Re: TODO list (was Re: Contributing with code)

On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 6:42 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
wrote:

> On 01/02/2018 11:17 AM, Robert Haas wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Dec 31, 2017 at 2:31 PM, Peter Geoghegan <pg(at)bowt(dot)ie> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, Dec 31, 2017 at 10:42 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>>>
>>>> If we're not going to maintain/curate it properly, I agree it's not
>>>> worth keeping it around. But I'd rather see somebody put some effort
>>>> into it ...
>>>>
>>> If somebody was going to resolve to put some effort into maintaining
>>> it to a high standard then it probably would have happened already.
>>> The fact that it hasn't happened tells us plenty.
>>>
>> +1, and well said.
>>
>
> O.k. what does it tell us though? Is it a resource issue? Is it a barrier
> of entry issue?

Lack of ownership/ruthlessness. While I can edit it to remove items that
don't seem desirable (or comprehensible, or whatever) I'm not likely to do
so, unless I'm the one who added it in the first place. Maybe it made more
sense or was more important to someone else, like the person who added it.
At one time many of the items didn't have links to the relevant email
discussions (or more detailed wiki pages of their own), so those would have
been good targets for purging but I think Bruce hunted down and added links
for most of them.

Another problem is that wikimedia doesn't have a "git blame" like feature.
I've been frustrated before trying to figure out who added an item and
when, so I could research it a bit more.

> What does deleting it solve? What problems (and there is a very large
> obvious one) are caused by deleting it?
>
> Right now, the TODO list is the "only" portal to "potential" things we
> "might" want. If we delete it we are just creating yet another barrier of
> entry to potential contribution. I think we need to consider an alternative
> solution because of that.
>

There are various "roadmaps" floating around (wiki and elsewhere), but they
aren't very prominent or easy to find. They seem to mostly be minutes from
meetings, but you wouldn't know to look for them if you weren't at the
meeting.

Cheers,

Jeff