[R-pkg-devel] CRAN student assistants

[Joris Meys]

Dear Hadley,

a follow up mail: You know who they are. Your organisation has the policy
to add all email correspondence with CRAN to the github repo.

https://github.com/r-lib/gargle/tree/master/cran-correspondence

That's how I now also found out who they are. One is a doctor. She has a
PhD. The mere fact you insinuate that this woman could be a student, is
disturbing. The other obtained an engineer degree in 2011, and is currently
obtaining a second one in Economics while working as a project assistant.
Also here I find it disturbing you question the competence of someone with
that experience, and who was selected by people known for their
thoroughness.

In light of this new information, I fail to understand why you even bother
asking for information you had already. I would appreciate if you would
stop gaslighting about CRAN and show those ladies the respect they deserve.

Kind regards
Joris

On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 11:06 AM Joris Meys <Joris.Meys using ugent.be> wrote:

> Dear Hadley,
>
> given you're on the list of R foundation members, I rest assured you have
> other channels to ask about the identity of new CRAN staff directly to
> those responsible. Their names and paychecks are of no interest to the
> general dev world. I can understand CRAN doesn't want to make these names
> public, in order to avoid thousands of beginning devs mailing them directly
> with questions that should be answered elsewhere.
>
> I'd like to take a moment to thank CRAN for extending their workforce.
> Given the increased workload, this was long overdue. I'm fully confident
> the responsible CRAN maintainers made a thorough selection of competent
> people. They're not known for their laissez-faire attitude.
>
> I further note that:
>
> 1) the devoid package is on CRAN.
>
> 2) Where cat() is used in gargle, message() is a better option for the
> following reason:
>
> > myfun <- function(){cat("Yes");message("No")}
> > suppressMessages(myfun())
> Yes
>
> This is how I train my students, but you're entitled to your own opinion
> obviously. When the opinion of a dev differs from CRAN however, it's up to
> them to argue with CRAN about why their vision is correct. A third party
> public complaint seems to be the norm lately, but in our region such things
> are generally frowned upon, as it's considered basic politeness to solve
> differences with the people directly.
>
> Finally, I'd like to point out that one can easily use the argument
> "repos" in install.packages() to install from a different repository. So
> there's absolutely no problem to have your own repo where you hire the
> people and make the rules. That might save you a few emails to the dev
> lists.
>
> I hope your ongoing problems with CRAN get resolved soon.
> All the best.
>
> Joris
>
> On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 5:26 PM Hadley Wickham <h.wickham using gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-package-devel using r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>>
>
>
> --
> Joris Meys
> Statistical consultant
>
> Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modelling
> Ghent University
> Coupure Links 653, B-9000 Gent (Belgium)
>
> <https://maps.google.com/?q=Coupure+links+653,%C2%A0B-9000+Gent,%C2%A0Belgium&entry=gmail&source=g>
>
> tel: +32 (0)9 264 61 79
> -----------
> Biowiskundedagen 2017-2018
> http://www.biowiskundedagen.ugent.be/
>
> -------------------------------
> Disclaimer : http://helpdesk.ugent.be/e-maildisclaimer.php
>


-- 
Joris Meys
Statistical consultant

Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modelling
Ghent University
Coupure Links 653, B-9000 Gent (Belgium)
<https://maps.google.com/?q=Coupure+links+653,%C2%A0B-9000+Gent,%C2%A0Belgium&entry=gmail&source=g>

tel: +32 (0)9 264 61 79
-----------
Biowiskundedagen 2017-2018
http://www.biowiskundedagen.ugent.be/

-------------------------------
Disclaimer : http://helpdesk.ugent.be/e-maildisclaimer.php

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