On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 6:44 PM, Michael Schwendt <mschwe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Jul 2015 15:25:05 -0400, Ben Rosser wrote: > > > Speaking as someone who relatively recently went through the process > though > > (and whose package(s) sat in the review tracker for two years): > motivation > > is hard to come by when it looks like you're not going to get sponsored > > because (you think) nobody cares about your package. > > ??? When exactly in the process does it look like you're not going to > get sponsored? After a week? After a month? After having done 2-3 reviews > and linked those reviews in the needsponsor ticket(s)? After having pointed > at that work in a post to devel@ list? > > I would need to see your initial review requests to comment on this > issue further. > > I don't really want to turn this thread into a "why didn't I get sponsored sooner?" thread (and in fact, looking back, I'd guess not linking the two informal reviews I did wasn't a good thing). But since I brought it up... https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=823679 In fact, you yourself were the first reviewer. I guess I could have emailed you privately, but... > Nowadays, I consider the review queue as very tiresome. I've commented > on many tickets, I even have made clear behind my name in bugzilla that > I'm in the packager sponsors group, but nobody has taken that as > opportunity to email me privately. The time when new contributors did > that is gone. > > As a potential new contributor, I never felt encouraged to email potential package sponsors privately, as I didn't know any of them. I never felt encouraged to bug a SIG (because while I was packaging a piece of Python software, it was hardly a major piece of software or anything). I wanted to package a piece of software I was considering using for a project, because it wasn't already in the distribution and I liked Fedora enough that I wanted to contribute something upstream. So I followed the procedure(s) on the wiki, or at least I think I did. I reviewed one or two other packages informally. I assumed that eventually someone who was a sponsor would review my package and tell me what they thought of it. Then maybe ask me to do a few more things, maybe a few more reviews. Tell me what they thought I needed to work on, etc. And, I mean, that eventually did happen. So I guess the system worked. It just took a long time to work.... longer than I would have expected from only reading the documentation on the wiki. > When somebody has not submitted a single ticket in bugzilla, not even > via ABRT, one can not even be sure the person is using Fedora. > So you're saying that reporting bugs against other components in the distribution that aren't necessarily packages is a thing that we are looking for in potential new packagers? That seems reasonable. But this is not indicated on the How To Get Sponsored page. > Then, once someone *does* notice your package, maybe they work with you on > > improving it, ask you to do a few other things, etc. And it becomes a > more > > active process on both sides. At least, that's been my understanding of > the > > process based on what I've read in those guidelines. > > That's one way how to do it. Unfortunately, some of the needsponsor people > don't respond. Some respond after months, saying they have been busy. No > notification of that in the ticket. No response! What would happen if the > package were in the distribution? Somebody would start the non-responsive > maintainer procedure. > > That makes sense, so perhaps we should apply apply some analogy of the non-responsive maintainer procedure to new package requests (by unsponsored contributors, anyway), rather than let their tickets sit in bugzilla for forever without comment? > > It wouldn't be a bad thing, IMO, to (automatically?) ping sufficiently > old > > tickets with a sort of "what's the status on this" and maybe a link to > the > > sponsorship guidelines reminding them that there are other things they > can > > do if they still want to become a packager. > > It's too tiresome IMO. Pinging is frowned upon in other tickets, too. Just > be responsive, keep track of a single ticket that is important to you > because you need it for the sponsorship process. It is severely > demotivating for reviewers as well as sponsors to get no response to > reviews they post in the tickets. > It's demotivating to packagers, especially new ones, when they get no reviews over reasonably lengthy periods of time too. Anyway, I wasn't suggesting we ping more regularly than a year. > Really, I think you're asking for too much, if you expect all > single-package-review-quest-with-no-activity guys to be sponsored > or to be sponsored quickly. > -- > devel mailing list > devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel > Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct > I thought the point of the sponsorship system was to help mentor potential new contributors until they reached the point where someone thought they were competent enough and sufficiently well-versed in our guidelines. While simultaneously providing a hurdle from preventing just anyone from contributing low-quality packages into the distribution. So no, I don't think we should just *sponsor* new contributors instantly or quickly-- I don't want to lower hurdles either. But I also think we shouldn't just let their tickets bit-rot in bugzilla for more than a year without any comment. I don't know what the solution is, necessarily, but it's enough of a problem that someone (else) thought it worth contacting devel@ about. Ben Rosser
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