Re: clear policy discussions

[David Kastrup]

Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:

> On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 11:51:11PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>> Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:
>
>
> I'll only address "meta-discussion" points here.
>
>> > What about the next one?  Phil has been learning how to do it, and I
>> > certainly won't call *him* a trained monkey... but his expertise is
>> > documentation and build systems.
>> 
>> So you want to design a rule set that will let him do good work without
>> feedback?  Without consulting anybody?  Without trying to form a
>> judgment?  Do you really think that after all this time he can't do a
>> better job than a switchboard?
>
> ...
>
> I think the monkey analogy has been taken too far, and it is
> veering uncomfortably close towards personal attacks.  I apologize
> for my previous use of that analogy.

Well, it is I that have brought it up.  Probably a sign of my lack of
communication skills that I fail how it could be construed as a personal
attack.  Probably because "uncomfortably close" is a subcategory of
"distinguishable", and that is all that it takes to stay in my comfort
zone.  Whatever.

> As for a "simple rule set" -- yes, the original intent was to have
> a sufficiently simple rule-set that nobody would feel intimidated
> by it.  I have been trying to get other people to handle releases
> for ages.  This involves hard technical challenges (dealing with
> GUB, although I've tried to keep this as simple as possible
> there's still a lot of difficulties there), and potentially-vague
> release policies.  I tried to keep those policies as unambiguous
> as possible.

"release management" and "release work" are two different things.  It
might be nice if the second was, at some point of time, automated.  I
don't see that we can or should automate the first.  For that, we need
guidelines more than rigid rule sets.

> I took exactly the same approach to the Bug Squad.  Not enough
> volunteers?  try to make the job as simple as possible.

You'll find that Colin takes greater liberties in heeding the letter of
the rules in order to apply them according to the spirit of the rules
rather than the letter than you permit yourself to take with release
management.

> Since the idea is to facilitate discussion, that is enough
> feedback.  A simple one-line "what's the point of this?" or "what
> exactly are you suggesting" or just "I don't understand".  In my
> mind, that should trigger an automatic re-think / re-write of the
> proposal.

The problem is rather that I do understand.  It is just that you are
addressing a problem space that is not all that connected to the problem
space I consider relevant.

It's like refining a rule set for soccer when we have a basketball
court.  I don't mean to imply that the rule set for soccer is beyond
improvement, or that you are not doing a thorough job with it.

-- 
David Kastrup