Sponsor shortage

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sun, 12 Jul 2015 08:58:37 -0500, Rex Dieter wrote:

> I like to think of being a sponsor as an exciting opportunity to shepherd 
> new contributors to fedora.

Quick approval of an account based on reviewing a single tiny package
is not an option for me anymore. I've done that before. I've been burnt
before. I patiently explain things in private mail, sometimes for a long
time. But some people are "pissed off" too easily by something, such as
a new version of Fedora breaking something, or are distracted by something
more interesting and are not nice enough to notify the project.

Once more, it is too frustrating to see somebody leave the project
silently because of various factors (sometimes not even related to
Fedora). A single package (and lack of activity) is not enough for me
anymore to decide whether to approve an account.

So, I'm still active in the queue, but I watch out for active
contributors, who don't want to push a single tiny package into the dist
only without doing anything beyond that. Sometimes it's years old code
(such as a Python module) with no dependency. And after several months
there's still no dependency in the queue. To me that doesn't make much
sense.

> Taking the attitude of "It's too hard... (mostly) because it will be a lot 
> of work to turn them into good packagers", is... less than constructive 
> here, imo.

Those are your words, and they don't sum up what I've pointed out in this
thread.

> My blunt suggestion: if that bothers you, then help clean out 
> the queue.

No. That tiresome with NEEDINFO, urging submitters to respond, waiting
several weeks before closing the ticket. And later getting blamed
somewhere in the comments of some blog post when some Fedora politician
talks about how to simplify the process (as in this thread).

> Further, I think it's more than just a sponsor shortage, but a *reviewer* 
> shortage too.

And a shortage of motivated new contributors.

> If only all packagers would strive to do at least as many 
> reviews as packages they've submitted, I think we wouldn't be having this 
> conversation.  Hrm, an interesting metric I'd love to see: for all 
> packagers, calculate ratio of pkg-reviews / pkg-submissions-approved, and 
> give big kudos to anyone near 1 or higher (probably with some minimal 
> numbers to be fair here, ie for anyone with pkg-reviews and/or pkg-
> submissions greater than, say, 5)
> 
> -- Rex
> 
> p.s. Heck, for the amount of effort put into this thread so far, I'd venture 
> at least another few reviews could have been done

You can find plenty of reviews and reviews related comments from me in
the queue(s).