Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
* Enrico Zini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-05 14:20]: > On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 02:27:36AM +, Martin Michlmayr wrote: > > > Actually, in a recent chatting one of the past DPLs told me that he > > > tried at some point, but the feedback he got was roughly "who cares?". > > Since we talked recently, I'm wondering if you're referring to me. If > > so, I didn't express myself clearly. Let me know if you're referring > > to me and I'll try to elaborate what I meant. > Yup, that was from my memories of our conversation at FOSDEM: I'm sorry > if I have misuderstood or misrepresented you. Sorry for the delay but I've been busy filing 500 or so bug reports. ;-) When I talked to you at FOSDEM, I didn't want to suggest that nobody cares about reports from the DPL. Quite the opposite! I think it's very important to keep people up to date, and that doesn't just apply to the DPL but to everyone. We could do much better actually writing up new developments and announcing them. (See for example the comment by bkoz on http://lwn.net/Articles/177353/#Comments to see what kind of great feedback you can get.) What I tried to express was that I encountered two problems while sending updates during the time I acted as DPL: - Most work done by the DPL is work to keep Debian going but it's not necessarily any sexy work you can announce. When I got asked at conferences what my job entails then I would often answer that a big chunk of my time is making sure that the project actually keeps running. You usually don't see this work - you'd only see it if it didn't get done, because then we'd have all kinds of problems. Many things the DPL does aren't sexy at all but they are necessary tasks to keep the project running smoothly. This can involve work like mediating between people, or obtaining some hardware, sorting out hosting, dealing with legal stuff, etc, etc. There are many small things, but they all add up. So the obvious problem is that much of the work the DPL does is very important, but it's not really debian-devel-announce material. And that's a problem I had as DPL: I didn't want to make monthly postings just for the sake of it, even if there wasn't anything to *announce*. I also felt that people treated me as the Debian News Summarizer rather than the DPL. As DPL, you work together with delegates and basically make sure that they can do their work. What this means is that they do the cool stuff and that *they* should post to d-d-a. In the past I'd summarize what delegates did, but then I increasingly encouraged them to post their own summaries. Again, that's important work - but people don't see that the DPL was actually involved. They only see that a delegate has posted something, give them credit, and go on complaining that the DPL doesn't do anything. (Oh, and I'm *not* saying here that the DPL is behind every posting on d-d-a; but in some cases, they have been involved behind the scenes.) So, what I'm saying is not that reports are useless but that most stuff is not important enough to warrant a d-d-a posting. If I were DPL again, what I'd do is to send small summaries to debian-project (where it *is* okay to send a two-line summary of something, and do that for each item), collect these summaries on a web page (with an RSS feed) and then put them into d-d-a postings every 3 or 6 months. - The second problem was that if you do post something (see the report I sent after 6 months of being DPL) people only complain that you're doing self-promotion... but that's just the typical problem of Debian and free software, i.e. that no matter what you do someone will complain. What I did, and looking back this was a stupid thing, was to say "fuck them all, then I'll just not post what I've been up to". The right thing of course is to ignore such people and do post because the majority appreciates it. But don't assume that just because many people want reports that you'll only get positive responses... In summary: updates are completely crucial, but not everything the DPL does is d-d-a material. Instead, smaller reports should be posted to -project and then summarizes for d-d-a every once in a while. I think some of the things I've just said also came up in the DPL debates this year, but I only skimmed them when it became clear that it was mostly a venue to complain that the DPL doesn't do anything and to ask candidates to justify themselves and explain what they'll do... [Yes, a posting on the tasks the DPL does for my journal is forthcoming. I 'just' need to find the time to dig through my DPL archives to come up with some examples of typical tasks.] -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
