dmerrill: Thanks for being fair. I'm still
not sure how it helps anyone to spread an inconsequential
vote thin. I know it doesn't count certs from non-Masters
to determine who becomes a Master, but do those Master certs
drain away "capacity" when calculating the lower levels?
After all, the Masters will often be best-known and
most-certified; if much of the voting power drifts back up
to the Master level, does that explain why there are fewer
Apprentices? (Just a guess...)
I think LDP is an important project, and I can write decent
documentation, but it's draining and really not one of my
favorite things to do. I have yet to write the full user
documentation for my conferencing system, for example. If
there's something particularly interesting that I know well
where there's a vacuum, maybe I'll contribute some docs, but
I'd be more likely to contribute on the code side usually.
As for what projects to volunteer for, I don't really know.
I'm wary of overcommitting my time, but I'm also not sure
how to pick a project -- what makes any given project more
worthy of time and attention than the next? Unfortunately,
it probably comes down to working on whatever captures your
attention and "seems like a good idea at the time". The
advantage of finding something sufficiently interesting to
work on is that you might find more time to work on it, if
it's fun...
If you have specific coding projects/tasks to suggest, I'll
certainly listen. I'll tell you that my coding inclination
tends to run more towards building solid infrastructure
(often reinventing the wheel even if I don't need to) rather
than worry about making things flashy. I'd rather have a
no-nonsense piece of code that is rock-solid and robust than
a fancy, pretty interface to unstable flaky code that may
crash at any time, for little to no reason.
I often prefer to write new things from scratch, since I
often find that I don't like a lot of the existing code out
there. Much of it seems poorly designed and/or poorly
implemented, and it often seems easier to toss it out and
write it from scratch than to fix the myriad problems that
are often found in existing code. (Like Mozilla had to
throw things out and start over, for example.)
So, I'm more likely to be interested in implementing code
where a small project would be created to solve something,
or where some clearly-defined module in a larger project
needs to be created from scratch or rewritten. I can also
debug and enhance existing code, but it's often much more
frustrating, because I'll keep running into things that
bother me about the code...
dyork: Yes, let's drop it. At first, I was
interested in discussing it on a theoretical basis, because
it sets Advogato apart -- there are interesting questions
about how well the system works and how it might be
improved, but I'm tired of debating it.
Basically, I don't care about certification either; I'm
interested in the certification system as an architectural
feature of this site, and I'd like to see it work
"correctly", whatever that ultimately means. I couldn't
care less what level I'm certified at, but I would prefer to
remain certified, given the restrictions when you're not.
It's because I had been certified long ago that it seemed
that something was amiss; if I was still waiting for
certification, it wouldn't have concerned me. Oh well...
Thanks for the opinion about "gangplank". I still think
it's an odd name, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I
think you're right; I've got the domain, I might as well
just run with it. (And if a better name really does come
along, I'll just have to decide at that point whether to
rename the project...)
I think I'll just go ahead and release it under the name
"gangplank" since I have no better ideas. It will take a
little effort to prepare an initial release, but I'll post a
note here when I release it...
