Re: [gentoo-project] Social Contract clean-up

[Dean Stephens]

On 03/31/18 19:35, Daniel Robbins wrote:
> I disagree strongly and think this is unwise because many may contribute
> but not have time to go through the recruitment process or any interest in
> being part of the project.
If someone does not have any interest in being part of the project, why
would they take part in the project via User Representatives?

As for the lack of time argument, which is a recurring meme, especially
as it applies to those without tree access, formal recruiting can be
done in trivial amounts of time compared to making any sort of ongoing
contributions. If one were to have a mentor and dedicate some time to
just getting the quiz answered, without merely spoonfeeding the answers,
it should take perhaps a few hours, past that the requirements
essentially boil down to making some keys (call it a minute or two),
minor interaction via bugzilla (a few more minutes, call it half an
hour), and a meeting with Recruiters (mine was brief, but call it an
hour, two if you feel like wildly overestimating things). If you are
just focusing on the recruitment process itself, the executive summary
is: perhaps six hours at worst, more realistically closer to half that,
and potentially notably less still.

However, we (specifically the forums team) do not typically do it that
way for a very simple reason: doing so would be pointless. We recruit
based on abilities and interests that are not so much as touched on by
the quiz. So we get our recruits up to speed on what they are being
recruited for and generally just let the quiz follow.

Recruitment for gentoo.git access does necessarily take longer, given
that there are multiple quizzes and more questions, but they are also
biases quite a bit more heavily toward specific technical information
that those being recruited should, by and large, already know before
they reach the point of formal recruiting. Recruits do not, yet, spring
forth from pods with no prior life experience. Recruits come in via
filing bugs and submitting patches with are then reviewed, and modified,
and the reasons for the modifications are discussed which provides an
education in what the policies in effect are and how they are
implemented, which in turn typically covers a significant fraction of
the material on the quiz, the balance of which their mentor should cover
with them. As such, even for gentoo.git access, recruitment itself is
not, has not been, and is not likely to become the major time sink, the
actual work being done is.

> Also, it is critical that there is
> representation from outside of the project proper, as the Gentoo developer
> world can become (many will argue that is already has become) a kind of
> mono-culture.
A monoculture of people who are adamantly for and against many of the
same packages and policies, and those who scarcely care either way so
long as things work. A monoculture of people who get along reasonably
well with virtually anyone and those who manage to get along poorly with
virtually everyone. A monoculture of people who deliberately try to
throw their weight around and those who simply try to work on their
corner of their project. A very extraordinarily diverse monoculture,
especially given its relatively small, and dare I call it cellular, nature.