On Mon, Mar 06, 2006 at 02:58:04PM +0100, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote: > On Sun, 2006-03-05 at 01:16 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > > Uh, for one thing, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" != "DPL Team". > > Maybe it would have been a good idea then to publicize a point of > contact for your team. You did not, therefore I think Enrico is wrongly > annoyed by the lack of input to the team. I agree that in hindsight, that should've happened. The DPL preferred otherwise, and a consideration was that it was easily for people to just mail the people involved, as email addresses of DD's can be looked up. Several people did so, but not many. > I definately believe that the DPL-team is a good initiative and should > be continued; at the same time I also believe that the past year should > have taught some lessons on what can be improved. Communication is an > important one. Make sure people can actually contact you, and make it > clear that you sollicit input. And when you get it, actually respond to > it, even if it's just a short note, which is a world of difference with > no response at all. I'll have leader@ be forwarded to the whole team. In addition, I'll *actively* sollicit feedback every 3 months, and post results. --Jeroen -- Jeroen van Wolffelaar [EMAIL PROTECTED] (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357) http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 11:16:48AM +0100, Kurt Roeckx wrote: > There was no contact address for the DPL-team, or atleast none > that I know off, so it's rather hard to ask them. The only > available address that I know of is [EMAIL PROTECTED] And as > far as I know, there wasn't even an official list of who was in > the team. Well, there were meeting minutes published, and the platforms listed the initial team contents (which would've missed the later and only addition Mako). We have a Debian LDAP service at db.debian.org which happily would provide you with contact details for any subset of DD's, including for like the DPL team. People did manage to mail the team, and I'd think that the lack of a convenient alias shouldn't be too prohibitive for a technical audience like Debian people are. Anyway, yes, it'd have been better if there were a publicly available contact address. As I understand it, both Andreas and myself are promising to have simply leader@ pointed to the whole team. --Jeroen -- Jeroen van Wolffelaar [EMAIL PROTECTED] (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357) http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 09:49:29AM +0100, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote: > Hello Enrico, > > > But there's more than that. In the last year as part of the DPL Team, > > people have been criticising the last year for the lack of reports. But > > I don't remember a single one sending in a mail like "Dear DPL[-Team], > > what happened last week?". > > > > It would have been a pleasure to answer such a question with something > > like "Hi, thanks for asking. It was mainly reasoning about the Security > > Team, plus approving expenditure of $300 for flying person X to > > conference Y". > > If that would have been a pleasure, I'm wondering why your team did not do > that. > > I've sent just a couple of mails to leader in the past term, less than a > handfull. Of those, I have received exactly zero replies from the DPL, you > or the rest of the team. > > Here are some suggestions for possible answers: > - Thanks for your mail, we're already doing this-and-that to address the > problem; > - Thanks for the input, but I disagree for this reason; > - Good to hear from you, but unfortunately this is currently not a priority; > - I'll consider that the next time such an issue comes along. Yes, one of those (or another) answer should've been returned, I'm sorry for that. > I find it very strange that the DPL(team) explicitly calls for all input, > then ignores that input, and then complains on -vote that they did not get > enough opportunity to tell what they were doing. Well, I for myself can say that this input was not ignored. I re-read your mail (I can only find one in my mailbox), and the issues you raised were a real concern for us. Your mail helped in getting clearer ideas how the current situation was, and as such influenced the direction a bit. I do note that your mail was raising an issue, and calling for some action, rather than asking a question. Which still means it should've gotten an answer, instead of silence -- although I did talk with you privately multiple times about the issue since. Anyway, unless you want to followup relevant for -vote, I suggest we'll continue this discussion privately over a beer or something. --Jeroen -- Jeroen van Wolffelaar [EMAIL PROTECTED] (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357) http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
* Thijs Kinkhorst ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [060306 14:58]: > On Sun, 2006-03-05 at 01:16 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > > Uh, for one thing, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" != "DPL Team". > > Maybe it would have been a good idea then to publicize a point of > contact for your team. You did not, therefore I think Enrico is wrongly > annoyed by the lack of input to the team. > > I definately believe that the DPL-team is a good initiative and should > be continued; at the same time I also believe that the past year should > have taught some lessons on what can be improved. Communication is an > important one. Make sure people can actually contact you, and make it > clear that you sollicit input. And when you get it, actually respond to > it, even if it's just a short note, which is a world of difference with > no response at all. For this reason, Andreas now wants to give everyone in the Team access to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - so the team can be contacted. Cheers, Andi -- http://home.arcor.de/andreas-barth/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
