Hi Karl, I should preface this by saying that I guess I didn't do a good enough job digging into the Savane software! I didn't realize that closed ads are hidden from view (I naively saw all the old ads and assumed that many of them were closed and just needed to be cleaned out). Since that's the case, I agree that there is no real reason to remove closed ones.
I think your moderate approach would, indeed, be better and I think your proposed protocol is good. One specific question about the Savane software: can the author manually just update the date of the post or does the text have to be updated in order to do so? While I don't think we should force anyone to change the text (you're right), still I would want to strongly encourage that they at least update the date. I'm speaking from at least my own psychological reaction to the old ads: when I first came to Savannah looking for something to do and I noticed that a lot of the Help Wanted ads were dating back years, I immediately started ignoring those old ones on the assumption that they're out-of-date. So, the author can do as he/she chooses, but changing the date would help keep Savannah looking fresh, not to mention getting it more attention (in my opinion). So, I would send a message something like this: "Hello, My name is Brandon Invergo and I am helping to [clean up?/moderate?/organize?/keep clean?] the Help Wanted section of Savannah, the GNU software forge. On Month DD, YYYY, you posted an ad titled "Hacker needed for Hello, World." Is this call still open? If it is, we would like to encourage you to update the [date?/text?], helping to increase the visibility of the ad while keeping the Help Wanted list fresh. If it is no longer open, then we would request that you set its status to "Closed." Keep in mind that if the position becomes available again, you are welcome to re-open the call. Thank you very much for your help. Cheers, Brandon" How does that sound? A bit dry and formal I guess, but it's something that can be worked on. -brandon ps - I'm not sure if it matters, but if it looks better and probably fits more within the GNU philosophy, I can send such admin emails from the email address on my personal domain rather than from this Gmail one. On Sun, 2012-01-29 at 23:17 +0000, Karl Berry wrote: > Follow-up Comment #3, sr #106581 (project administration): > > Hi Brandon -- thanks for jumping in with this. > > I completely agree with 1) and 2), but (despite what I wrote originally :) why > delete old postings, any more than there is to delete old bug reports? After > all, it's not unlikely that the same need will recur after a volunteer leaves > a project. As long as a posting is closed, it wouldn't be normally visible, > so it seems harmless. > > Also, I'm not sure about "forcing" people to change the text. For example, I > have two jobs open for Texinfo that are just about to hit a one-year mark. > They are still open, but there is nothing to change about the text. I guess I > could do some meaningless tweak just to update the date, but if a maintainer > chooses not to do that, I don't think it would be right to just arbitrarily > close it. > > In general, if a maintainer says a job is still open, I don't think it's our > place to close it, regardless of whether the text is updated. > > Thus, my proposal would be less hard-line: > - if a posting is open and >1 year old, contact maintainer. > - if maintainer says it's old, fine, we or they can close. > - if maintainer says it's still valid, fine, leave it open (and strongly > recommend they update the text as needed). > - if maintainer does not reply, give them a while, try again (maybe from > another email account, given the realities of spam filters) and say "we will > close this soon if we don't hear from you", and so that in another week or > two. > > wdyt? > > thanks again, > k > > > _______________________________________________________ > > Reply to this item at: > > <http://savannah.gnu.org/support/?106581> > > _______________________________________________ > Message sent via/by Savannah > http://savannah.gnu.org/ >
