2010/5/17 Scott McMurray <me22.ca+boost@gmail.com>:
On 17 May 2010 17:01, Stewart, Robert <Robert.Stewart@sig.com> wrote:
I took Joachim's suggestion to be that the RMA would act as an RM, up to the point of announcing a decision on the list, instead passing collected and generated information to the RM for consideration. If the RM trusts the RMA's input, or the RM has independently verified the RMA's input, the RM may follow the RMA's decision, even going so far as to copy and paste the RMA's suggested summary message to the list.
The most important function of an RMA is to *support* an RM so the RM can do his job with a minimal investment of time and that he can concentrate on the important issues: Evaluation of the controversial points of the discussion, weighting the conditionals and finding a final decision particularly if the discussion was controversial and the vote is tight. The way in which the RM wants to be supported is essentially up to him. But it is quite obvious that this usually will imply to do the jobs that cost time and work: * A thorough check if the submitted library fulfills the requirements. Currently this check has to be done by the RM. If it is not done thoroughly, the violated requirements tend to pop up during the review, which is usually annoying for the reviewers: In the past there where such instances: E.g. Missing tests, insufficient docs, examples didn't compile, too many warnings etc. indicating that RMs frequently lack time or motivation. Contributors, cause they are facing to undergo the same check, will likely be very good gatekeepers for that. For them doing the check thoroughly is effective, cause they learn for their own project. * Technical announcements: Advance notice, announcement of dates. * Compiling statistics and other technical summaries of the review. * Report about the review's result as a draft for the RM.
This sounds substantially like promoting the current pool of RMs to RWs, and letting new people into the RM pool.
The RMA usually will not make decisions and will not issue a final verdict about the acceptance of a library.
What good would an untrusted RMA be?
My basic assumption is that boost contributors are trustworthy, competent and passionate people. They are attracted by high quality generic programming and accept high standards and tough discussions. There are a lot of opportunities to gain trust in them: Postings about their work on the list. Participation in discussions. Often also boostcon participation / boostcon talks. The RMA job in an additional oppotunity. I am shure contributors that volunteer for RMA can be trusted in the vast majority of cases. And if there were a case where someone turns out to be a real failure? (1) The RM may cancel the collaboration with this RMA and look for another OR (2) does the job himself, in which case he has the same workload as he had in the old model. Regards, Joachim.