Re: Bug squad roll call

[Graham Percival]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 11:00:03AM +0000, James wrote:
> Here Mr Holmes!
> 
> On 29 January 2012 10:51, Phil Holmes <address@hidden> wrote:
> > I know Brett is no longer squadding, and that Marek and James have been
> > taking up the slack.  Could I have a roll-call of who is doing which day, so
> > I can update the CG please?
> 
> I offered to do Saturdays.

That's very generous of you, but I'm concerned that it might not
be the best long-term plan.

The Bug Squad is the only "entry-level position" that we have.
Writing code requires either 3+ years of programming experience
(ideally in ope-source software) software, or lots of hand-holding
-- but we don't have lots of interest in hand-holding.  Writing
docs is finicky (as James knows very well!) because there's lots
of places you need to just know "don't do this", "ignore those
warnings", etc.  LSR is still festering at the 2.12 level.  etc.
By contrast, the Bug Squad has very clear guidelines (less than 10
bullet points for every "if you see this, do xyz" situation), a
well-defined amount of time (20 minutes, once a week), etc.

I don't think we should have highly skilled developers filling
those positions.  Potential volunteers aren't going to offer if
they don't see any easy way to contribute.

We've bumped the suggested response rate up to 4 days, so if
anything I think we should leave days open.


For James in particular... in addition to your doc stuff, I think
you should be coordinating lilydev 2.0 (I think we're ready for
another beta test?), and once that's out, we should find you 1 or
2 doc helpers.  It's high time for you to be training new people
how to work on our documentation; if you get hit by a bus, we're
SOL.

The first candidate that comes to mind is of course Eluze; he (or
she?  I'm never certain with names from other countries) has good
ideas for the docs, and it's fine to poach him/her away from the
Bug Squad.  I was always hoping that the Bug Squad would serve as
an "entry level" place where interested volunteers could spend 2-3
months helping out, before moving on to more complicated tasks.
IIRC I was initially forcasting a turnover of 50% every 6 months.

- Graham