<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Hi, so we all agreed. I wrote our agreement into text here, and cleaned up that page as far as I could: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/oscaf/wiki/OntologyMaintenance">http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/oscaf/wiki/OntologyMaintenance</a> I would say: from today on, we have to turn bad tickets into good tickets, Here is the central point, copy-pasted into this mail: Good tickets <ul> <li>are like <a class="closed ticket" href="https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/oscaf/ticket/34" title="task: Clarification of nie:contentSize vs nie:byteSize (closed: fixed)">ticket:34</a> </li> <li>discuss one change at a time </li> <li>provide a precise patch to say what needs to be changed in which ontology </li> </ul> Bad tickets <ul> <li>contain multiple wishes for changes, </li> <li>affect multiple ontologies, </li> <li>are written in unprecise prosa, </li> <li>express a different idea how ontologies should be and ignore the design rationale existing within the existing ontologies, </li> <li>say that they are in a hurry and need to be done today because so much is at stake, </li> <li>insult committers, maintainers, or others, </li> <li>end up in endless fruitless and tiring discussions. </li> </ul> The task of a good maintainer is to turn bad tickets into good tickets: by closing them as invalid, splitting them up into multiple tickets, each one a good ticket (and then closing the bad ticket as invalid, linking to good tickets), telling the community about our agreements here, being polite and helpful, respecting the anger and frustration of programming in general that caused a contributor to file a bad ticket. best Leo It was Evgeny Egorochkin who said at the right time 24.11.2009 01:16 the following words: <blockquote cite="mid:200911240216.01551.phreedom.stdin@gmail.com" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">В сообщении от Пятница 20 ноября 2009 23:32:06 автор Leo Sauermann написал: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">ok, summary from my side: * patches are a welcome idea by Antoni, Sebastian, Evgeny, Roberto, but some say: not mandatory. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> +1 as long as it's defined as: provide patch if possible/applies to the situation/can be useful, </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">* maintainer has to reply to a patch within a week. agreed? (if all say yes, we work like this from now on) </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> Some questions: * I can afford to promise this. Can others like Antoni afford? * Maintainer = one of maintainers or all maintainers? * What if the only reasonable course of actions is to first obtain feedback from parties affected? Or this means that all maintainers must take some action(like clarify the question, ask for feedback) in case if this is needed within 1 week? How about tickets stalled due to lack of follow up from the reporter or one of implementations(where required)? To be honest, I'm DESPERATELY LOOKING FOR an excuse to be able to make changes faster. In the current situation, there's a chance this would mean: * me proposing a patch(X% of the time based on someone asking/complaining about something; (100-X)% of time because I see this biting us in the ass later) * me replying that I like the patch and * me making the commit and closing ticket. Essentially no peer review or feedback. </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">I would also say: patches do not have to be perfect, something like this is enough: "change nco: add: nco:PersonContact rdfs:subClassOf banana:Bananas. nco:Contact rdfs:comment "All persons are bananas in their brains." " We have an ontology language (RDFS, NRL and N3) for a reason: it gives us a clear langauge to speak. Such text is easy to write, but much more precise than prose. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> +1 If you are allowed to use some human (but precisely worded) language when it makes sense. eg: use xxx:string intead of xsd:string all across the ontology. The preference of course goes to specific lists of triples to add/remove. </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">all ok? the input and dicussion is good, we get somewhere, best Leo It was Antoni Mylka who said at the right time 19.11.2009 11:45 the following words: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Sebastian Faubel pisze: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Form my experience, it's almost impossible to come up with a working patch when suggesting something significant and especially when requesting a feature. There are often lots of possible ways to implement something and without the initial discussion, you get a 95% useless patch, especially if you aren't a core developer. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap="">I agree to the above mentioned - It should not be mandatory to send in a patch when filing a bug report. However, a patch can often serve as a concrete starting point for discussion on the mailing list. I mean, that from a patch people can outline concrete modeling weaknesses and offer concrete resolutions. One difficulty when designing ontologies is not to get off topic and stay focused on the problem at hand. I think that this is what really needs to be addressed. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap="">+1. Discussing a patch is much easier. Even if the initial version is 95% incorrect. We shouldn't require it, because that would alienate potential external contributors. We should seriously encourage it though at least among ourselves. Antoni Mylka <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:antoni.mylka@gmail.com">antoni.mylka@gmail.com</a> _______________________________________________ Xesam mailing list <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Xesam@lists.freedesktop.org">Xesam@lists.freedesktop.org</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xesam">http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xesam</a> </pre> </blockquote> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> </pre> </blockquote> <pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- _____________________________________________________ Dr. Leo Sauermann <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.dfki.de/~sauermann">http://www.dfki.de/~sauermann</a> Deutsches Forschungszentrum fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz DFKI GmbH Trippstadter Strasse 122 P.O. Box 2080 Fon: +43 6991 gnowsis D-67663 Kaiserslautern Fax: +49 631 20575-102 Germany Mail: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:leo.sauermann@dfki.de">leo.sauermann@dfki.de</a> Geschaeftsfuehrung: Prof.Dr.Dr.h.c.mult. Wolfgang Wahlster (Vorsitzender) Dr. Walter Olthoff Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Prof. Dr. h.c. Hans A. Aukes Amtsgericht Kaiserslautern, HRB 2313 _____________________________________________________ </pre> </body> </html>