REVU - Cleanup of the "Needs Review" section

[James Westby]

On Sun, 2008-11-02 at 08:43 +0100, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> James Westby <jw+debian at jameswestby.net> writes:
> 
> > If you are concerned about a large number of items in the list then we
> > should consider expiration, but I don't think this is the right way to
> > do it.
> > [...]
> > It does give a bad impression to new contributors though, as they may
> > not understand why their package is not being looked at.
> 
> Expiration leaves the users exatly here: Not understanding why their
> package is not being looked at.
> 
> Technically, revu really *needs* some expiration mechanism for disk
> space reasons, and what Siegfried is proposing sounds pretty similar to
> that to me.
> 
> I think we should be honest: We don't have enough manpower to process
> the revu queue. The queue is processed on a best-efford basis, and if a
> contributor does not find a sponsor by other means (like advertising it
> on our irc channel, etc) there is a good possibility for the package to
> be ignored. I consider expiration in the way Siegfried is proposing it
> as a way of implementing this.

No, I disagree.

Siegfried's proposal gives the user some busy-work to do, and will only
eliminate those packages where even the submitter does not care. While 
we do want those packages we also want to give the right impression
to those that do still care.

Instead of distracting them with a small change to the changelog, why 
not explain the situation more clearly and accurately? For all packages
older than 6 (?) months archive the package with a message explaining
that no-one has looked at the package probably because it's not 
something that it is worth the effort of maintaining in Ubuntu. Explain
that going to Debian might be more successful, and explain that if
they believe it is really worthwhile to submit an updated package,
and add a comment explaining why this package is important to Ubuntu.

If the issue of diskspace could be solved with a new hard-disk then 
please drop me a message off list, and we can at least try to make
this a less pressing issue.

Thanks,

James