On Wed, 18 Dec 2024 at 14:20, Goffi <goffi@goffi.org> wrote:
Le mercredi 18 décembre 2024, 11:07:25 heure normale d’Europe centrale Dave Cridland a écrit :
On Tue, 17 Dec 2024 at 22:12, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> wrote:
I think there's a third option, which is to move the responsibility for processing non-GitHub PRs onto the submitter, and have them find a volunteer to handle it each time (a Document Shepherd, additional Author, or whatever). I worry that if there's a body on the Editorial team who handles this very rare case, it'll likely mean that when it's needed, we've mostly forgotten who has this role, or they've drifted away, or whatever. Once submitted, it's the Author's responsibility to do the updates by PR as well, so this is a task for the lifetime of each XEP (like the Author, really).
If a submitter cannot find anyone on the standards list or amongst the people they know willing to help handle this part of the Author role, then I think that suggests quite a bit about how much interest there is in the XEP.
Furthermore, I think this is essentially a mild formalisation on what the existing de-facto process is; so absent a strong reason to chnage the existing process, I'd rather we document something that matches.
(I'll make a PR against XEP-0143 with concrete text on Friday)
I think that making it nearly-mandatory to register an account on a service from a private company is a problem. It's totally understandable that people don't want to create an account on GitHub (I've avoided it myself for a long time), and asking potential first-time contributors to look for help themselves can be highly discouraging.
Totally agreed.
At the very least, there should be an easy process to ask for help, a list of people to contact, or an automated message requesting assistance when a patch is received by email. As you mentioned yourself, this case is currently rare, so it shouldn't be a huge problem.
Is something like "Do a PR, but if you can't, send it to standards@ and ask for help?" enough here? Currently, Florian is happy to handle all such requests; but I don't think it's fair on him to rely on his continued availability and kindness.
I don't say that accepting patches by email is a must, but there should be an option that doesn't require creating an account on a private company's service, even if it's not used often.
I do 100% sympathise. However, options such as running our own version control, or insisting that the Editor handles emailed patches and submissions, seem to put the additional load on the wrong people too. I do think anything we do here is inevitably a compromise, I'm hoping we can find one we're all equally, and minimally, unhappy with. Dave.