Quoth jd@commandprompt.com ("Joshua D. Drake"):
> Josh Berkus wrote:
>> Bruce,
>>
>>> What happens now is that someone says they want to work on X, and the
>>> community tells them that Y might be working on it, and Y gives us a
>>> status.
>>>
>> What happens now is:
>> A starts working on X.
>> 3 months pass
>> B comes to hackers, spends hours reading the archives, doesn't find
>> X (because they know it by a different name), comes to -hackers and
>> asks "Is anyone working on X?"
>> B waits for 2 weeks without an answer and repeats the question.
>> Hackers E, F and G reply "yes, someone is but I don't remember who,
>> search the archives for keyword X"
>
> I would bet, right about here we loose a whole lot of would be
> contributors.
>
> Just the the questions I had about two todos this year was enough
> basically give up on doing any work on them.
So I'm to take it that if nobody had *ever* pestered you about those
items, you would have been certain (or "significantly more likely") to
get them done in time for 8.2?
I don't see this being a huge "force for evil"... If people are so
easily discouraged that any attempt to account for what has been
promised will lead to its loss, then it seems to me that they
shouldn't have promised anything in the first place.
It's not a matter of having to send in weekly status reports; I would
think that "pestering" about status more than once every other month
is more than could be done.
And in terms of the "community contract" for taking on TODO items, it
does not strike me as unreasonable to be expected to report back on
status once every couple months. That's not a heavy bureaucratic
burden.
--
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