[followups directed at the arc-discuss alias]
At 427 messages (and counting), the ksh93 case (2006/550) was anything
but a typical fasttrack. Leaving the details of the project to Don,
April and others, I'd like to focus on the things we in the ARC
community learned from doing this review:
o It was not clear to the ksh93-integration community that a
bunch of outsiders (the ARC community) had just joined them
in their discussions.
This lead to confusion about what these newcomers
knew and didn't know about the project. Since
project team members presumed (correctly) that
new community/project members would read/scan the
project archives before initiating a new conversation,
they were surprised when the ARC people showed up
with only the case materials for context. The
ARC members were at a disadvantage in the discussions
because they didn't know that they were missing
important project context and history.
TAKE AWAY: The case submitters need to make sure
that their project/community is aware that
a discussion is being initiated that will
involve a larger audience. For example:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/arc/handbook/arc-invite/
TAKE AWAY: Since the ARC members don't always have
the luxury of doing significant independent
research, the project teams or case submitters
should provide the ARC with any background
info it may need to understand the issues.
In many cases, this can be done by providing a
short summery in the fasttrack introduction message
that includes pointers to mail archives for
relevant historical discussion threads.
TAKE AWAY: In more complicated cases, this "learning"
is done as a natural part of the review cycle, but
in the case of first time fasttracks like this
one, it needs special attention.
o The discussion was hampered by posting delays caused by a
combination of manual moderation and timezones.
The OpenSolaris website team and the moderaters
involved are working on solutions to the mailman
part of the problem, and I am working on some changes
to the ARC mail handling tools within Sun.
TAKE AWAY: For cases that generate large volumes
of email, read all the replies to date before posting
to see if your comment was already made by someone
else. Realize that some participants live in other
timezones and may take several hours to respond.
o The shear volume of messages made it hard to follow the case.
This case was a learning experience for all of us.
As such, the case was atypical - "normal" fasttracks
are expected to be simple and noncontroversial; they
end up having less than a dozen or so email messages,
total. If you think abnout it, the concepts of "large
volumes of email" and "noncontroversial" are pretty
much at odds, implying that such projects really
were not good fasttrack candidates in the first place.
As we learn and understand how to do these reviews,
I expect future cases to generate much less email.
More info on the OpenSolaris development process can
be found at
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/arc/handbook/arc-dev-process/
o The conversation needed a glossary of words and acronyms.
TAKE AWAY: See the new Glossary FAQ on Genunix:
http://www.genunix.org/wiki/index.php/Glossary_FAQ
o Some participants lost sight of the fact that Sun is made up of
human beings. This lead to disrespectful statements and
accusations, as well as presumptions that Sun was a single
entity.
TAKE AWAY: Postings with personal attacks or derogatory
statements are never appropriate. If you find yourself
saying things like "obviously", "stupid" or "Sun decided",
please stop and rethink what you are really trying to say.
If you can not find a more helpful or precise way of saying
what you mean (such as "It looks like you may have missed
the discussion we had _here_ last week, where we concluded
with this _summery_", or "I thought that PSARC decided this
when it approved case yyyy/ccc"), or of your intent is to
vent your frustrations and be insulting, then maybe you
should simply delete your message before posting it.
Factual, technical and insightful content is always welcome
in ARC discussions; flames, flame bait and rude behavior
isn't.
TAKE AWAY: Sun is inanimate. Asking it questions won't
produce useful results. It doesn't make decisions. It
certainly is not on this mailing list. We need to
keep in mind that it is _people_ who do the work, answer
questions, decide on policies and (sometimes) even make
mistakes. Don't generalize; find out who the people are
and engage with _them_ and we will find that we get
quicker responses and better results.
-John Plocher
OpenSolaris ARC Community
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