[Dev] Rotating build sheriff duties?

[John Anderson]

+1

Phillip J. Eby wrote:

> At 06:29 PM 12/7/2005 -0800, Heikki Toivonen wrote:
>
>> pje said that if we had better tools and possibly
>> organizational changes, sheriff wouldn't be needed, but he did not seem
>> to deny the need currently.
>
>
> That's because I'm not in a position to reasonably argue that you and 
> Bear don't need or want something you've said you need or want.  :)  
> I'm more than willing to do my time as sheriff, but that's not quite 
> the same thing as saying we *need* one.
>
> To be honest, I think we'd achieve more progress if, when somebody 
> complains about the build being broken, you or Bear simply pointed 
> them to whoever caused the problem.  From there, we could simply let 
> the forces of natural selection and social pressure take over.  :)
>
> Putting a sheriff between the offenders and the offendees just enables 
> the offenders' dysfunctional behavior - it allows people in the 
> current case to blame the sheriff instead of themselves, and to 
> perhaps ignore the impact on other people.  If they are directly 
> subjected to the complaints, however, then they can't hide behind the 
> idea that it's just you and Bear being picky or something.
>
> The rotation seems like a nice theory to solve the same issue, but in 
> practice it seems unlikely that any given sheriff-of-the-day is going 
> to be particularly enthusiastic about confronting such issues.  After 
> all, why argue today when you can let it slide till tomorrow?  This 
> will just further exacerbate the problem of a lack of social pressure 
> and continue to enable the idea that this is just bureaucracy or 
> whatever excuses are being used.
>
> My take, then, is that we need not a rotating "build sheriff" but a 
> rotating "tinderbox wrangler".  The difference being that the former 
> is expected to enforce rules, and the latter is a co-ordinator for 
> various technical issues and a temporary replacement for better 
> monitoring tools in certain areas.  I don't mind being a tinderbox 
> wrangler, but I really don't want to be a sheriff.
>
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