[R-pkg-devel] CRAN student assistants

[Hadley Wickham]

Hi all,

Several people on my team have received responses to their CRAN
submissions from new members of the CRAN team who appear to be student
assistants (judging from their job titles: "Studentischer
administrativer Mitarbeiter"). From the outside, they appear to be
exercising editorial control[^1] and conducting design reviews[^2].

CRAN is a critical piece of R community infrastructure, and I am sure
these students have been surrounded by the proper checks and balances,
but it's not obvious what their role is from the outside. I'd really
appreciate knowing a little more about them:

* Who are they?

* Are they paid employees or volunteers?

* What is their scope of work?

* How are they trained?

* If we believe that they have made a mistake, how do we request
  review from a senior CRAN member?

* They appear to be able to apply additional discretionary criteria
  that are not included in R CMD check or documented in the CRAN policies.
  Is this true? If so, what is the scope of these additional checks?

Hadley

[^1]: The devoid package was rejected because the student assistant
did not understand the purpose of the package.

[^2]: The gargle package was rejected because the student assistant
believed that the use of cat() was incorrect. It was not.

-- 
http://hadley.nz