2008/8/31 Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com>:
One of the things I was thinking about, because sometimes signoffs can stagnate....
Should we have a time-based limit?
That is, if a package has been in testing for X days, with no complaints, but no signoffs, yet, can we consider it fully functional, assuming the packager is comfortable with that.
I'd like opinions on this. I'm trying to solve the issue of the big ol' backlog of pending-signoff packages.
I can imagine this causing people to stop signing off altogether ("meh, it'll be signed off automatically in a couple weeks"). This could lead to people not testing altogether or to a "packages must spend X days in testing" philosophy in the long run. This could knock the 'bleeding edge' off the Arch. I think its better to find a way to encourage people to do more signing off. Some kind of incentive or motivation. Some ideas: - policy to do at least two signoffs for every package submitted to testing (bump it to three or four in times where testing is backlogged) - count the number of signoffs people do on the web based signoff and reward the big signoffers with recognition and the non-signoffers with negative recognition (possibly just a list of top three and bottom three signoffers on the dashboard or signoffs page). This sounds a bit big brotherish... - somehow flag packages that have been in testing for an unreasonable amount of time. Possibly sorting the signoffs list by length in testing, listing exceptionally long-time testing packages in the dashboard, e-mailing the list periodically with a list of such packages, etc. Another alternative: - Create a web based interface to allow community users to signoff on packages. We could have a policy of X number of user signoffs is equal to one developer signoff. Developers can be trusted to test it better (or not? ;-), but arch members can contribute too. In that case we still need some incentive to the end users to bother doing this. There aren't a lot of people like dolby and cactus who seem to actually like working really hard with as little recognition as possible. Dusty