Proposed directions for proven testers

[Aaron Faanes]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-06-14 at 09:30 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
>> Hi, everyone. I've written up a very rough draft of instructions for
>> what proven testers should look for:
>>
>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Adamwill/Draft_proventesters_instructions
>>
>> I'm not really super happy with the format, I plan to revise it into
>> something less wordy and more functional - 'here's what you should do
>> from Step 1 to Step 5' kind of thing. But I'd just like to make sure
>> everyone's happy with the general direction I'm aiming in, first. I'll
>> post further drafts for comment as I go. thanks!
>
> Here's a second draft, which turns it into more of a 'list of
> instructions':
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Adamwill/Draft_proventesters_instructions
>
> it still feels a bit mushy and long at the end. Suggestions on how to
> reformat or rewrite it to be more 'punchy' and less eye-glazey are
> welcome! Thanks.
> --
> Adam Williamson
> Fedora QA Community Monkey
> IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
> http://www.happyassassin.net
>
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I worked on this draft a bit on my own user-page. Specifically, I
wikified some of the links and heavily edited the overview paragraph.
I'm not an expert by any means on the proven-testers proposal, so I
might have introduced inaccuracies. Here's the link:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Dafrito/Draft_proventesters_instructions#Testing_process

I wonder if the article would read better by shaping the article
around responsibilities directly. Each responsibility might be a
separate section. Here's an example:

Overview
Responsibilities
- Find & install updates to test (Explain updates-testing, Bodhi,
--enablerepo, etc.)
- Ensure minimum required functionality (Explain release criteria,
critpath actions)
- Investigate problematic updates (Explain techniques?)
- Report karma to Bodhi, and Bugzilla if necessary (Explain karma rules)

On the other hand, if it seems like these responsibilities share a lot
of information, then the separate sections could instead become bullet
points under a 'Responsibilities' section. The shared infomration
would then become separate sections:

Overview
Responsibilities
Getting Updates (ways to enable updates-testing)
Criteria
- release criteria
- critpath actions
Tools
- fedora-easy-karma
- bodhi

This might be too article-centric. If the goal of the page is to
strictly define proven-testers, then a step-by-step outline makes more
sense. However, linear instructions imply strict adherence, and there
seems to be a lot of flexibility in how proven-testers can/should
work.

I'd be happy to continue working on this by implementing one of the
outlines above on my draft, or by doing something entirely different,
too! I just figured I'd throw some ideas out before I got ahead of
myself. :)

-- Aaron Faanes