Hi! Mi humble opinion:
I cannot evaluate the workload for CRAN maintainer, but it don't seem to be reasonable that students can make objections with packages that "do not yield R CMD check problems or otherwise violate CRAN policies." Maybe CRAN maintainer team are giving review tasks for those students, for increasing package evaluation skills. But a new protocol should be implemented with this seamly new position, where students learning errors doesn't obstruct the workflow of senior package developers with own QA methods implemented, as a result of years efforts. Is not bad new workforce helps with heavy duties: it's an excelent news. But It cannot cause problems with tunned workflow/pipelines. Is the internal CRAN process for package approval described somewhere? Best, Ale. On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 11:55 AM Hadley Wickham <h.wick...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi all, > > The thread seems to have drifted off topic. I really didn't want this > to devolve into a discussion about when cat() or message() is more > appropriate — I have complete faith in Jenny Bryan's ability to > understand technical tradeoffs and pick the most appropriate given the > constraints. I am most interested in understanding what level of > discretion CRAN's "Studentischer administrativer Mitarbeiter" have to > critique the implementation of R packages, particularly for packages > that do not yield R CMD check problems or otherwise violate CRAN > policies. > > I mean no disrespect towards the CRAN maintainers (whose tireless > efforts are a crucial part of making R the success that it is), but I > don't think it's unreasonable to enquire as to who is involved in a > crucial piece of open source community infrastructure, and, if > students are involved, what their scope of work is and how they are > trained and supervised. > > I do recognise that my question "Who are they?" may have been > perceived as overly intrusive. To clarify: I don't want to know names > or other personally identifying information, but I would like to know > in general terms how many there are, and what backgrounds they have. > Similarly, I don't want to know how much they are paid, just whether > or not they are volunteers or employees. > > Hadley > > On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 10:23 AM Hadley Wickham <h.wick...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > > Hi all, > > > > Several people on my team have received responses to their CRAN > > submissions from new members of the CRAN team who appear to be student > > assistants (judging from their job titles: "Studentischer > > administrativer Mitarbeiter"). From the outside, they appear to be > > exercising editorial control[^1] and conducting design reviews[^2]. > > > > CRAN is a critical piece of R community infrastructure, and I am sure > > these students have been surrounded by the proper checks and balances, > > but it's not obvious what their role is from the outside. I'd really > > appreciate knowing a little more about them: > > > > * Who are they? > > > > * Are they paid employees or volunteers? > > > > * What is their scope of work? > > > > * How are they trained? > > > > * If we believe that they have made a mistake, how do we request > > review from a senior CRAN member? > > > > * They appear to be able to apply additional discretionary criteria > > that are not included in R CMD check or documented in the CRAN > policies. > > Is this true? If so, what is the scope of these additional checks? > > > > Hadley > > > > [^1]: The devoid package was rejected because the student assistant > > did not understand the purpose of the package. > > > > [^2]: The gargle package was rejected because the student assistant > > believed that the use of cat() was incorrect. It was not. > > > > -- > > http://hadley.nz > > > > -- > http://hadley.nz > > ______________________________________________ > R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel > -- alejandro baranek @ken4rab <https://twitter.com/ken4rab> qbotics <http://qbotics.tumblr.com/> | rpolyhedra <https://qbotics.shinyapps.io/rpolyhedra-explorer/?_inputs_&polyhedron_color=%22%23FF0000FF%22&polyhedron_name=%22Triakis%20Tetrahedron%22&polyhedron_source=%22dmccooey%22&show_axes=false> | surferinvaders <http://surferinvaders.tumblr.com> | algebraic-soundscapes <http://imaginary.org/content/algebraic-soundscapes> | surfer-shuffle <http://imaginary.org/program/surfer-shuffle> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
