Request: please consider clarifying the project's position on Spins

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 8:30 AM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> As maintainer of two spins I have enough problems recruiting people to
> do the core stuff in the Spins let alone trying to get people for QA,
> Design and everything else. And I even have problems with getting the
> other groups to do even basic things for my spins with a few
> exceptions like QA who have been exceptional. If I had to attempt to
> recruit people to do everything I would just drop the spins altogether
> as it just wouldn't be worth the stress and problems.


I suspect that this is a pretty good encapsulation of how most people feel
about their spins.  And we've got two sentences here that illustrate, to me,
the nature of the problem:

1. "I even have problems with getting the other groups to do even basic
things for my spins with a few exceptions like QA who have been
exceptional."

2. "If I had to attempt to recruit people to do everything I would just drop
the spins altogether as it just wouldn't be worth the stress and problems."

More simply: "I'm not getting support for my spin, but I don't have
time/energy to find that support myself."  And it feels like that
frustration becomes amplified when that support is expected, but never
comes.

We say it often, and I think it's appropriate here: "It's better to be
disappointed than surprised."  We've got a number of work queues that will
accept tickets.  Accepting those tickets creates expectations.  But then
those tickets languish -- that is to say, some tickets languish, but other
tickets go through because there's more support.  No one's fault, everyone
works hard and does their best, but there aren't enough bodies, and hard
choices have to be made.  And the person who makes a request in good faith
and never gets a response ends up sending an email two days before release
saying "geez, did anyone ever look at this?"

So maybe the right approach is to be crisper about what services spin
maintainers can *expect* to get help for.  Looks like QA has a handle on
what they can and can't offer.  What about docs? marketing? design?
translation?  Even if the answer is "sorry, we don't have the bandwidth to
help spins," that's better than "sure, put it in our queue, maybe we'll get
to it," and then the spins folks end up waiting for the cavalry that never
comes.

Again: no blame here.  None.  Everyone works their ass off.  But a large
part of being successful is managing expectations, and it seems like we can
do a lot better in that regard, project-wide.

Recruiting is another hard question, of course.  There's hard questions all
around.  :)

--g
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