On Sun, 2006-03-05 at 01:16 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > Uh, for one thing, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" != "DPL Team". Maybe it would have been a good idea then to publicize a point of contact for your team. You did not, therefore I think Enrico is wrongly annoyed by the lack of input to the team. I definately believe that the DPL-team is a good initiative and should be continued; at the same time I also believe that the past year should have taught some lessons on what can be improved. Communication is an important one. Make sure people can actually contact you, and make it clear that you sollicit input. And when you get it, actually respond to it, even if it's just a short note, which is a world of difference with no response at all. bye, Thijs signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: DPL reports [was: Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates]
On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 07:59:34PM +0100, Enrico Zini wrote: > On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 11:05:04AM -0500, Kevin B. McCarty wrote: > > Hi Kevin. > > > I'm not sure that I understand the reasons why the efforts couldn't be > > reported, at least to debian-private. Are they one or more of the > > following, and if so, which? > > Among your categories, the ones that most apply are: > > - Not wanting to offend or cause problems for specific Debian developers > - Not wanting to discuss efforts before they were likely to come to fruition > > in some cases, however, it went as far as "we had a hard time not to > start yelling out insults ourselves, go figure if this hits -private". > > One of the big roles of the DPL seem to be to address that sort of > communication that people for some reason aren't carrying out on their > own, and that can't take place on a public (or semipublic) list because > lots of people are frustrated about the issues involved and would make a > somewhat hostile discussion environment. The non disclousure of the things happening behind the scene probably increases the frustration and sometimes leads to an even more hostile disucssion environment. I would hope that disclosing at least some parts of what the team is doing to solve "hot topics" (at least on -private) would decrease frustration and prevent some flamewars on -devel. At least saying something like "We are negotating on problem X with person A and B" should be possible. You don't have to tell everybody what the stance of the involved parties exacatly is if this would hinder further negotiations. But like this "normal" developers at least know that something is going on and that the problem will hopefully get solved sometime sooner or later. Gaudenz -- Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ~ Samuel Beckett ~ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
Martin Schulze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The missing announcement is totally my fault, so please don't blame > any DPL for this. I don't think this is the point. If the DPL had cared about the problem and about transparency, he'd asked you how the service is running and why it hasn't been announced yet; or he had assigned one of the DPL team members to do that. Regards, Frank -- Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX)
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
Frank Küster wrote: > > * Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-05 18:48]: > >> I also asked the DPL a question about backups of the development > >> machines (after the CVS corruption last year) and never got any answer. > > > > FWIW, there is a dedicated backup server now. I don't know any > > details though (nor why it was never announced). > > So you also don't know what is backed up, and how often? I've just looked in my archive and have to admit that I indeed totally forgot to announce this service. I guess one reason for the missing announcement is that the machine broke down two weeks after its installation and the "real" machine proposed for this task hasn't arrived yet, so we had to go with a backup solution. The missing announcement is totally my fault, so please don't blame any DPL for this. I'll craft a text later to be sent to d-d-a. Regards, Joey -- Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
* Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-05 21:05]: > > FWIW, there is a dedicated backup server now. I don't know any > > details though (nor why it was never announced). > So you also don't know what is backed up, and how often? No, I only know that there's a dedicated backup server and that it's located at the University of Darmstadt (who're hosting the unofficial AMD64 archive). -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
