[maemo-developers] External Repository and HAM

[From: Attila Csipa]

On Monday 08 March 2010 18:43:02 Graham Cobb wrote:
> It must be made clear to testers that giving a thumbs down (or up) MUST
> always be on the basis of their own, direct observation.  It would be
> unacceptable for a tester to give a thumbs down "because Attila has already
> given a thumbs down and added a comment" as it is possible that you had
> made a mistake, or it is possible that the developer has added a comment
> which explains why the thumbs down was incorrect in this case.
>
> As long as each tester personally verifies that they can see that the
> problem is there, and it is a showstopper, then it seems a reasonable
> optimisation.

Again, keep in mind that the issue here was with the bugtracker non-
compliance, and that *IS* something that can be instantly verified (and I 
certainly don't expect anybody to t-down without making sure that a listed 
error actually exists - not that I'm that big of a factor in the testing-squad 
to expect anything from anybody :). In fact, if you take a look at my votes 
you'll see that I did not t-down mikkov's Kobo package even though many others 
did exactly because it was unclear to me whether it was offending the 
bugtracker rule or not.

To reiterate an important point with the bugtracker issue - IMHO it should be 
editable from the packages user-interface (just like screenshots), and the 
XSBC field just used as a last-resort manual override. Think about it this way 
- the only way to change a bugtracker link is to force thousands of people to 
download the SAME package again (even if we forego the whole -testing issue), 
just so that a different link would appear on the maemo.org site ? MASSIVE 
overkill. 

And that's a two birds with one stone, right there - that would mean 
bugtrackers are no longer blockers, i.e. testers thumb down, the author fixes 
it in the package interface and the testers change it to thumbs up and it can 
be promoted, everybody happy, no quarantine or tester time wasted.

Regards,
Attila