REVU - Cleanup of the "Needs Review" section

[James Westby]

On Sun, 2008-11-02 at 18:49 +0100, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> I think this proposal is even more agressive and unfriendly to
> newcomers
> than Siegfried's original one.
> 
> I translate it as: "We're sorry but we do not care about your package
> this time. Please try again next time, we'll see if we care about it
> in
> 3 months".
> 
> Of course we can present it friendlier, but the general message I
> would
> get of it would remain.

I agree, but I'm not entirely sure what the problem with this would
be; isn't that exactly the situation we have?

One characterisation of the original proposal would be "we're not
going to review your package right now as it needs an entirely
trivial change". It won't always be entirely trivial, but will for
the most part.

While it would weed out those packages where the packager no longer
cares, my worry is that it leaves a bad taste in the mouth for those
who do still care and are really keen to have their package in Ubuntu,
and they are exactly the people we should be encouraging. Why not
state the issue in terms that lets them understand the purpose.

> I think the key problem we are trying to solve here is prioritisation.
> Sorting out packages that the packager no longer cares for is IMO a good
> thing, and Siegfried's proposal catches them.

Yes, but I feel it conflates this with rather a trivial thing in the 
package. If all we want is some action from the packager to say that
they are still interested then why not just do something as simple as 
add a button to the page for them to assert that?

>  Perhaps we can or should
> add more ways to prioritise packages on REVU. Perhaps by linking
> packages to brainstorm ideas and comparing votes there.

I had a similar thought. The number of users that want a package
isn't going to the be a complete measure, but initial prioritisation
based on that could be a good start.


I guess this proposal was trying to do more than just clean up the list,
I was trying to change expectations in the new package process.

We could go through the list right now, starting from the oldest 
packages and give a real review of the problems in every package, not
just the change to "jaunty", moving them to the "Needs work" state.
This would achieve what you want.

However, we would then have all the packages fixed and ready for 
inclusion, but I am not sure that we want them all in. I know there
are people who support having everything packaged and included, but
I generally don't fall in to this camp. When we take a package
that is not in Debian we take on more of a commitment, and I fear
that this is not always justified. I would guess that many of those
packages are not well maintained, and so this gives a bad experience for
our users.

I have tried in this thread to try and steer things such that when we
make this commitment it is a net win for the distribution, as we would
be doing it for packages that are truly worthwhile. I imagine that
not everyone agrees with me on this point though.

Thanks,

James