[Python-Dev] Move selected documentation repos to PSF BitBucket account?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 06:08:07PM -0600, Brian Curtin wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 5:57 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

> > I'm sure that we'll get *more* contributions, but will they be *better*
> > contributions?
> >
> > I know that there are people who think that mailing lists are old and
> > passe, and that we should shift discussion to a social media site like
> > Reddit. If we did, we'd probably get twenty times as many comments, and
> > the average quality would probably plummet. More is not necessarily a
> > good thing.
> 
> If we need to ensure that we're getting better contributions than we
> are now, then we should be interviewing committers, rejecting
> newcomers (or the opposite, multiplying core-mentors by 100), and
> running this like a business. I've written some crappy code that got
> committed, so I should probably be fired.

None of those things are guarenteed to lead to better contributions. The 
quality of code from the average successful business is significantly 
lower than that from successful FOSS projects like Python. Interviews 
just weed out people who are poor interviewees, not poor performers. And 
any organisation that fires contributors for relatively trivial mistakes 
like "crappy code" would soon run out of developers.

My point is that increasing the number of contributions is not, in and 
of itself, a useful aim to have. More contributions is just a means to 
an end, the end we want is better Python.


> Enabling our community to be active contributors is an important
> thing. Give them a means to level up and we'll all be better off from
> it.

Right. But this isn't a feel-good exercise where anyone who wants a Gold 
Star for contributing gets commit privileges. (That would "enable our 
community to be active contributors" too.) Barriers to contribute work 
two ways:

(1) we miss out on good contributions we would want;

(2) we also miss out on poor contributions that would 
    just have to be rejected.


Enabling more people to contribute increases both.



-- 
Steven