Ideas for minor changes

[Ethan Blanton]

Stu Tomlinson spake unto us the following wisdom:
> On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 23:33, John Bailey<rekkanoryo at rekkanoryo.org> wrote:
> > Idea #1 - Make it easier to tell who are developers in #pidgin
> >
> > Gary and myself have both said on multiple occasions that it would make
> > sense to have some sort of mechanism by which a new entrant to #pidgin could
> > easily identify who is affiliated with us (and thus whose answers can be
> > trusted as authoritative).  I know it runs contrary to Freenode's
> > recommendations, but I think it would make sense if we could come up with a
> > way to auto-voice all CPWs and auto-op all developers.  (This was trivial on
> > the old services mechanism, but I have no idea how to achieve this on the
> > current services platform.)  We can then clearly state on the website/wiki
> > that operators are developers and voices are senior contributors.
> 
> I'm not really in favour of this, I really do like the Freenode
> guidelines about this.

Agreed.

> As much as we like to complain about #pidgin it does seem to work most
> of the time

Agreed.  I do understand John & Gary's point, though -- when it fails,
it fails pretty hard.  All it takes is a handful of
obstinate/clueless/helpfully unhelpful users descending at the same
time to cause all of the developers to flee in terror.  I don't think
ops and voice willl fix this, though.

> > Idea #2 - Make it easier to tell who are developers on trac
> >
> > The other idea I had is to find out if it's possible to either modify the
> > trac template or make a plugin that would somehow label developers and CPW's
> > on their comments.  For example, if I comment on a ticket, show "rekkanoryo
> > (Developer)," or if Masca comments on a ticket, show "salinasv (Crazy Patch
> > Writer)" or "(Senior Contributor)" or similar. This would obviously need to
> > be keyed off the "developer" and "cpw" groups in trac, and might even make a
> > good argument for making a "ticket triager" group in the future if we ever
> > have a dedicated ticket team.
> 
> This might actually be useful. Taking it a step further I'd like to
> see something along the lines of what gnome have managed in their
> bugzilla with bug reporters/developers/etc getting a "points" score.
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/page.cgi?id=points.html but I realise this
> is probably asking a bit much :)

I would not mind seeing developer/cpw/blessed triager markings, but
I'm not a big fan of scores, karma, etc.  I've never seen such a
system that didn't wind up with at least some subset of users gaming
the system for obscure and nearly worthless bragging rights, to the
detriment of real work.  That said, I don't actually know what gnome
has implemented, maybe it's not what I'm thinking.

> I wonder why I have different opinions on these two ideas. Am I weird?

Yes, but not because of this.

Ethan

-- 
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764