Re: [Savannah-help-public] [sr #106581] doing something about stale jobs?

[Brandon Invergo]

Hi Karl,

I should preface this by saying that I guess I didn't do a good enough
job digging into the Savane software! I didn't realize that closed ads
are hidden from view (I naively saw all the old ads and assumed that
many of them were closed and just needed to be cleaned out). Since
that's the case, I agree that there is no real reason to remove closed
ones.

I think your moderate approach would, indeed, be better and I think your
proposed protocol is good. One specific question about the Savane
software: can the author manually just update the date of the post or
does the text have to be updated in order to do so? While I don't think
we should force anyone to change the text (you're right), still I would
want to strongly encourage that they at least update the date. I'm
speaking from at least my own psychological reaction to the old ads:
when I first came to Savannah looking for something to do and I noticed
that a lot of the Help Wanted ads were dating back years, I immediately
started ignoring those old ones on the assumption that they're
out-of-date. So, the author can do as he/she chooses, but changing the
date would help keep Savannah looking fresh, not to mention getting it
more attention (in my opinion).

So, I would send a message something like this:
"Hello,
My name is Brandon Invergo and I am helping to [clean
up?/moderate?/organize?/keep clean?] the Help Wanted section of
Savannah, the GNU software forge. On Month DD, YYYY, you posted an ad
titled "Hacker needed for Hello, World." Is this call still open? If it
is, we would like to encourage you to update the [date?/text?], helping
to increase the visibility of the ad while keeping the Help Wanted list
fresh. If it is no longer open, then we would request that you set its
status to "Closed." Keep in mind that if the position becomes available
again, you are welcome to re-open the call.

Thank you very much for your help.
Cheers,
Brandon"

How does that sound? A bit dry and formal I guess, but it's something
that can be worked on.

-brandon

ps - I'm not sure if it matters, but if it looks better and probably
fits more within the GNU philosophy, I can send such admin emails from
the email address on my personal domain rather than from this Gmail
one. 

On Sun, 2012-01-29 at 23:17 +0000, Karl Berry wrote:
> Follow-up Comment #3, sr #106581 (project administration):
> 
> Hi Brandon -- thanks for jumping in with this.
> 
> I completely agree with 1) and 2), but (despite what I wrote originally :) why
> delete old postings, any more than there is to delete old bug reports?  After
> all, it's not unlikely that the same need will recur after a volunteer leaves
> a project.  As long as a posting is closed, it wouldn't be normally visible,
> so it seems harmless.
> 
> Also, I'm not sure about "forcing" people to change the text.  For example, I
> have two jobs open for Texinfo that are just about to hit a one-year mark. 
> They are still open, but there is nothing to change about the text.  I guess I
> could do some meaningless tweak just to update the date, but if a maintainer
> chooses not to do that, I don't think it would be right to just arbitrarily
> close it.
> 
> In general, if a maintainer says a job is still open, I don't think it's our
> place to close it, regardless of whether the text is updated.
> 
> Thus, my proposal would be less hard-line:
> - if a posting is open and >1 year old, contact maintainer.
> - if maintainer says it's old, fine, we or they can close.
> - if maintainer says it's still valid, fine, leave it open (and strongly
> recommend they update the text as needed).
> - if maintainer does not reply, give them a while, try again (maybe from
> another email account, given the realities of spam filters) and say "we will
> close this soon if we don't hear from you", and so that in another week or
> two.
> 
> wdyt?
> 
> thanks again,
> k
> 
> 
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