MJ Ray dijo [Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 02:32:47PM +0000]: > > I think it's pretty hard to expect something really reliable about > > this. To my experience, there has never been topic grouping in the > > schedule and, given the way Debconf sets itself up, I'd bet it will > > not happen. > > Thanks for the reply, but note I didn't ask for "something really > reliable", but for preliminary. > > The lack of topic grouping is a bug in debconf set-up, isn't it?
There are too many vectors around which you could end up grouping talks - it's not as trivial as it looks like. And usually, people are not just interested in a given "track" - Most people in Debian end up cherry-picking from quite different topics (both for what they work in or what they want to hear). So far, grouping by topic/track has been talked about several times in the Debconf organization, and so far has been impossible/fruitless. In any case, it might be interesting to reenable a rating subsystem such as what we had in Debconf 5 (written by Don Armstrong, who must also be reading this ;-) ), which intended to minimize the amount of people thinking, "bugger, my two favorite talks overlap". Of course, this subsystem was closely tied with the Comas system, which we are no longer using, and would basically have to be rewritten from scratch for Pentabarf. Of course, I do not know if such a subsystem would end up being useful in the general overview - Would it really be better than essentialy-random-allocation? How compatible would it be (without major and inconvenient adjustments) with human-induced changes (i.e. "I'm scheduled for Monday, but I arrive on Tuesday", or "We all know $person always fills up any room he gets - Schedule him with no competing talks!")... Human factors induce stupid amounts of complexity and frustration. > > Debconf is, more or less by definition, something that you really > > benefit from when you participate to the entire event, really. > > It's a shame if there's no willingness to make debconf more easily > accessible to a wider range of developers. It seems likely to lead to > forking as we grow, with all the drawbacks that involves. Umh... Well, I was just thinking yesterday that partly it's a shame that Debconf has become such a success. It has shifted from a very informal and ad-hoc get-together (I won't insult previous organizing teams by stating that no organization was needed, but for a fact, it was much more relaxed and with much fewer rules and formalities). Yes, it might end up forking or changing somehow - but I doubt it can (or should!) continue growing. Debconf is meant for work in and towards Debian. We do not need a 500+ people conference! IMHO, we would lose more than what we'd win. Greetings, -- Gunnar Wolf - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - (+52-55)5623-0154 / 1451-2244 PGP key 1024D/8BB527AF 2001-10-23 Fingerprint: 0C79 D2D1 2C4E 9CE4 5973 F800 D80E F35A 8BB5 27AF _______________________________________________ Debconf-discuss mailing list Debconf-discuss@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-discuss
