On Oct 23, 2011, at 6:29 AM, Dan Brickley wrote: > [snip] > > Interesting discussion, and maybe a good time for those of us making > use of all this code to remember to say 'thanks'. So, er yeah, thanks. > > One thing I would like to bring up, as you talk this stuff through, is > that there are a few of us on the periphery of Mahout development, > e.g. who might have helped track down a bug or few, or suggested a > patch, but who are more on the user side of the fence than core > developers or "committer material". > > Maybe you can think about ways of making more use of us, or more > targeted use?
Docs is one obvious one. Also, just keep supplying patches. > I guess the possibilities vary from case to case. For my > part I've gone chasing into specific issues when they've stood between > me and getting some job done, and that's hard to target. > > I've never quite felt sure how to feel about opening JIRAs here. I > used it previously in a more corporate environment which set different > expectations. With Apache/Mahout I always feel a bit guilty opening > something I'm not likely to try fixing myself. You should not feel guilty about that at all. An open issue at least makes others away and a half done patch is better than no patch at all. > > Would you prefer us to keep some stronger sense of ownership / > commitment when we raise them? That's ideal. This is definitely the path to being a committer. > Or maybe it's best to make sure > everything is recorded in JIRA, even if there's no followup from the > reporting party. > > Lemme see... > https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/ViewProfile.jspa?name=danbri > for examples ... > Ok, I filed https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-804 "Each > page in Mahout's Confluence Wiki has 2 URLs, with differing page > styles and search behaviours" and it's just sat there, and I feel a > bit like it comes over light pointless complaining; probably you all > knew the wiki was a bit messy, and everyone's busy, so it doesn't > really need a JIRA. This has to do with the fact that we are misusing Confluence. ASF says our site is supposed to link to the auto export site (the crappy looking one) but the auto export plugin looks like crap compared to the main one. So, without digging into Confluence and the auto export plugin, it's hard to know what to do. > There are a few other more technical JIRAs I've > either opened or followed and could/should try to be a bit more > disciplined about getting to closure. > > Are there less core pieces of work that can be pushed out to a wider > group, e.g. around documentation? I know managing a pool of > contributors itself takes time,but maybe a few more notes in > https://cwiki.apache.org/MAHOUT/how-to-contribute.html could help > spread the load? Absolutely! Also, we as a community should be willing to make committers of people who do this on a regular basis. There is no requirement that a committer has to have total knowledge of all the stuff Mahout does. I also believe the bar should be pretty low in terms of committership. 3-5 good patches, a willingness to work in the community and a demonstration that a person knows when something is outside of their scope. > > This query looks useful: > https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=true&jqlQuery=resolution+%3D+Unresolved+AND+reporter+%3D+currentUser%28%29 > > (... so I've just taken the liberty of adding it into > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAHOUT/How+To+Contribute ) > > It reminds me I opened these: > * https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-839 "rowid job failing > (when parsing options)" > ... I submitted a patch but using the wrong APIs; it needs just a > one-liner fix to close. On my "been meaning to..." list. > * https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-834 "rowsimilarityjob > doesn't clean it's temp dir, and fails when seeing it again" > ... doesn't seem to be agreement on whether this is an issue. I've > been wondering whether to make a patch. > * https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-804 "Each page in > Mahout's Confluence Wiki has 2 URLs, with differing page styles and > search behaviours" ...is me talking to myself. Hard to know how to > help here. > > So I don't want to de-rail discussion into the detail of these > specific JIRAs; but rather to take them as example of what it's like > to be a Mahout user and run into some issue, reported via mail or > JIRA. The way things are framed now sort of sets things up for us to > report a problem and then just wait for "you guys" to do the hard work > of fixing it. Maybe there are some tricks for widening the workforce > without creating a huge coordination and management burden for the > core committers? Totally agree.
