Re: [gentoo-dev] Arch testers need themselves an IRC channel so I can love them more

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 9:00 AM, Kent Fredric  wrote:
>
> As such, I believe Arch Testers should have themselves an IRC channel,
> where Arch testers are OP, and membership of arch testers is voluntary
> ( but encouraged ).
>

The history here is that ATs typically hung out in the arch channels
themselves, like #gentoo-amd64.

Back in the day when the arches were new, there was a lot of general
activity in these channels around adapting packages/etc.  For the more
minor arches it may still be that way.  The ATs were viewed as just
another part of that.  Non-dev ATs were typically given at least voice
in these channels.  Back in those days the arch leads were also fairly
active positions.  Different arches sometimes had different policies
on the role of ATs, and for non-dev ATs there was close coordination
since a dev would need to make the commits.

These days upstream is a lot more attentive to the more popular archs
(IMO), so there isn't as much widespread patching/porting/etc going
on.  I think this is part of what has led to the drop in arch team
activity, and AT activity as well (nobody is
recruiting/encouraging/etc them).

I'm not trying to dismiss your suggestion.  I just wanted to point out
that ATs do actually have a place of sorts right now other than -dev.
They just don't have one place across all arches.  Maybe that should
change, maybe not.  I'd be interested in the thoughts of the ATs
themselves.

-- 
Rich

[gentoo-dev] Arch testers need themselves an IRC channel so I can love them more

[Kent Fredric]

If you're an arch tester reading this, I love you.

Your job is mostly thankless and how important it is seems relatively
un-reflected in our regular conversations, and this needs to be
rectified.

Often, I see a stable request get done, and I know what got stabilized
was a monumental amount of work, and I just want to thank you for your
effort, but there isn't a good place for this.

Other times, I may want to ask questions in an informal setting, and
get an authoritative answer on what exactly you want of us as an arch
tester.

Presently, if I want to ask questions about arch testing, the only
place to do this is #gentoo-dev, or seek the mailing list like I am now.

The latter of these is a bit time consuming, and that probably
discourages participation.

And the former is not entirely useful as that's likely to get
side-tracked by all the people who don't do arch testing opining on
what to do, mostly directed by their experience with working with arch
testers. 

This is not "bad" as such, but its not really an authority on arch
testing.

I believe that as arch testers, you have a right to run a channel as
you see fit, and have an authority on how it is you do what you do.

As such, I believe Arch Testers should have themselves an IRC channel,
where Arch testers are OP, and membership of arch testers is voluntary
( but encouraged ).

I myself would start such a channel, but I feel it is not my place to
found such a channel, as I'm not an arch tester, it would be wrong of
me to hold OP of such a channel: That's a right only an Arch tester
should have.

And a channel opped by and filled with Non-Arch testers on the subject
of arch-testing sounds too much like certain political problems we have
lately.

I also believe somewhat in the idea that /people who are most concerned
about an issue/ should also be the same people who /do the work to
resolve that issue/, and in that light, it is somewhat disingenuous
to constantly fret over the state of arch testing while doing little to
actually fix the problem myself.

I do have it on my TODO list to attempt rectifying this, and in a
semi-long-term view of things I might find myself doing arch testing,
but I don't think we should wait until then to have an arch-testing
channel ;)

It would also probably be useful to have such a channel for arch
testers and interested potential-arch-testers to congregate and discuss
things, so that the potentials can get a feel for the work in an
informal capacity before stepping up to take the load, and the channel
would thus also facilitate the transfer of knowledge to widen the
tester base.

( I understand people may be discussing the potential formation of an
AT mailing list/alias/project or something along those lines, but
I find such a strategy far too formal to be valuable, and much prefer
the flexibility of self-organising groups and the relaxed informality of
IRC, which typically don't need any approval to to create or infra
assistance to start )

In closing, this is a petition to somebody who is a recognised arch
tester to form a channel for this purpose, and encourage other testers
to join, and people like myself can then hop on and maybe be more
productive as a result.

<3




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