Re: [gentoo-dev] Fwd: Cron <gmirror@dipper> /usr/local/bin/pidlock -s rsync-gen /bin/bash /usr/local/bin/mastermirror/rsync-gen.sh

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 7:06 AM, Dirkjan Ochtman <djc@g.o> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 8:26 AM, Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:
>> I should point out that:
>>
>> 1) CI is detecting this kind of issues much faster than you are,
>> and reporting them both to the committer and to a *dedicated* mailing
>> list, so your mail is completely redundant and delayed.
>
> That sounds like a somewhat better solution, although sometimes it can
> make sense to send email to where the developers are already, rather
> than putting the onus on them to join a separate mailing list.
>

I don't think the idea is to put the onus on people to join a separate
list so much as to give people the freedom to NOT join that list.

Why is it necessary to notify every developer that somebody has not
run repoman?  For everybody who does what they're supposed to do,
there is no lesson to learn, and it is just noise.

For people interested in building tree-wide QA tools or who are
interested in overall trends, then they can mine the list archives.
If they have significant observations they can always post here or on
planet or whatever, and that would have a much higher S/N ratio.

>> 2) Spamming the developer mailing list is completely unprofessional
>> here. If you are unhappy about those mails, just disable them, and stop
>> blaming people for your misery. Trying to prove others incompetent
>> helps nobody.
>
> Come on... I think it's fair game to share news about people breaking
> things on the gentoo-dev mailing list. Naming & shaming can be useful
> sometimes.

I think naming and shaming is a short-term game.  It might have
immediate effects, but it tends to create a culture where nobody wants
to get involved, because they don't want to be the person getting
named and shamed.

We should certainly provide information to people about their errors
so that they can fix them.  We should certainly have this information
available to people making tools that can help people avoid errors,
since error is human nature.  There is no need to hide this
information, but we shouldn't have a culture where we're making it an
emphasis so that we can all go around pointing fingers.

If somebody is a consistent problem and is impervious to attempts to
work with them (whatever the ultimate reason), we don't need to make
them a social pariah until they decide to quit.  We just need to have
QA revoke their commit rights.

I'm a little concerned that stuff like this starts to end up working
like collective punishment.  Fred over here broke the tree, so nobody
gets to have desert or recess today; you all know what to do with Fred
when he's looking to sit next to somebody at lunch and when the bus
drops you off at home later today.

I don't think that was the original motivation; I think frustration
with this being a frequent problem is more the issue and is quite
understandable.  I just don't think this is the right solution.

-- 
Rich