[Mageia-discuss] Suggestions

[Michael Scherer]

Le dimanche 24 octobre 2010 à 02:09 +0200, Tux99 a écrit :
> On Sun, 24 Oct 2010, Michael Scherer wrote:
> 
> > Le dimanche 24 octobre 2010 à 00:59 +0200, Tux99 a écrit :
> >
> > > I 100% agree with that and this is something that the packagers really 
> > > should do. What's the point in packaging up a great useful app, but then 
> > > saving time on the description so nobody but a few insiders use it, 
> > > because nobody know what it is for?
> > > 
> > > Even I still come across packages I have never heard of and then wonder 
> > > what they are for, immagine a newbie who doesn't really know any of the 
> > > Linux apps by name.
> > 
> > Well, writing better description is a task that do not requires
> > technical knowledge, and that any packagers could do, if people send a
> > patch.
> 
> Come on... the effort of adding a decent description is minimal for a 
> packager, the effort for a normal user of making a patch is much 
> higher, this is not a very friendly answer towards the users...

I think I demonstrated in the past that constant friendliness toward
users is not one of my distinctive characteristics. 

The patch arguent is invalid, because people can also send mail, like
"here is a better description of package $FOO because I didn't
understood the current one and I wanted to help".
 
So while sending a email and finding the packager email can be hard for
some people, I doubt that sending a email is hard for everybody.

If writing a decent description is easy and almost effortless, and if
sending a email is easy, then what is difficult into doing both ?

> > Since I never received anything for my own packages for this kind of
> > problem, shall I assume that my packages are fine ?
> 
> I don't know which ones are your packages, this wasn't meant personally 
> towards you or anyone specific, I don't think including a decent package 
> description in all Mageia packages (each packager for their own 
> packages) is such a bad or hard thing to ask for.

If this is not a hard task, my question still stand, why does no one, be
it packagers and non packagers do it ?

We could rely on the packagers for everything, but 1) that doesn't scale
2) that doesn't work.

That doesn't scale because packagers time is a finite ressource. 

And that doesn't work because packagers ( at least me ) most of the time
do not read descriptions, so they do not see something is wrong.
Managing and knowing softwares is our duty, which place use in a
position far away from someone that discover the system. Kde had 3
majors releases since I started to use Linux, so of course the packages
descriptions change, yet I didn't read them since years. And the same
could be said of most packagers.

And I think that most of use naively think "if something is wrong, at
least 1 person will say it". yet, it doesn't happen.

So if we want to scale and make it work, then we need to find how to
make people who are directly concerned contribute. And so, the best way
to find why something didn't happen is to simply ask to people who are
directly concerned.

So again, why does people do not send improved description ? Because
they fear we will nuke them from orbit ? Because our email are so
obfuscated that no one can find them  ?

-- 
Michael Scherer