On 2/20/2011 12:12 PM, Joachim Faulhaber wrote:
2011/2/19 Edward Diener<eldiener@tropicsoft.com>:
On 2/19/2011 3:57 PM, Gordon Woodhull wrote:
Hi Ron, Ed, all,
On Feb 18, 2011, at 10:58 AM, Ronald Garcia wrote:
That's right. The review wizards will also be putting out a report which requests managers for libraries that don't have one, but individual appeals are often more effective.
On Feb 18, 2011, at 10:06 AM, Edward Diener wrote:
I am not sure how one goes about doing that, but I will assume I am supposed to ask for one on this mailing list.
On 2/18/2011 9:36 AM, Ronald Garcia wrote:
At this time you should try to find a review manager for the library.
Ed, you volunteered to be a review manager about a month ago. Have you approached any of the authors of prospective libraries on http://www.boost.org/community/review_schedule.html who are listed as needing review managers?
I was told to contact the review wizards and offer up my services to review libraries. I did so, and mentioned the libraries I felt I could review. As I understand it, it was then up to the review wizards to determine whether I was qualified to review a library and to contact me about doing so if they thought that I was. I was not subsequently contacted.
!! This is at least delicate and definitely "not amusing". (1) Ed volunteered to be Review Manager for a couple of libs (2) Ed is around in the Boost community for quite some time including BoostCon
I have to correct that. I have never been to BoostCon.
and is going to be first time library contributor. As an active Boost member he should qualify to be an RM, shouldn't he. At least he deserves a respose! (3) Many libs still don't have an RM AND (4) he was not subsequently contacted!
Thanks for the boost on Boost, but I am fine with the decision. I do believe that having so many libraries waiting for reviews, which puts the potential, at least, for a library being added to Boost as some time pretty far relatively in the future, is not a great thing. I made the suggestion in the past that more than one review going on at a time, and a longer review process for each library, be allowed in order to get libraries reviewed more quickly. I honestly do not see that the slowness of the review process has much to do with libraries having review managers or not. Usually a library which is scheduled for review fairly soon will get a review manager somehow. But maybe this is a problem in that the review schedule is at least partially determined by those libraries which have review managers. At the same time the process for a library submitter finding a review manager for his library seems very odd to me. One posts a message on this mailing list and hopes someone responds saying that they are willing to be the review manager. if no one responds, what does one do then ? If someone responds, and the library implementer does not know that person from the mailing list, how does one choose whether or not that person is acceptable or not ? In a real way I would rather a review wizard go through a list of people which he knows are knowledgable and experienced enough to be a review manager and contact each of those people until he finds one to be a review manager for a library. It would be much easier than placing the burden of finding a review manager for a library on the library submitter. It would also almost assuredly mean that the review manager would have little personal bias approving or not approving a library for inclusion into Boost at the end of the review process.
There are different interpretations one can have about facts (1) to (4). I prefer this one:
The construction of a looooong term duty, like the Reveiw Wizard Role, is just not working so well. RWs have a lot of duties and a lot of expectations put on them (e.g. by phony statements and standards on the web-site). At the heart of the review process they control things by accepting or rejecting RMs for library submissions. That gives them power and responsibility. What do they get for that? How are they motivated for all the work over years? What if they just have too little time to always care for all the requests and expectations directed towards them, follow all those discussions and keeping track of the qualifications of potential review managers. What if they aren't real Wizards but only humans?
In my view,
(1) Initiative and action should be "passed" to the people that are highly motivated: The group of contributors that have ideas and projects. (2) Quality control and the technical management of library review can be organized by contributors via the Review Manager Assistant role. (3) The "sovereign" is the community of developers: Discussions and formal reviews are crucial for acceptance or rejection of new libraries. (4) Seasoned boosters can veto if things go astray. In addition they contribute as mentors and help finding decisions in controversial cases.