On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 11:53 AM, Michael Schwendt mschwendt@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:05:37 -0600, RS (Richard) wrote:
2011/11/22 Bruno Wolff III:
One area where we could probably do more advertising for is getting new packagers via the co-maintainer route. I think most of the new packagers still come in by packaging a new package. I think we really want most of the new packagers coming in as co-maintainers.
Yes, this seems to be an chicken-or-the-egg issue. There seems to be permanent resource shortages with package maintenance which means we need more contributors, and then at the same time there are hundreds of package reviews languishing, many of which need sponsors.
Uh, come on, ... package submitters waiting on the NEEDSPONSOR list could _really_ work a little bit more actively on persuading potential sponsors of their packaging skills. Instead, some wait silently for months without doing any package review themselves.
That may be true, but from my own experience, it could also because they're intimidated by the whole process. Submitting my first package I certainly felt intimidated by the process.
I was lucky I had good sponsors to walk me through the process but I'm not sure that everyone is.
In other cases, reviewers post reviews, but it takes many weeks or months for the package submitter to respond. What does that tell potential sponsors about the submitter's motivation to become a package maintainer?
I won't argue that that doesn't happen because it does
Btw, it has happened before that people have been sponsored without doing a couple of package reviews. Sometimes as a result of them actively seeking for a sponsor. That may be easier than waiting for magic to happen. We still don't have enough package reviewers.
I don't want to get too far off topic but being short handed is directly related...
Does the sponsor processes need to be more formalized? Currently you must be nominated (either by someone or yourself) but there's no concrete requirements on a knowledge or skill level required to be a sponsor.
To bring it to a more personal level, I have no idea if I've done or proven myself enough to become a sponsor or not. If I am deficient in an area, there's currently no formal feedback mechanism for me to know in what areas I need to improve.
I can't be the only person stuck in this nebulous position...
And still there have been self-nominations before. You could look up FESCo tickets of past nominations.
I never thought about that, perhaps it should be added to the contributor wiki?
Are you an active reviewer?
It comes in spurts when I have time, but yes. That also begs the question: How does a sponsor find future sponsors? Just because I complete an informal or formal review doesn't mean that a sponsor sees it, unless there's some system that provides visibility that I'm unaware of.
Thanks, Richard