I think the tool is useful, but perhaps we’re a little premature? If we could get some more people like yourself having one on ones with PMCs, that seems to work better than any form of advertising these services has had so far. If we could get a subset of the PMCs who really are interested in D&I, then we could advertise new tools and research findings to them first. If some communities would prefer to ignore us or similar topics, that’s their choice as long as they aren’t interfering with other PMCs’ choices.
Matt Sicker > On Aug 31, 2021, at 11:50, Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com> wrote: > > > >> On 8/31/21 12:24 PM, sebb wrote: >> >> That seems to me to be an overreaction. > > Yes, I can see that it would seem that way without a larger context. The > number of messages I have received on various lists, and off-list, calling > this effort wrong/bad/evil, have been ... demoralizing, shall we say? > >> In my case, I have no complaints about the purpose of the analysis. >> It's the excessing false positives and UI of the software that is the >> problem, combined with a poorly worded email. > > I appreciate that you have no complaints about the purpose of the analysis. > Others do, and have made those complaints both very obvious and very personal. > > While this is often the case with this conversation, the vitriol this time > has been somewhat disturbing. And that's from someone who has had this > conversation with probably 200 projects over the past 18 months. > >> I think what needs to happen is for a detailed investigation of the >> results, especially for projects that have lots of hits, so that the >> scanning can be properly tuned. >> It's pretty obvious at present that the scanning is far too eager to >> report issues (and not just master in URLs). > > I disagree. I think that highlighting all potential problematic words/phrases > is part of the message, whether or not the project in question feels the need > to address all of them. The purpose here is to make people aware of how the > words/phrases in their code and documentation affect other people. > >> There also needs to be some work on the UI, to make it easier to >> ignore individual files, and to make it easier to actually edit the >> source files. > > It is not the goal of the tool to make editing source files easy or even > possible. It's a code analysis tool. Sure, it could link to the file in the > target repository, which may be what you're asking for. But it's not intended > to be a remediation tool. > >> There are some other issue no doubt. >> Once the reports are usable without lots of effort by projects, then >> maybe start inviting a few random projects to see if they have any >> feedback on the analysis. >> Fix any issues, and gradually increase the number of projects. >> It might be an idea to send a follow-up email to explain why all the >> projects have been removed. > > One of the things we were reprimanded for was sending a cross-project email > about this topic in the first place. As such, I won't be advocating sending a > followup email on the same topic. Someone else is, of course, welcome to > pursue that avenue. > >> Though I think it would have been better to keep the projects (apart >> from retired ones), but send an email to say that the analyses are >> currently at the alpha stage, and solicit feedback on improving the >> scanning. > > They're *not* at an alpha stage. Those words *do* appear in the code. And I'm > already using this same tool elsewhere, as part of my day job. It's a tool. > It wasn't the tool that people objected to. It was the analysis. > >> That way might result in analyses that projects actually want. > > My take-away was that the projects *don't* want this analysis. > > > -- > Rich Bowen - rbo...@rcbowen.com > @rbowen
