Removal of old projects from fedorahosted.

[Brett Lentz]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: fedora-infrastructure-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:fedora-
> infrastructure-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Mike McGrath
> Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2008 6:37 PM
> To: Fedora Infrastructure
> Subject: RE: Removal of old projects from fedorahosted.
> 
> On Tue, 9 Sep 2008, Brett Lentz wrote:
> 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: fedora-infrastructure-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:fedora-
> > > infrastructure-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Robin Norwood
> > > Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2008 6:11 PM
> > > To: Fedora Infrastructure
> > > Subject: Re: Removal of old projects from fedorahosted.
> > >
> > > On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 4:35 PM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > In general from the infrastructure side I'd say we want to keep
> the
> > > > barrier to enter low but the quality high.  Certainly there's
> > > projects
> > > > that don't need to be updated every 6 months but we can identify
> > > those and
> > > > deal accordingly.
> > >
> > > How about 'delisting' instead of deleting?  I'm operating under the
> > > assumption that the infrastructure burden of hosting the project
> isn't
> > > the problem you're trying to solve, and that keeping the projects
> at
> > > fedora hosted relevant is.
> > >
> > > A delisted project simply wouldn't appear on the main fedora hosted
> > > list of projects, but would still be available via direct link.
> That
> > > way, nothing is lost, but the clutter vanishes.
> > >
> > > You could even have yet another category for projects that are
> known
> > > to be abandoned.
> > >
> >
> > What about using a Sourceforge-style project classification scheme?
> Allow
> > projects to self-identify their status (Alpha, Beta, Stable,
> Abandoned,
> > etc.). That would allow us to craft policies around project updates
> that are
> > more in line with their current development status. It would also
> allow us
> > to filter the main project page according to development status.
> >
> > For example: maybe alpha projects need to be updated at least every
> 3-6
> > months, but stable projects would only need a minimum of a yearly or
> > bi-yearly update to be considered "actively maintained."
> >
> 
> Why?
> 

This would help prevent having more stable projects up on the chopping block
every six months simply because they haven't done anything recently. 

Obviously, each time this comes up, fedora-admin will gradually collect this
information anyway just by virtue of having the discussion of whom to
delete. 

However, it doesn't make sense to me to discard this information each time
the current discussion ends. It also doesn't makes sense to continually
rehash this same discussion over the same projects every six months if
everyone suddenly forgets that the foo project is a stable app that doesn't
see many updates because it "just works." Or, more plausibly, whenever we
have a new member that asks "what about project foo? Why doesn't it get
deleted?"

It seems like it would be better to just have a more robust process and
encourage project state information to be better documented for future
discussions and future admins.

It's also entirely possible that I'm over-thinking the issue. :-)

---Brett.