Martin Michlmayr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > * Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-05 18:48]: >> I also asked the DPL a question about backups of the development >> machines (after the CVS corruption last year) and never got any answer. > > FWIW, there is a dedicated backup server now. I don't know any > details though (nor why it was never announced). So you also don't know what is backed up, and how often? Regards, Frank -- Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX)
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
Enrico Zini wrote: > I just went back to the mail archive of that time and stopped reading > after a while because of anger rising: lots of good efforts have been > done, and the instant reaction to those was in various case absolutely > disappointing. It's all stuff you can't put in a report: you just have > to swallow, be patient, keep insisting, try new things, "this is going > to be a long-term one". Would it be possible to illistrate this with a few examples? > X: but that isn't fair, we HAVE been doing things! > Y: how do you argue that, without disclosing A, B and C? > X: sucks. > Y: sucks. So why is everything that the DPL is involved in so secretive that they cannot disclose it to the project? It seems that we have a DPL election period where all the candidates try to be very open about where they want to take the project, followed by a DPL term where everything happens in private. Why can the DPL only effectively lead in private? Isn't there a big disconnect there? Anyone else not like this at all? > So we waited until we had something big to show. And that's were we > found out that when something big happens, even if the DPL has been > putting lots of efforts in talking people into making it happen, they > never happen in the name of the DPL. They would if it were clear that the DPL had led the project to this happening, in public[1], surely? -- see shy jo [1] Which can after all, include debian-private. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
* Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-05 18:48]: > I also asked the DPL a question about backups of the development > machines (after the CVS corruption last year) and never got any answer. FWIW, there is a dedicated backup server now. I don't know any details though (nor why it was never announced). -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DPL reports [was: Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates]
On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 11:05:04AM -0500, Kevin B. McCarty wrote: Hi Kevin. > I'm not sure that I understand the reasons why the efforts couldn't be > reported, at least to debian-private. Are they one or more of the > following, and if so, which? Among your categories, the ones that most apply are: - Not wanting to offend or cause problems for specific Debian developers - Not wanting to discuss efforts before they were likely to come to fruition in some cases, however, it went as far as "we had a hard time not to start yelling out insults ourselves, go figure if this hits -private". One of the big roles of the DPL seem to be to address that sort of communication that people for some reason aren't carrying out on their own, and that can't take place on a public (or semipublic) list because lots of people are frustrated about the issues involved and would make a somewhat hostile discussion environment. Or the key people just wouldn't answer on -private for fear that people would inflame, the discussion would turn out useless and their time would be better spent on more practical work. > I apologize for perhaps seeming to pry so much. The very vague > statements you made about things that can't be disclosed really piqued > my curiosity. No problem at all. It sucks to have important discussions happening behind the scenes, actually; besides being generally unfair, one also loses a fair amount of peer support and contributions of good ideas. Ciao, Enrico -- GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
Martin Michlmayr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > However, what you say in your message (if people had > asked for status reports they would've received them) is blatantly > wrong. We did ask, and (usually) no good response was given. I also asked the DPL a question about backups of the development machines (after the CVS corruption last year) and never got any answer. At least one other person told me he had asked about the same, so this would have deserved a public answer. Regards, Frank -- Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX)
DPL reports [was: Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates]
