On Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:03:25 -0500, JLTI (Jason) wrote: > For a while now I have been working on a proposal for some changes to > both the way we elevate packagers to sponsors and what (to a small > extent) sponsors actually do. Please note that this is not a proposal > for any changes to how people are made members of the packager group in > the first place and does not change the privileges of existing sponsors. > > My proposal is at > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tibbs/RevitalizingSponsorshipProposal > > I've run this by FESCo, whose response was favorable, so I'm sending > this to a larger audience. Please let me know what you think. There are a few unfortunate sections in the first paragraph already: | users have to go through an almost endless set of steps (which also | needs revision, but that's another topic) Compared with a few years ago there are many newbie-packagers, who apparently are not interested in the 'Packaging' related Wiki pages and not in the 'ReviewGuidelines' either. Such package[r]s in the review queue sit and wait for a reviewer to do __all__ the work including most basic tasks like running rpmlint or running a test-build. And that inspite of the Wiki documents being detailed and helpful enough nowadays ... compared with the brief QACheckList from ancient times. Things commented on by reviewers often are applied to a spec file only reluctantly, without proper/clear acknowledgement. A single "okay, I see" or "that makes sense" often would make a difference. With regard to 'mentoring', I favour people, who show better communication skills and who are more responsive. I appreciate feedback, even if somebody disagrees and wants to discuss the guidelines instead of simply applying a spec file fix. Worse, however, are those who start with Fedora criticism in either bugzilla or private mail (such as considering the guidelines as needless bureaucracy and finding fool language for that even). A negative point of view related to how Fedora does something is not motivating potential sponsors. A few years ago, when I received private mail from somebody about sponsorship, my reply would result in either a longer thread where to discuss something or in a short acknowledgement and work move into the review request. Nowadays, private mail mentions the wish to be sponsored, but communication stops at that point because pointing at the PackageMaintainers Wiki entry page apparently is considered too much homework for the people who mail me. | and then pin their hopes on a review ticket that, due to an insufficient | number of active sponsors, may not get looked at in a reasonable amount | of time. It's disappointing to see that your "activity report" does not cover activity in the review queue. I may be one of those, who has not sponsored anyone in the past year, but I post helpful (and detailed) review comments regularly and encounter inactive package submitters both in the normal queue and in the needsponsor queue. In the same way packagers cannot guarantee to return with a reply in less than 1-3 months, I cannot guarantee sponsoring somebody already with only a _single_ submitted package, where I have had to point at the Packaging Documentation multiple times. Also, I think it has become more important to be more careful about who to sponsor, because we are facing a growing number of orphans due to packagers leaving the project without notice, as well as packagers who grab N>1 packages in pkgdb without actually handling them properly in bugzilla (if at all). | Make some criteria that sponsors need to meet if they wish to remain sponsors. Forcing sponsors to fulfill such criteria is the wrong way IMO. It may result in even more blanket-approval sponsorships. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.3.2-8.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.14 0.18 0.21 -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
