Regarding the quality of this mailing list

[Carlos Leonhard Woelz]

Hi Kenny,

On Wednesday 14 July 2004 05:11 pm, Kenny Smith wrote:
> I was reading the KDE quality wiki and quality.kde.org to look for a solid
> definable goal of what this list intends to accomplish, but did not find
> one. From what I gather, the quality team is there to fill in the various
> uncrossed t's or dotting the...lower case j's... And to give a more,
> complete overall feel to the product of the KDE desktop, please correct me
> if I am wrong.

You are correct.

> The various wiki modules do a good job providing the status of tasks for
> contributors to jump on-board with... which I think is awesome in it's
> current states -- and fits into what I could ascertain from the project's
> goals.

Thanks!

> But what is this list for, exactly?  From what I gather (once again, no
> obvious guideline or definition here -- and corrections please),
> This list is for announcements of new tasks / projects / completion of
> tasks, for seeking help when you are unable to complete a task, and
> coordinating any group effort.  Basically this is a KDE developer's list.

Yes, it's a developer (in a broad sense) list. I prefer contributor, as for 
some people developer = programmer.

> What I'm proposing is we have certain GUIDELINES on what should be posted
> into this list, so it won't turn into just meaningless chatter, and
> actually provide a place where helpful information can be gathered for
> these developers.  I really don't think this list should be dealing with
> user's problems of compiling from CVS / unstable.  AS i have said
> previously, this might be better off in the KDE forum (easier to access and
> search IMO).

I agree. Here are the guidelines:

On topic:
1) We support new contributors. If you are building KDE for the first time, 
intending to help with docs, transtalion, whatever, we are here to help. So 
calls for help are on topic.
2) Discussion about tasks, new programs to perform them, guides, tips, 
bugzilla itself, promo for attracting new people, in sum organization stuff, 
is on topic.

Off topic:
In depth discussion about bugs, being compilation problems, fonts, whatever, 
are off topic. Better bring them to the correct application / kde-devel / 
kde-core-devel mailing list or bugzilla.

> I really think the Quality team has a good chance at making KDE a complete
> product-- and from what I've seen the  Quality team has accomplishments --
> re-organization, and maybe more guidance and leadership is in order (IMHO)

I totally agree. Anyone can lead, and that's what I like most about KDE. In 
KDE, leadership is done by example. You want people to do something you 
believe in? You just do it, prove it works, and then people will use the 
schema you created. It's leadership by example(tm).

But what do you mean by reorganization?

> So, any opposition?  Suggestions? Comments? Agreeance?
My comments are all around :)

> Also -- is this list FOR helping users/developers compile from CVS?  I
Developers (contributors), yes. Users, no. (but is hard to tell, so we end up 
helping anyone who asks. The guy is already compiling KDE CVS, so he will be 
at least a tester). There is not so much traffic from these guys, and it is 
worth it.

Compilation bugs, NO. Please no. If it is a real bug, not an newbie error, we 
should stop and say: there is a bug, try again in a couple of days. There was 
quite some traffic in the past about this. It should stop.

> honestly have no way of telling.  If this list is meant for this sort of
> thing, then maybe some changes are to be had?
Don't you think it is important to help and encourage new contributors to 
build KDE for the first time? I think it is a great step towards being an 
active developer. It's a cultural shock for non programmers.

Cheers,

Carlos Woelz