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Enrico, I have some questions about what you've written regarding the DPL reports. Perhaps I am just being dense, but some of it seemed purposely obscure. This probably isn't really germane to debian-vote anymore, so please follow up (if you like) to debian-project or debian-private as you think best. Enrico Zini wrote: > After Sarge released, it was finally the time to go back at all the > overdue big changes that have been delayed to allow Sarge to come out. > > Big issues started to come in, and frustration followed shortly > afterwards when it started to become clear that interaction with all the > parties involved was much more delicate and difficult than what one > would expect. Which issues and which parties do you refer to? Are these issues that have been discussed on public mailing lists and/or debian-private? Are the parties in question Debian developers in specific positions? Outside agencies? > I just went back to the mail archive of that time and stopped reading > after a while because of anger rising: lots of good efforts have been > done, and the instant reaction to those was in various case absolutely > disappointing. It's all stuff you can't put in a report: you just have > to swallow, be patient, keep insisting, try new things, "this is going > to be a long-term one". > > This was the "lots of effort is being done, none of it can be put in a > report" phase. I'm not sure that I understand the reasons why the efforts couldn't be reported, at least to debian-private. Are they one or more of the following, and if so, which? - - Already reported on by some other team (e.g. DWN) - - Irrelevant to the vast majority of DDs - - Would be necessary to reveal people's private personal information in order to discuss them - - Security embargos (possibly could still go to debian-private) - - Not wanting to offend or interfere with negotiations with certain outside agencies (ditto) - - Not wanting to offend or cause problems for specific Debian developers - - Not wanting to discuss efforts before they were likely to come to fruition - - Top-secret PATRIOT act gag orders (this is a joke, I hope) > X: haven't made a report in two months, we should make one. > Y: what do we have? > X: "lots of difficult talking with people" and "approved two bills" > Y: if we make a 'last two months' report like that, everyone's gonna > shout "you haven't been doing *anything*!" > X: but that isn't fair, we HAVE been doing things! > Y: how do you argue that, without disclosing A, B and C? > X: sucks. > Y: sucks. Again, why could A, B and C not be disclosed, at least to debian-private, if they form a major part of the DPL's activities? > Personal suggestion to all candidates: > > make it clear from the beginning that people should't expect to find > big stuff in your reports unless you start making summaries of what > happened in the project. > > But that would be duplicating DWN. > > So make it clear from the beginning that people shouldn't expect to > find big stuff in your reports, period. That's likely to be the only > way you'll be able to make a report at all. > > Lars, your crontab mail example is enlightening: boring, but essential. I completely agree with Lars -- even if all the glamorous stuff has already been reported by DWN, it's important to see regular DPL reports, if only to indicate that the DPL is still working behind the scenes. There are conferences, etc. that the DPL represents Debian at, right? Surely not all of those are reported on by DWN. And there is nothing wrong in any case with a report that's a little redundant with other sources of news. > DPL Report for last week > > > 1. Security team > > > Did lots of reasoning about the Security Team. Just like last week, > things are tricky, but this week someone came up with a better idea. > > 2. Budget > - > > Approved expenditure of $300 for flying person X to represent Debian > in conference Y. Thanks X for your outstanding work in this field, > please make a report when you're back. > > -- End of DPL report for last week -- I absolutely do not see anything wrong with such a report. The only reasonable complaint anyone could make about it would be the absence of a clause after "things are tricky" starting with the word "because". But this gets back to the issue of undisclosable things again. I apologize for perhaps seeming to pry so much. The very vague statements you made about things that can't be disclosed really piqued my curiosity. If you can't or don't want to answer any of my questions, I have no wish to cause you any more frustration -- feel free to consider this email unsent and ignore it at will. Don't worry, I'll manage to live with the disappointment :-) best regards, - -- Kevin B. McCarty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Physics Department WWW: http://www.pr
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
su, 2006-03-05 kello 15:49 +0200, Lars Wirzenius kirjoitti: > su, 2006-03-05 kello 14:20 +0100, Enrico Zini kirjoitti: > > On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 10:44:17AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote: > > > > > And yes, a couple of times I did ask, although on IRC and not via > > > e-mail. Having to drag out information gets tiresome so I only did it a > > > couple of times. > > > > Did you get answers when you asked on IRC? > > Not as far as I remember. To avoid misunderstandings: I asked (mostly, I think) from the DPL in private messages, and he may well have been away (even if not marked as such on IRC). I guess this is an example of a situation that would be avoided if as much DPL-related communication would be in public, say, via the BTS. -- If possible, use code, not comments. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
