[arch-dev-public] Possible signoff addendum

[Dusty Phillips]

2008/8/31 Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at 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