[macports-mgr] Question about MacPorts project membership application

[Joshua Root]

On 2018-5-14 07:03 , Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> On 13 May 2018 at 21:32, Rainer Müller wrote:
>> On 2018-05-13 18:30, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>>> The portmgr team might need some time to check the contributions and
>>> verify candidate's suitability for commit rights, but maybe they
>>> forgot to send you a preliminary confirmation of receiving your
>>> request and were simply waiting for the votes to arrive.
>>
>> We never did anything like that... Why would we expected to confirm the
>> reception of every single mail?
> 
> Probably not confirming reception of every single email, but I believe
> it makes an enormous difference to the user asking for commit rights
> if he gets a simple, totally generic email saying something like
> "Thank you for contacting us and for volunteering to help us shape our
> package manager into an even better product. Please be patient while
> we are evaluating your recent contributions and don't hesitate to ping
> us again in case you don't get an answer within two weeks." ... as
> compared to not even knowing whether the email was sent to the correct
> email address and not lost on the way due to spam filters.

This sounds reasonable. It's much less work to reply with some
boilerplate than to evaluate the applicant's contributions. As Rainer
said, this has not been part of the process to date. I fully understand
the concerns about not having enough time as it is, but it's important
to communicate well with contributors.

I wonder if we could even automate it. Perhaps by recommending the use
of return receipts, or a bot that can recognise requests for commit access?

The idea of having a secretary is an interesting one too, though I
wonder if we have anyone who would volunteer for the job.

- Josh