su, 2006-03-05 kello 14:20 +0100, Enrico Zini kirjoitti: > On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 10:44:17AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote: > > > And yes, a couple of times I did ask, although on IRC and not via > > e-mail. Having to drag out information gets tiresome so I only did it a > > couple of times. > > Did you get answers when you asked on IRC? Not as far as I remember. -- Finland: where people go into 100 C rooms and eat ammonium chloride for fun -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
Hi, On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 02:27:36AM +, Martin Michlmayr wrote: > However, what you say in your message (if people had > asked for status reports they would've received them) is blatantly > wrong. We did ask, and (usually) no good response was given. this turns out to be interesting: we have two different perceptions of what happened. Bug. Let's debug it. My memory mainly has people complaining about lack of reports. The report thing has been sick and twisted, it went (as I see it) more or less like this: - [Branden just elected] "I'll write regular reports!" (crowd applauds) - Two regular reports come out covering what is happening on the last moments of Sarge release, and Branden's making a recap of the status of things as he found them. - Sarge releases, and a month later comes the (delayed) third and last report. After Sarge released, it was finally the time to go back at all the overdue big changes that have been delayed to allow Sarge to come out. Big issues started to come in, and frustration followed shortly afterwards when it started to become clear that interaction with all the parties involved was much more delicate and difficult than what one would expect. I just went back to the mail archive of that time and stopped reading after a while because of anger rising: lots of good efforts have been done, and the instant reaction to those was in various case absolutely disappointing. It's all stuff you can't put in a report: you just have to swallow, be patient, keep insisting, try new things, "this is going to be a long-term one". This was the "lots of effort is being done, none of it can be put in a report" phase. On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 10:44:17AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote: > I disagree. They let the project know that things are going on (or not > going on), and the DPL and Team are not just dormant, which was the > impression I, at least, had for much of the past year. Compare to daily > status mails from crontabs: if you don't get them, you can assume that > something went wrong. This is true, and looking at it from now it would indeed have been much better than nothing. But at that time things were like: X: haven't made a report in two months, we should make one. Y: what do we have? X: "lots of difficult talking with people" and "approved two bills" Y: if we make a 'last two months' report like that, everyone's gonna shout "you haven't been doing *anything*!" X: but that isn't fair, we HAVE been doing things! Y: how do you argue that, without disclosing A, B and C? X: sucks. Y: sucks. So we waited until we had something big to show. And that's were we found out that when something big happens, even if the DPL has been putting lots of efforts in talking people into making it happen, they never happen in the name of the DPL. Time passes, expectations raise, nothing to match them. Rinse and repeat. Recipe for failure. Personal suggestion to all candidates: make it clear from the beginning that people should't expect to find big stuff in your reports unless you start making summaries of what happened in the project. But that would be duplicating DWN. So make it clear from the beginning that people shouldn't expect to find big stuff in your reports, period. That's likely to be the only way you'll be able to make a report at all. Lars, your crontab mail example is enlightening: boring, but essential. On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 02:27:36AM +, Martin Michlmayr wrote: > Such questions were asked all the time but we didn't get any > substantial answers. Once it resulted in a wiki page being created > listing what the DPL team has been up to, but that page was really > embarrassing, listing only 3-4 minor things (a few more were added > later, but still... not really a good summary). Several times (after > the failure of the Scud IRC meeting), people asked what Scud was > actually up to and never got any response whatsoever. Do you have links to them? I'm not asking to question what you say, but because I'd like to have a look at them again. What's left in my memory is people asking for reports we couldn't make or progress we couldn't disclose. Lots of frustration, so I might have just repressed those questions from my memory. > The point is that people shouldn't have to *ask* for such reports. > It's imho the responsibility of the DPL to send such reports without > being prodded, and in fact, the current DPL explicitly stated in his > platform that he would send such statements (but almost never did). Right. IMHO Branden had grand plans in the platform of announcing cool stuff every month, and banged against the reality of cool stuff being reported into DWN and the DPL being left with boring stuff. The first reports of Branden were quite grand. They culminated in the Sarge release. After that, there was nothing that could have matched, and noone's been able to redesign the reports to cope with it. In
