binary package to the subject
  (I have no idea what, e.g., "vavoom" is about).
- Although debian-mentors is a default destination for RFS, it would probably
  better to contact one of the teams that works on related packages. Again, the
  vavoom package (I now looked at the RFS): Why wasn't
  pkg-games-de...@lists.a.d.o contacted?

> So I was thinking it would be nice if every email thread got a
> public reply within four days. That's a goal that Niels and I have
> set, and we hope maybe some of you help too. Even if we reply, "Eek,
> I'm swamped. Try again later," I figure that is nicer than hearing
> nothing back.
> 

Would you mind to elaborate on the expected benefit of such a step? *Whom*
would you expect to be doing such replies? Is that more than an "ACK, your
message made it to the list" (you can check that by looking at the list archives
as well)? I think you are only curing some symptoms, but fail to tackle the
underlying root cause (some of which might be the points I mentioned above). 

> In general, I encourage mentees and mentors to consider 4 days the
> timeout on your debian-mentors conversations. So if you email your
> usual sponsor and don't hear an answer within 4 days, try once more.

I'm not sure how mentees usually handle the situation where a package has
already been sponsored once. I'd expect mentors to be ready to handle further
uploads, and IMHO such RFS shouldn't even pop up on the list. After a few
rounds, people should be both ready and willing to apply for Debian-Maintainer
status. 

> After another four days, email the list asking for a sponsor
> (explaining that you have a normal sponsor).
> 

Should the mentor indeed be non-responsive, this should be *clearly* indicated
in the subject of an RFS email to debian-mentors.

> I'm hoping to take some of the uncertainty out of the process. What
> do you guys think?
> 
> And what other cultural improvements can we make to debian-mentors?
> What else can we do to make this place supportive and helpful for
> the progress of y'all mentees into sparkly Debian contributors and
> developers?
> 

IMHO one of the most important steps would be for mentees to look for
appropriate teams already working on similar packages. It would actually be
beneficial if people first subscribed to their respective lists to see what's
going on there and then try to get in touch with them about a new package.

Hope this helps (mentees and mentors alike),
Michael



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Re: Four days

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Sat, 2 Oct 2010, David D Lowe wrote:


Hello Asheesh.

As a mentee, this sounds like a great idea. It can get quite 
discouraging when you don't get any replies to your RFS. I like the 
implicit permission to remind people of your RFS after four days. So 
far, I haven't dared to do that: I've just waited for the next upstream 
release of my package.


David D Lowe


Thanks for the kind words! Let's see how this goes (-:

-- Asheesh.

--
You will be Told about it Tomorrow.  Go Home and Prepare Thyself.


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Re: Four days

[David D Lowe]

Hello Asheesh.

As a mentee, this sounds like a great idea. It can get quite 
discouraging when you don't get any replies to your RFS. I like the 
implicit permission to remind people of your RFS after four days. So 
far, I haven't dared to do that: I've just waited for the next upstream 
release of my package.


David D Lowe



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