Re: [Tails-project] [Tails-dev] Request for change in commun…

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Author: sajolida
Date:  
To: Public mailing list about the Tails project
CC: The Tails public development discussion list
Subject: Re: [Tails-project] [Tails-dev] Request for change in communication culture
I'm moving this discussion to tails-project@ and quoting your fully
because not all core contributors (starting with paid workers) are
subscribed to tails-dev@ while we have a check list item to make sure
that they are all subscribed at least to tails-project@.

For example most of the Help Desk is not subscribed to tails-dev@ and
it's been particularly complicated for me to get their attention on
Redmine and mentions helped.

anonym:
> Hi!
>
> Let me first express the change we're seeking: when leaving a comment on a ticket, consider it your responsibility that the right person(s) will read it! If you don't @mention someone, you probably are failing this responsibility!


I've also realized pretty late that mentioning people on Redmine A LOT
was useful and needed. I started doing it pretty consistently and it
works! So I fully support your proposal.

> [Note that @mentioning works in both Redmine and GitLab, and this proposal is meant for both.]
>
> So far we have been relying on one person subscribing to all Redmine changes and constantly following up on new comments and notifying the right people so they are not "lost into the void". This is not sustainable (and IIRC GitLab does not support subscribing to everything?) so we need to distribute this work.
>
> To me it makes most sense to put this responsibility on the poster, at least among us regular-ish contributors that are expected to have read the contributor's docs -- new (or "drive-by") contributors cannot be expected to have done this, and will be dealt with differently, some how.
>
> In practice this means you should do the following when leaving a comment:
>
> 1. Figure out who you want to read the comment! A good resource for this is:
>
>        https://tails.boum.org/contribute/#mentors


Note that this list is unmaintained and outdated and we have plans to
get rid of it:

https://redmine.tails.boum.org/code/issues/17076

>    If you have trouble finding who to @mention, please mention @anonym and I'll try to help!

>
> 2. Is this person already the assignee of the ticket you are posting to? If so they will be notified any way, so we don't necessarily have to spam them further by @mentioning them. But please err on the side of over-using @mentions rather than under-using them! :)


Did you check that assignees actually receive ALL comments on their
tickets? I didn't check but I'm not sure.

> 3. Otherwise, just add a @mention (or several, if you think several people could be interested in this comment) somewhere in your comment.


intrigeri told me that he was not sure whether it worked to add several
mentions on the same line. I didn't check, but since then I stopped writing:

@some1 @some2

And always write:

@some1
@some2

> 4. Post!
>
> What are your thoughts on this? I know this proposal isn't 100% bullet proof, it's more of a necessary reaction to the fact that we won't have a person doing all this work for us any longer.
>
> Personally I think there might be a few cases when the above rule doesn't apply, e.g. if you just want to add some piece of info to a ticket no one is working on, just to make sure it is available to whoever might work on it in the distant future. Not sure how to formalize a rule around this, but remember: "please err on the side of over-using @mentions rather than under-using them".
>
> Related to all this, if you need a technical rubber-duck, try talking to me (e.g. by private email or pinging me on XMPP)! If I cannot outright help you directly, I most likely can find someone who is better suited to help.
>
> Cheers!


--
sajolida
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