The Testing and QA Teams on Launchpad

[Scott Ritchie]

Hey,

Just something I noticed, but I think we should better clarify the
difference between the ubuntu-testing team and the ubuntu-qa team on
Launchpad.  Going by their launchpad descriptions it seems as though the
QA team is intended for "serious" testers - you need to be an Ubuntu
member, announce yourself to a mailing list, and so on.  The Testing
Team is much simpler -- if a user finds it.

If a potential tester goes to https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-testing
they'll find an  open team and an invitation to join the Testing Team
mailing list.  There are no posts on it, and that kind of discussion
belongs in a place we'll all read.  So, I agree with the suggestion to
simply remove that invitation and direct people to this mailing list
instead.  I believe this was mentioned at the last QA meeting, but in
any case traffic here seems to be fairly low.  We can worry about
splitting the lists the way ubuntu-devel was if an army of contributors
makes it too cluttered here, but that'll be a good problem to have ;)

If there are going to be two separate teams with distinct roles, then I
would suggest that they mention eachother in their launchpad
descriptions as well.  This raises the question of what to do with the
testing launchpad team as it is - right now it's just a collection of
people.  From my experience with the Wine team (which started as just a
collection of people and no real launchpad tasks), I suggest making
regular contact somehow.  Subscribing the entire team to particular bugs
is a bad idea, however it would be very prudent to send out call for
testing emails during the various testing phases (ISO, new feature,
etc.)  This is as simple as hitting the Contact This Team button in
Launchpad.

I've taken some initiative and edited "Feature Testing" on the Testing
Team Activities page to include this role here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/Activities -- it is, of course, open to
change and editing as I'm not quite done with the page.  We also need
someone to send out the actual call for testing emails; I wouldn't mind
doing it, but perhaps it wouldn't matter if the decision about what to
email was made at the weekly QA meeting.

Once I'm happy with the descriptions in the Testing/Activities page,
I'll move them (and some of the content from Grant's loco page) to the
main Testing wiki page.  Comments appreciated :)

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie