On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 6:44 PM, Michael Schwendt <mschwendt@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 10 Jul 2015 15:25:05 -0400, Ben Rosser wrote:
> Speaking as someone who relatively recently went through the process though
> (and whose package(s) sat in the review tracker for two years): motivation
> is hard to come by when it looks like you're not going to get sponsored
> because (you think) nobody cares about your package.
??? When exactly in the process does it look like you're not going to
get sponsored? After a week? After a month? After having done 2-3 reviews
and linked those reviews in the needsponsor ticket(s)? After having pointed
at that work in a post to devel@ list?
I would need to see your initial review requests to comment on this
issue further.
I don't really want to turn this thread into a "why didn't I get sponsored sooner?" thread (and in fact, looking back, I'd guess not linking the two informal reviews I did wasn't a good thing). But since I brought it up...
In fact, you yourself were the first reviewer. I guess I could have emailed you privately, but...
Nowadays, I consider the review queue as very tiresome. I've commented
on many tickets, I even have made clear behind my name in bugzilla that
I'm in the packager sponsors group, but nobody has taken that as
opportunity to email me privately. The time when new contributors did
that is gone.
As a potential new contributor, I never felt encouraged to email potential package sponsors privately, as I didn't know any of them. I never felt encouraged to bug a SIG (because while I was packaging a piece of Python software, it was hardly a major piece of software or anything). I wanted to package a piece of software I was considering using for a project, because it wasn't already in the distribution and I liked Fedora enough that I wanted to contribute something upstream. So I followed the procedure(s) on the wiki, or at least I think I did. I reviewed one or two other packages informally.
I assumed that eventually someone who was a sponsor would review my package and tell me what they thought of it. Then maybe ask me to do a few more things, maybe a few more reviews. Tell me what they thought I needed to work on, etc.
And, I mean, that eventually did happen. So I guess the system worked. It just took a long time to work.... longer than I would have expected from only reading the documentation on the wiki.
When somebody has not submitted a single ticket in bugzilla, not even
via ABRT, one can not even be sure the person is using Fedora.
So you're saying that reporting bugs against other components in the distribution that aren't necessarily packages is a thing that we are looking for in potential new packagers?
That seems reasonable. But this is not indicated on the How To Get Sponsored page.
> Then, once someone *does* notice your package, maybe they work with you on
> improving it, ask you to do a few other things, etc. And it becomes a more
> active process on both sides. At least, that's been my understanding of the
> process based on what I've read in those guidelines.
That's one way how to do it. Unfortunately, some of the needsponsor people
don't respond. Some respond after months, saying they have been busy. No
notification of that in the ticket. No response! What would happen if the
package were in the distribution? Somebody would start the non-responsive
maintainer procedure.
That makes sense, so perhaps we should apply apply some analogy of the non-responsive maintainer procedure to new package requests (by unsponsored contributors, anyway), rather than let their tickets sit in bugzilla for forever without comment?
> It wouldn't be a bad thing, IMO, to (automatically?) ping sufficiently old
> tickets with a sort of "what's the status on this" and maybe a link to the
> sponsorship guidelines reminding them that there are other things they can
> do if they still want to become a packager.
It's too tiresome IMO. Pinging is frowned upon in other tickets, too. Just
be responsive, keep track of a single ticket that is important to you
because you need it for the sponsorship process. It is severely
demotivating for reviewers as well as sponsors to get no response to
reviews they post in the tickets.
It's demotivating to packagers, especially new ones, when they get no reviews over reasonably lengthy periods of time too.
Anyway, I wasn't suggesting we ping more regularly than a year.
Really, I think you're asking for too much, if you expect all
single-package-review-quest-with-no-activity guys to be sponsored
or to be sponsored quickly.
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I thought the point of the sponsorship system was to help mentor potential new contributors until they reached the point where someone thought they were competent enough and sufficiently well-versed in our guidelines. While simultaneously providing a hurdle from preventing just anyone from contributing low-quality packages into the distribution.
So no, I don't think we should just *sponsor* new contributors instantly or quickly-- I don't want to lower hurdles either. But I also think we shouldn't just let their tickets bit-rot in bugzilla for more than a year without any comment. I don't know what the solution is, necessarily, but it's enough of a problem that someone (else) thought it worth contacting devel@ about.
Ben Rosser
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