On Fri, Sep 02, 2016 at 12:06:40AM +0200, Tomasz Nitecki wrote:
> Hey,
>
> On 01/09/16 18:46, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 01, 2016 at 01:03:39AM +0200, Tomasz Nitecki wrote:
> >> <CUT>
> >> Since you can easily configure how-can-i-help to ignore those bugs
> >> (section 'IGNORE SELECTED TYPES OF OPPORTUNITIES' in manpage), I'd
> >> rather leave it as it is.
> >
> > Unless I miss something, how-can-i-help is primarily a tool for giving
> > newcomers suggestions where they could start contributing and current
> > Debian developers suggestions where they could expand their work on
> > Debian.
> >
> > While doing special QA cleanup tasks is helpful and appreciated, the
> > information about ITAs you use for some very specific QA work is not
> > useful for the target audience of how-can-i-help.
>
> I'm afraid that you are mistaken about how-can-i-help being specifically
> targeted at newcomers. Just as the description says [1], it's a tool
> designed to show opportunities for contributing. How-can-i-help is
> supposed to be configurable enough to be useful for everyone, regardless
> of their experience level.
>
> That is why we are showing RFS opportunities (those are useful mostly
> for DDs as they are the only ones that can sponsor) or ITAs. It is also
> why we are going to get notified when a package was removed from testing
> over a year ago - it is also an opportunity for contribution, but not
> necessarily one that is a good starting point for a newcomer.
Why not?
The devtodo package I gave as example for a package removed more than
a year ago from testing is a very simple program, and the RC bug #779551
that keeps it out of testing would be a good training task for a newbie
who wants to become a maintainer - if it wouldn't already contain a
patch that fixes the bug since March 2015.
No matter whether a package was removed from testing 3 months ago or
3 years ago, the root cause is usually that the maintainer is MIA
(or at least temporarily lacking time for working on Debian).
> And that is also why a user can configure how-can-i-help to show (or
> hide) specific opportunity types. Newcomer can configure it to show only
> 'newcomer' opportunities, veteran DD might like to be shown everything.
>
> [1] 'show opportunities for contributing to Debian'
My point is that an ITA is not an opportunity to contribute.
No matter whether this is a newcomer, or a veteran DD who is not
otherwise involved with QA.
> > I fully understand the value of a "debian-qa-helper" tool that lists for
> > example all ITA bugs and also has them ordered by date of the latest
> > update to the bug (for finding stale ITAs). But that would be
> > a different tool for a quite different target audience.
>
> Still, I do agree that for different audiences we might consider showing
> different opportunity types by default. Probably something akin to
> reportbug 'tell me how competent do you feel' and the preconfiguring
> how-can-i-help depending on the answer. Or maybe we can just add some
> configuration templates (like 'newcomers', 'sponsorships', etc.) that
> can be chosen by the user?
While the tools might actually work on the same data and do similar
things, the target audience is completely different for "how-can-i-help"
and "debian-qa-helper"[1].
how-can-i-help shows a list of confirmed and likely opportunities to an
audience as large as possible, and if one random person takes care of a
specific opportunity that's a success.
QA cleanup tasks should be carried out on a continuous basis by a small
and relatively stable group of people.
If a newcomer wrongly believes that he can or should do anything with
an ITA bug displayed by how-can-i-help, then this will cause trouble.
> Regards,
> T.
cu
Adrian
[1] existing QA tools tend to be web-based, but there's nothing bad
about a commandline tool if that's your preferred way of working
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
