[R-pkg-devel] CRAN student assistants

[alejandro baranek]

Hi!

Mi humble opinion:

I cannot evaluate the workload for CRAN maintainer, but it don't seem to be
reasonable that students can make objections with packages that "do not
yield R CMD check problems or otherwise violate CRAN policies."

Maybe CRAN maintainer team are giving review tasks for those students, for
increasing package evaluation skills. But a new protocol should be
implemented with this seamly new position, where students learning errors
doesn't obstruct the workflow of senior package developers with own QA
methods implemented, as a result of years efforts.

Is not bad new workforce helps with heavy duties: it's an excelent news.
But It cannot cause problems with tunned workflow/pipelines. Is the
internal CRAN process for package approval described somewhere?

Best, Ale.

On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 11:55 AM Hadley Wickham <h.wickham using gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> The thread seems to have drifted off topic. I really didn't want this
> to devolve into a discussion about when cat() or message() is more
> appropriate — I have complete faith in Jenny Bryan's ability to
> understand technical tradeoffs and pick the most appropriate given the
> constraints. I am most interested in understanding what level of
> discretion CRAN's "Studentischer administrativer Mitarbeiter" have to
> critique the implementation of R packages, particularly for packages
> that do not yield R CMD check problems or otherwise violate CRAN
> policies.
>
> I mean no disrespect towards the CRAN maintainers (whose tireless
> efforts are a crucial part of making R the success that it is), but I
> don't think it's unreasonable to enquire as to who is involved in a
> crucial piece of open source community infrastructure, and, if
> students are involved, what their scope of work is and how they are
> trained and supervised.
>
> I do recognise that my question "Who are they?" may have been
> perceived as overly intrusive. To clarify: I don't want to know names
> or other personally identifying information, but I would like to know
> in general terms how many there are, and what backgrounds they have.
> Similarly, I don't want to know how much they are paid, just whether
> or not they are volunteers or employees.
>
> Hadley
>
> On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 10:23 AM 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
>
>
>
> --
> http://hadley.nz
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-package-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>


-- 
 alejandro baranek
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