Ideas from the -vote@ DPL election discussions

After one week of campaign on -vote@, many subjects have been mentioned already. I’m trying here to list the concrete, actionable ideas I found interesting (does not necessarily mean that I agree with all of them) and that may be worth further discussion at a less busy time. There’s obviously some amount of subjectivity in such a list, and I’m also slightly biased ;) . Feel free to point to missing ideas or references (when an idea appeared in several emails, I’ve generally tried to use the first reference).

On the campaign itself, and having general discussions inside Debian:

  • have those discussions on a more regular basis, outside DPL elections (from lucas)
  • use polls to measure consensus (from lucas, question from mjr)
  • use a pre-arranged questionnaire that DPL candidates would fill in (from algernon)

On getting new users and contributors to Debian:

  • discussion on the various steps: Debian user – first contribution – regular contributor – DM/DD (from lucas)
  • maintain a single list of “paths in” (from moray and lucas)
  • have some “neutral” people to ask about tasks, and to get suggestions from in response to explaining their current skills and experience (e.g. http://www.debian.org/women/mentoring) (from moray)
  • more local meetings, compile list of regional contacts (moray)
  • increase Debian presence at local meetings. Advertise the Debian Events initiative that facilitates that (from lucas)
  • provide “Debian ambassador” title for students, similar to what is done by Google or Microsoft (from moray)
  • re-work on advertising gift tags (bugs suitable for new contributors) (from lucas)
  • make sure teams have list of easy tasks in their wiki pages (from lucas)
  • discussion on student projects involving Debian (from lucas)
  • do mentoring inside teams, like DebianMed’s MoM (from moray)
  • participate in other internship-like programs, like Outreach Program for Women (link from lucas), or organize our own, which would also avoid some restrictions from GSoC (northern hemisphere only (point made by moray), restricted to students (ana))
  • extend internship-like programs to other kinds of work (packaging, documentation, etc.)
  • localize -mentors@ (mailing lists + IRC channels for DE, FR, ES contributors) (from lucas)
  • organize IRC schools/seminars about e.g. packaging (from lucas)
  • introduce more gamification in mentoring (from rra)

Infrastructure, processes, releases:

  • improve infrastructure to help with team maintenance (e.g. PET) (from lucas)
  • authorize NMUs for archive-wide changeovers such as /usr/doc -> /usr/share/doc  (from moray)
  • increase visibility of RC bugs squashers by listing them in Debian Project News (from lucas)
  • provide inexpensive non-monetary gifts (free t-shirts?) to RC bug squashers (from lucas)
  • re-open discussion on gradual freezes (from lucas), focus attention on more important packages by improving tools (from lucas) and removing packages earlier (from moray and lucas)
  • involve upstreams and downstreams in RC bug fixing (from algernon)

Relationships with upstreams/downstreams:

  • use Debian money to sponsor maintainers to attend upstream events (from lucas)

This list could be moved to wiki.d.o if others find sufficiently useful to help maintaining it.

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