Re: Proposal for a team of admins

[c.]

On 11 Jan 2017, at 10:58, Julien Bect <address@hidden> wrote:

> * When the EHP [1] is created, we have of course to create its OF-repo by 
> cloning its main repo.  But for other packages, we also have to create an 
> OF-repo [-> no additional work].

Why "of course"? Externally hosted packages could just be externally hosted, 
developed and deployed.
How these packages are developed and distributed should in no way interfere 
with the working of OF.

So if the OF leader(s) are not happy with how the code of a package looks like 
they should not necessarily 
clone it as-is and host it on OF. 

I think that looking at other people's code and trying to convince them to 
adapt it to what he beleived to be 
the minimum acceptable quality standards of OF is a large part of what Carnë 
refers to "community management" 
in his latest post and is very tirying and time consuming.

Such code does actually not even necessarily be proper "packages", for example 
for a function consisting of 
a single file the complete package structure is definitely overkill.
Contributions of tis kind may still be useful per-se (e.g. I found the now gone 
physical_constants package 
to be very useful ...) but especially are a great way to get new contributors 
involved with Octave development
without being confronted with a steep entry barrier.

I do understand OF leader(s) may not wish to have their own "reputation" or 
that of OF linked to the "quality" 
of such software, but I still think we would benefit from maintaining a list of 
such contributions.
So if you like this list could be maintained elsewhere, e.g. on a dedicated 
page in the wiki taht would be linked
to from https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ just like Octave Forge.

c.