[maemo-developers] QA process = bug fixing disincentive?

[From: Andrew Flegg]

Jeremiah wrote:
>
> On Nov 3, 2009, at 19:25, Tim Teulings wrote:
>
> > P.S.: Don't trust my version numbers! Trust my checkbox choice!
>
> That is totally fine with me. I thought a version number was less 
> intrusive, developers didn't have to do anything, just remember which 
> part of their version to change. But as version numbers are so 
> invariant an excellent argument against this has been presented.

Agreed. It seemed like a nice hack, but isn't going to work in practice.

> Shall we put a checkbox by the package promotion page, or somewhere 
> where we remember, which keeps all accrued karma?

That's probably a good first step, however I wonder if long term something like Marius suggested might be better: remaining karma for an app is...

   * proportional to current app karma
   * proportional to developer's karma
   * proportional to testers' karma
   * inversely proportional to the time between
     last build and this build.

This'd mean that if I released an app and had it voted up by Ryan, Tim, Daniel, Quim and a few others on the first karma page; and I released a new version the next day (short time => probable bug fix); my app might only lose one or two points.

Maybe this works for time too (or vote by high roller reduces time?) Or maybe it's just too complicated?

Thoughts welcome.

Cheers,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/