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 03:11:58AM +0100, Enrico Zini wrote: > > But there's more than that. In the last year as part of the DPL Team, > people have been criticising the last year for the lack of reports. But > I don't remember a single one sending in a mail like "Dear DPL[-Team], > what happened last week?". There was no contact address for the DPL-team, or atleast none that I know off, so it's rather hard to ask them. The only available address that I know of is [EMAIL PROTECTED] And as far as I know, there wasn't even an official list of who was in the team. I did mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] several times about the lack of DPL reports and related questions and the first time this resulted in mail to debian-devel-announce, and as far as I know, that was his last DPL report. After some other mails he said we should follow what he's doing on planet.debian.org, which I disagreed with, and said so. I don't blame the DPL team for this, it's the DPL that in the end is responsible for it. Kurt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 09:49:29AM +0100, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote: > Hello Enrico, > > But there's more than that. In the last year as part of the DPL Team, > > people have been criticising the last year for the lack of reports. But > > I don't remember a single one sending in a mail like "Dear DPL[-Team], > > what happened last week?". > > It would have been a pleasure to answer such a question with something > > like "Hi, thanks for asking. It was mainly reasoning about the Security > > Team, plus approving expenditure of $300 for flying person X to > > conference Y". > If that would have been a pleasure, I'm wondering why your team did not do > that. > I've sent just a couple of mails to leader in the past term, less than a > handfull. Of those, I have received exactly zero replies from the DPL, you > or the rest of the team. Uh, for one thing, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" != "DPL Team". It was Branden's decision to not auto-forward the leader address to the DPL team, so that anyone could feel comfortable contacting leader@ about confidential matters; the flipside is that responsiveness to that address was definitely contingent on Branden's personal availability. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
Hello Enrico, > But there's more than that. In the last year as part of the DPL Team, > people have been criticising the last year for the lack of reports. But > I don't remember a single one sending in a mail like "Dear DPL[-Team], > what happened last week?". > > It would have been a pleasure to answer such a question with something > like "Hi, thanks for asking. It was mainly reasoning about the Security > Team, plus approving expenditure of $300 for flying person X to > conference Y". If that would have been a pleasure, I'm wondering why your team did not do that. I've sent just a couple of mails to leader in the past term, less than a handfull. Of those, I have received exactly zero replies from the DPL, you or the rest of the team. Here are some suggestions for possible answers: - Thanks for your mail, we're already doing this-and-that to address the problem; - Thanks for the input, but I disagree for this reason; - Good to hear from you, but unfortunately this is currently not a priority; - I'll consider that the next time such an issue comes along. I find it very strange that the DPL(team) explicitly calls for all input, then ignores that input, and then complains on -vote that they did not get enough opportunity to tell what they were doing. bye, Thijs -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
su, 2006-03-05 kello 03:11 +0100, Enrico Zini kirjoitti: > It would have been pointless to come out with such trivial reports. I disagree. They let the project know that things are going on (or not going on), and the DPL and Team are not just dormant, which was the impression I, at least, had for much of the past year. Compare to daily status mails from crontabs: if you don't get them, you can assume that something went wrong. And yes, a couple of times I did ask, although on IRC and not via e-mail. Having to drag out information gets tiresome so I only did it a couple of times. -- Happiness isn't happiness without a violin-playing goat. -- Notting Hill -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates
* Enrico Zini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-05 03:11]: > In the last year as part of the DPL Team, people have been > criticising the last year for the lack of reports. But I don't > remember a single one sending in a mail like "Dear DPL[-Team], what > happened last week?". Such questions were asked all the time but we didn't get any substantial answers. Once it resulted in a wiki page being created listing what the DPL team has been up to, but that page was really embarrassing, listing only 3-4 minor things (a few more were added later, but still... not really a good summary). Several times (after the failure of the Scud IRC meeting), people asked what Scud was actually up to and never got any response whatsoever. > It would have been a pleasure to answer such a question with I never saw such answers. > That would have been as easy to