Folks, It is our first time going through the recommended New Committer process and we have uncovered some significant problems with the documentation <https://community.apache.org/newcommitter.html#new-committer-process>.
- The most serious problem is step A: of the "Committer Invite Template" on the above page: A. This personal invitation is a chance for you to > accept or decline in private. Either way, please > let us know in reply to the [priv...@project.apache.org] > address only. > > This is a potential disaster, since the candidate will not have read or write privileges to the private mail list, the candidate's reply will simply disappear into the bit-bucket! I would recommend changing this paragraph to: A. Please reply directly to me if you wish to accept (or not accept) this > invitation. Presumably the person sending this message will be someone from the PMC / PPMC that the candidate already has had some contact with. Also, hopefully, the sender has enough good sense to not CC non-private mail lists or other people on the invite, which will make the exchange as private as possible. - The next problem is the wording of the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph: Being a committer enables you to more easily make > changes without needing to go through the patch > submission process. > > This is basically recommending bad programming practice! We encourage all our committers to use the PR and review process on all but the most trivial commits (e.g., documentation typos). I would recommend simplifying this sentence to: Being a committer grants you write access to the project repositories. - This next issue is somewhat a matter of style, but I would recommend replacing the entire section "B" with: B. If you accept, you will receive a follow-up message with the next steps > for establishing you as a committer. The above changes will make the invite letter simpler and more straightforward. I would be happy to submit these changes as a PR but someone will have to tell me where to do this. Cheers, Lee.
