[Python-Dev] Goodbye

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Am 23.09.2010 11:43, schrieb Tim Golden:
> On 23/09/2010 10:38, "Martin v. Löwis" wrote:
>>> Let me ask a question which I don't think has been asked in this
>>> thread: are there guidelines for tracker-trawlers? I'm never sure
>>> where to look for this kind of thing myself. If there's nothing,
>>> I'm happy to pen a dos-and-donts (which I might do anyway, simply
>>> as a blog entry...)
>>
>> Can you please rephrase the question? What's a "tracker-trawler"?
> 
> My invented terminology for someone -- like Mark -- who invests time
> in going through issues in the tracker with a view to assessing them,
> prioritising them, de-duplicating, etc. As opposed to someone who's
> looking through issues with a view to finding things to fix within
> a particular area of competence.

Ah. I think this goes to the core of the dispute: My recommendation
is not to trawl at all.

Instead, if you *really* want to contribute to Python, pick some area
that you think needs most attention, and go through the tracker, and
acquire competence in that area.

The question is how much time you want to spend per issue. If it's
only a few minutes per issue, I question whether this is a useful
activity. If the issue has been long-standing, most likely, a few
minutes will not be enough. There may, occasionally, be an issue
that has been forgotten about, but overall, I'd expect that that
the amount of wasted time becomes considerable - you can spend
hours and hours looking through issues just to find out that they
are all really tricky and would require a lot of expertise to resolve,
which you then are not willing to acquire. Also, for me, as somebody
on the nosy list, this activity doesn't help: *I* would have to spend
much more time than I have at hands. So any "is this still valid?"
message gets deleted immediately, especially if there are ten of
them in my inbox.

Regards,
Martin