ARB Review

Thu Apr 12 12:17:11 UTC 2012

Al 12/04/12 11:47, En/na Allison Randal ha escrit:
> On 04/12/2012 02:36 PM, Jono Bacon wrote:
>> I agree, Allison. As I mentioned in my original mail to the ARB a few
>> months ago, I think the primary bottleneck we are facing right now is
>> a people one and getting enough ARB eyeballs in front of the apps.
>> From what I have seen of the ARB in the last few months some members
>> of the board have been much more active than others (as is common with
>> any community board), and your contributions have been a good example
>> of an active member. While I think that getting more ARB bums on seats
>> will help open up potential capacity, I worry that we might just get
>> more people on board who will also get busy with real life.
> 
> At the moment the recruiting language for new ARB members says that the
> time commitment will be "no more than 5 hours a week", with nothing
> about a minimum commitment of time each week.
> 
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppReviewBoard/Responsibilities
> 
> I couldn't remember where the 5 hours came from, so dug back through
> emails. Turns out it was from you. :) I gather from re-reading that at
> the time you were trying to make it sound non-scary so we'd have an
> easier time recruiting new members. We should probably change that to
> "at least 4 hours per week". I certainly don't blame any of the current
> members for not having enough time available, since we took such pains
> to reassure them that we wouldn't need much time from them. Seems like a
> bit of "bait and switch".
> 
> On the other hand, I have doubts how many new recruits we'll get if we
> tell them they have to sign up for 4 hours every week. That's a pretty
> hefty volunteer commitment. And, at the same time, a 4 hour block really
> is the minimum needed from each volunteer to make real progress on the
> queue. Maybe that will change once we manage to switch everyone over to
> submitting by PPA.
> 
>>> More people will require more coordination, to make sure all those
>>> volunteers aren't duplicating effort (working on the same packages).
>>> But, we can ramp up coordination as we increase the number of volunteers.
>>
>> I agree; more members will need more coordination and good leadership
>> to ensure everyone is motivated and keeping on top of things.
> 
> This part seems totally doable, with a combination of human effort and
> some technical improvements to the review system. Finding the bodies to
> coordinate seems like the hard part.
> 
>>> The
>>> greatest time seems to be spent responding to developers, explaining
>>> what's wrong with their submission, and then re-reviewing when they
>>> resubmit (often looping several times, when their second, third, and
>>> fourth submissions also have problems).
>>
>> This does indeed seem to be an area where things slow down the most.
>> On one hand, as I have suggested, for developers that take weeks to
>> respond if ever, I think we should have a fairly explicit date in
>> which a response is required.
> 
> <shrug> We aren't blocking on time-limits at the moment. Maybe when we
> have some way to see submissions waiting for a response from the
> developer it'll become relevant. Right now, there really is no effective
> difference between requesting more information and rejecting the
> submission: the app drops out of our queue for both, and the developer
> can resubmit an update to both, which brings it back into the queue. For
> that matter, the automated message for a "Rejection" currently asks the
> developer to fix the app and resubmit. :)
> 
>> I also wonder if there are any other ways in which we could automate
>> some of the manual reviewing and checks going on. Maybe we could
>> develop scripts or improvements to ease this?
> 
> One thing that would be helpful is if the submission system:
> 
> a) had a field for a link to a PPA for the submission (as an alternative
> to uploading files), and
> 

That's https://bugs.launchpad.net/developer-portal/+bug/920428

> b) required the PPA field to be filled for ARB submissions (zero-cost,
> FLOSS license)
> 

It seems like a very good idea to me, as it would automatically ensure
the policy is enforced and would greatly reduce the amount of work on
the ARB side, +1!

I'd suggest filing a bug for it too.

Cheers,
David.

> We get all kinds of random junk submitted now, from binary packages, to
> .jar files, to tarballs with no compilation instructions. And, we spend
> a lot of time doing the "first cut" review, explaining to developers
> what's wrong with their submission and how to fix it. Having the
> submission form bounce them back until they get it right would be a very
> helpful filter.
> 
>>> The weekend before last I revamped the submission guide, and started
>>> adding links to it in responses to developers. This is helpful in giving
>>> the developers more details, but in a standard way so the reviewer
>>> doesn't have to spend much time on any one reply to a developer:
>>>
>>> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppReviewBoard/Submissions
>>
>> Nice work!
> 
> Thanks. :)
> 
>>> I'd like to get this linked in from developer.ubuntu.com, so more
>>> developers see it *before* they submit.
>>
>> Agreed. This is something David Planella in the 12.10 cycle.
> 
> Great!
> 
> Allison
> 

-- 
David Planella
Ubuntu Translations Coordinator
www.ubuntu.com / www.davidplanella.wordpress.com
www.identi.ca/dplanella / www.twitter.com/dplanella

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 554 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/app-review-board/attachments/20120412/a011f579/attachment.pgp>