Should we change how we approve developer account requests?

[Ben Cooksley]

On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 4:15 PM Nate Graham <nate at kde.org> wrote:

>
>
> On 8/16/21 10:11 PM, Nicolás Alvarez wrote:
> > It's not that odd :) We as sysadmins don't know if you're actually
> > sponsoring them until you reply approving the request, since people
> > can request developer access and enter any name as the sponsor. That's
> > pretty much what the approval is for, to confirm you did encourage
> > them to apply.
>
> Ah, fair enough.
>
> > ...but you're right that this still means dev access requests are
> > approved by 1 person (the sponsor), and if you think that should
> > change, that's a valid discussion to have with the wider community.
>
> Yeah I mean it would result in a bit more bureaucracy. If you think the
> current system is working well enough between sponsor confirmation and
> your own internal checks, I guess there's no reason to change.
>

So far the requests we receive tend to fall into one of two groups fairly
cleanly:

The first is composed of people who have a fairly extensive contribution
history, usually resulting in the question being asked "why didn't this
person apply for an account weeks ago?" :)
In many cases, their contribution record is sufficiently long that i'd be
happy to grant them an account without a supporter.

The second group is made up of people who have usually misunderstood the
process, and have applied for an account thinking they need one to use
invent.kde.org.
These are usually resolved by clarifying what a developer account is needed
for and providing some pointers on how someone can get involved.

For those applications that do fall in the middle ground (not that we see
many of these), additional inquiries are generally made of those the
applicant has interacted with.

It should be noted that all applications are reviewed in detail by
Sysadmin, with a sample of the applicant's activity being reviewed in
addition to comments from the supporter and the application itself prior to
an account being granted.


> Nate
>

Cheers,
Ben
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