Re: [Savannah-help-public] Obstacle to helping Savannah

[Sylvain Beucler]

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 03:27:13AM -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Someone who decided not to help on Savannah wrote to me and said:
> 
>     I was told that I needed to run it locally.  I was told that it could
>     take months or a year of experimenting and getting to know Savane on a
>     local machine before I could help with Savannah.
> 
>     That is probably why you are short on help. ;)
> 
> Perhaps he has misunderstood, but could you tell me more about
> this situation?  Can you show me the response you send to people
> who offer to help administer Savannah?

I attach a mailbox that includes the latest answers I gave to help
offers. I'm the one who answer them, when they come by mail.

Usually it boils down to:
- thanks
- point to current tasks lists and see what he's interested in
- join #savannah to meet us

Usually there are few people who actually join the IRC channel (or
answer back), and the past few who did said they would look at the
task lists and come back later - which they usually didn't.

Maybe they are mislead by the term "administration", because Savannah
currently requires little system maintenance, but rather needs user
support or non-trivial improvements. Or more nastily, this is not a
job where you only apply system updates via apt-get once in a while
while having your name in some GNU webpage.


As for this someone who decided not to help, I don't remember hearing
or saying such statements, so possibly that person asked around on IRC
at #savannah when I wasn't here and somebody else answered.


In the context of submitting patches, I remember advising to install
Savane locally, which is why I spent time last year to simplify the
setup, and provide a pre-installed QEMU image with Debian and Savane
pre-installed (download & run, can't be more simple).

I don't remember making it sound like a prerequisite to actually help
with Savannah administration.


In my mind, helping Savannah administration means:

- helped with tasks that do not require root access, such as project
  submissions, user support, etc, so we can test the user before
  trusting him/her with root access. We also usually grant a normal
  user account so as to look at Savannah while not being able to alter
  it or getting access to sensitive information (such as passwords).

- after that first phase, whose duration depends much on the person's
  involvement (a little task one a week or a regular help), we know if
  (s)he has basis sysadmin skills and Savannah interest, and we can
  grant more privileges. Sometimes the user is actually not interested
  with system administration though. Currently much of the volunteers
  do have root access but seldom used it.

- after that the volunteer can help with user requests that do require
  root access (password/e-mail change, CVS tarball import, etc.) and
  progressively get acquainted with the system.

That is, I see it as a progressive involvement and understanding,
rather than a tedious preparation process.


For people who want to help with reviewing project submissions only,
then that's of course a different story, and sysadmining is usually
not evoked at all. See the basic instructions that Jean-Michel wrote:
https://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/HowToBecomeASavannahHacker


Does that person wish to remain anonymous? Maybe I could look for more
info about happened if we know his/her name.

-- 
Sylvain

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