From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 48C03138247 for ; Tue, 21 Jan 2014 14:57:35 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 81659E0E8C; Tue, 21 Jan 2014 14:57:28 +0000 (UTC) Received: from andre.telenet-ops.be (andre.telenet-ops.be [195.130.132.53]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6EA45E0B30 for ; Tue, 21 Jan 2014 14:57:25 +0000 (UTC) Received: from TOMWIJ-GENTOO ([94.226.55.127]) by andre.telenet-ops.be with bizsmtp id GexQ1n00x2khLEN01exQ0x; Tue, 21 Jan 2014 15:57:24 +0100 Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 15:56:16 +0100 From: Tom Wijsman To: alan.mckinnon@gmail.com Cc: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: formally allow qa to suspend commit rights Message-ID: <20140121155616.6a8cdf9b@TOMWIJ-GENTOO> In-Reply-To: <52DD2E2A.2020303@gmail.com> References: <20140119050224.GA7898@laptop.home> <20140120035446.063a31be@TOMWIJ-GENTOO> <52DD2E2A.2020303@gmail.com> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.9.0 (GTK+ 2.24.22; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=PGP-SHA1; boundary="Sig_/0K0/olXrpEfzciKvJEEXSXF"; protocol="application/pgp-signature" X-Archives-Salt: 8b2a9394-1938-404a-82c5-4142f674ca21 X-Archives-Hash: 58c8321298d962b8d9e3b74481badc79 --Sig_/0K0/olXrpEfzciKvJEEXSXF Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Mon, 20 Jan 2014 16:09:46 +0200 Alan McKinnon wrote: > Speaking as someone who had this power in his day job, for QA to be > able to suspend accounts is a very bad idea indeed. It always ends > badly. I suspended 20+ accounts in my current job over the years and > the number of cases where it was the right thing to do is precisely 0. The relation between "using power" and "having power is a bad idea" is non-existing; it is rather how that power is used that determines whether it is a good idea than whether one is able to use that power. > It was always a case of ill-advised action taken out of frustration, > or bypass the training step, or don't try hard enough to reach the > "infringer" and communicate like grown adults. Yup, I did all three. The prior experience demonstrated here shows how frustration or lack of proper communication are really good symptoms to investigate and learn from; however, these symptoms seem non-existing with our QA lead. > Suspending an account is a very serious thing to undertake, the > effects on the suspended person are vast and this power should never > lie with the person who is feeling the pain. This is the core symptom of the way you do QA, if you are the person that is feeling pain then you need to reconsider your QA position; the thing feeling the pain here is the Portage tree, and the QA team is just ensuring its quality and thus should not get emotional or personally affected by the developers' changes to some bits 'n bytes. Of course one could see QA as defending the Portage tree with our heart; but not that literally, at least not up to the point that one gets painfully hurt or even just frustrated... > Instead, there are well established channels to the body who can make > the decision. If QA has a problem with a dev for any reason > whatsoever, then QA should make a well-thought out case to that other > body for decision. Adding extra bodies adds more delay; furthermore, these bodies have less time, understanding and more about the technical QA issue at hand. If a developer does an unannounced mass action that breaks the tree severely or is heavily prohibited by policy, is unreachable while he continues to commit this; then it would be handy to "temporarily" be able to withdraw the commit access to bring it to that developer's attention. This is under the assumption that we have tried to contact the person multiple time and after a reasonable amount of time the person has not responded; if we still then need to wait for another team to notice, investigate and finally take action whereas we have already took the decision, ... This is rather to note that we need have a talk to coordinate that mass action and unbreak the tree, than it is to punish that developer by hitting with a ruler on his/her hand; in a sense of "let's fix the damage to the tree and proceed". There even can happen worse things; like misusing 'pkgmove', the @system set or similar that can cause some real havoc. It is in this occasion where a developer hasn't discussed or talked to anyone earlier before proceeding with a change he knows he shouldn't do, as well as ignoring us afterwards; that we simply temporarily cannot allow further commits, simply because the developer seems "technically unable to follow the policy and its enforcement". This is similar to how you have Gentoo support ops in #gentoo, Gentoo chat ops in #gentoo-chat and individual ops in individual IRC channels; if they had to rely on another body which would be the group contacts or FreeNode, you would have to wait a long for them to kick, ban or mute. If the non-technical ComRel lead has this power, then why doesn't the technical QA lead have this power? After all, the technical lead assures the quality of what the developer has access to; like I stated above, the technical lead has more time, understanding and knows the issue. You can see this as ComRel improving the QA of the community relations, whereas QA is improving the QA of the Portage tree and its commits; to some extent it even becomes questionable why ComRel can suspend access to the Portage tree, but I guess for revert wars between developers. > Anything else is madness and open invitation for it to all go south. This is a too broad generalization on the basis of one use case. See power as an useful temporary tool for when it is absolute necessary, don't see it as a permanent tool for whenever something goes wrong; the former usefulness leads to success, the latter madness leads to sadness. --=20 With kind regards, Tom Wijsman (TomWij) Gentoo Developer E-mail address : TomWij@gentoo.org GPG Public Key : 6D34E57D GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2 ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D --Sig_/0K0/olXrpEfzciKvJEEXSXF Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=signature.asc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJS3oqUAAoJEJWyH81tNOV9lEQIAMeIuz3sCRbB6LJ6uZWra8Xj W/Q/q6RxuMbeReStdGz9CFF0iJxgRBP40pyUXggBwUfOGBrPWShnK2V5qxjnl0Ls qS/kbqtSxjYH9D96qPm7o06Bi5b6Pbnu+WqW/eS7lrViOQ6zAjvOPdcEcM1cc2KD pXx8Pci/BI5/4U2fTuDwIecQ5R8x0eoPyUMQRK+WZfj9R4uPppee3mwxrG5LWhvw vJsiR1+Sw70eXPYNabgQhbZYQm7/6/kuOryyttPvx45PIriAXQvWAlolA9L5ne07 d5SGp6OjYZZf9E2eiF1LN2dXgQ4leNi9NoRxMQFvL7Idk5mIZ/gXcpN0rcRQsss= =gd0o -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Sig_/0K0/olXrpEfzciKvJEEXSXF--