write in a casual answer as it would > have been hard to write wrapped in the officiality of a report: The point is that people shouldn't have to *ask* for such reports. It's imho the responsibility of the DPL to send such reports without being prodded, and in fact, the current DPL explicitly stated in his platform that he would send such statements (but almost never did). > 2. Budget > - > Approved expenditure of $300 for flying person X to represent Debian > in conference Y. Thanks X for your outstanding work in this field, I know that money was spent on stuff. For example, Branden approved money for RAM and hard drives for some MIPS auto builders (which I mentioned on -project). I read in Jaldhar's blog that Branden approved some money so he could go to a conference in India. But I never saw any such report on -project -- but I think the project deserves to how how its money is spent. The only report (to the best of my knowledge) that was ever posted was one listing some reimbursement for expenses the previous DPL (ie. I) made, but I think this was the only posting of this nature. > Actually, in a recent chatting one of the past DPLs told me that he > tried at some point, but the feedback he got was roughly "who cares?". Since we talked recently, I'm wondering if you're referring to me. If so, I didn't express myself clearly. Let me know if you're referring to me and I'll try to elaborate what I meant. Anyway, I realize that my message sounds quite negative. I'm not trying to blame Branden or the Scud team explicitly - I could have been a lot better myself with status reports, in particular in my 2nd year as DPL. However, what you say in your message (if people had asked for status reports they would've received them) is blatantly wrong. We did ask, and (usually) no good response was given. -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reflections about the questions for the candidates
Hello all, last year I had some fun following the election campaign and the questions to the candidates. This year I'm surprised to discover myself slightly irritated by it. I've been asking myself why, and realised that all these good and polite questions are asked *only* during campaigning. It can be that some questions that are good during campaigning might not be asked during the rest of the year because they might seem irrelevant. It can be that some questions are asked also during the rest of the year, but rarely get an answer because the people who could cluefully answer them are usually busy in something more important. Or because out of frustration they are asked rather impolitely, or targeted at the wrong person. So, what's interesting about campaigning is that for a limited period of time, questions are asked politely and correctly articulated, and the candidates take a break from the usual hacking and commit to answer absolutely all the questions that they get asked[1]. People ask directly and nicely, people answer. Fascinating pattern, should be reapplied! But there's more than that. In the last year as part of the DPL Team, people have been criticising the last year for the lack of reports. But I don't remember a single one sending in a mail like "Dear DPL[-Team], what happened last week?". It would have been a pleasure to answer such a question with something like "Hi, thanks for asking. It was mainly reasoning about the Security Team, plus approving expenditure of $300 for flying person X to conference Y". That would have been as easy to write in a casual answer as it would have been hard to write wrapped in the officiality of a report: DPL Report for last week 1. Security team Did lots of reasoning about the Security Team. Just like last week, things are tricky, but this week someone came up with a better idea. 2. Budget - Approved expenditure of $300 for flying person X to represent Debian in conference Y. Thanks X for your outstanding work in this field, please make a report when you're back. -- End of DPL report for last week -- It would have been pointless to come out with such trivial reports. Actually, in a recent chatting one of the past DPLs told me that he tried at some point, but the feedback he got was roughly "who cares?". It's also worth noting that if something big gets done, then it's likely not to go in a DPL report either, as it'd be usually not in the name of the DPL or of the DPL Team. This is because the job of the DPL is to help getting the work done, but not to get the work done: if a DPL would be enough to get all the work done, otherwise we wouldn't need the thousand DDs plus hundreds of almost-DDs, sponsored maintainers, helpful people and so on that make Debian shine day after day. So, the idea I'm throwing in is to take a little bit of these questions past the campaigning time, and come out from time to time with something like: 'Dear DPL, what do you think are the biggest issues in Debian at the moment, and what ways out do you see?' There's lots of fantasy and smartness going into questions posted to -vote. Part of that smartness could be reused. Ciao, Enrico [1] If we want to test this assertion, I have a polygen grammar that can generate a large amount of questions. :) -- GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> signature.asc Description: Digital signature
