[Xesam] NRL; Need your input - Leo proposes to allow from now on only "one patch per ticket" because we are slow and discussion is endless

[Evgeny Egorochkin]

В сообщении от Пятница 20 ноября 2009 23:32:06 автор Leo Sauermann написал:
> ok, summary from my side:
> 
> * patches are a welcome idea by Antoni, Sebastian, Evgeny, Roberto,
> but some say: not mandatory.

+1 as long as it's defined as: provide patch if possible/applies to the 
situation/can be useful, 

> * maintainer has to reply to a patch within a week.
> agreed?
> (if all say yes, we work like this from now on)

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.

> 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.

+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.

> 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:
> > Sebastian Faubel pisze:
> >>> 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.
> >>
> >> 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.
> >
> > +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
> > antoni.mylka at gmail.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Xesam mailing list
> > Xesam at lists.freedesktop.org
> > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xesam
> 

-- 
Evgeny