Having some kind of 'official testers' list

[coruja-eu]

While discussing about a package in the testing repo, which needed a user for testing and signing it off, I had the idea of having a list of the 'official testers' (meaning those with an account and allowed to sign off packages).

At the beginning, this could be a list somewhere, where testers can voluntarily add themselves to it if they want to commit to this. To make it more useful, they could add some software they're usually using, so that if there is some need for having a specific package tested, package maintainers can use this list to find appropriate testers easily.

If this is to be deployed in any form, some kind of notification e-mail to all testers could be helpful to let them know about this project and as a call for entries.

One nice side-effect would be that there would be some spotlight on the testing team, to appreciate their commitment, and to attract others to join (but that wasn't my initial intention).

So does this seem useful, and feasible? What do you think?

[Antiz96]

Hi,

As discussed together with @coruja-eu, I support this idea!

The way I personally picture this would be to have a public page showing profile with the "testers" role at e.g. https://archlinux.org/people/testers (similar to https://archlinux.org/people/package-maintainers/). This would also require adding an additional field in testers profiles (or in everyone's profiles if that's easier), like e.g. "Software used: [...]", so they can document which software / software stack they are using in their day to day workflow.

As said in the description of the issue, that would:

• Highlight which testers use specific software stacks, which would allow for package maintainers to be able to contact specific testers when particular packages are waiting on sign-offs (if they allow us, e.g. by filling in the "public email" field in their profile)
• Give some recognition to testers by offering a place on archlinux.org to publicly show / acknowledge their involvement as testers for our beloved distro (which is a nice move and could help motivating people to keep contributing long term) 🤗

All and all, this would allow fore more visibility for testers as well as facilitating our collaboration with them.

If this gets implemented, we could send a mail to the Arch-Dev-Public Mailing List and update the testing team wiki page accordingly to advertise it.

[Antiz96]

Just to make things clear, this is not about onboarding testers as staff, but simply indexing their profile in a page on Archweb.

Each page listing role profiles has a description. For instance, https://archlinux.org/people/package-maintainers/ has:

Here are all your friendly Arch Linux Package Maintainers who are in charge of the Arch Linux's official repositories (aside from [core] / [core-testing]).

We can use this to describe what the tester role is (including the fact that this is not a proper staff role, if that's concern).

[jelly]

There is a testers group in Archweb so this could be done, question is if people consent with their public information being shown on the website. This isn't something I am going to work on anytime soon.

[lahwaacz]

I guess it does not have to be public, but just internal (accessible by logged-in users).

[Antiz96]

I guess it does not have to be public, but just internal (accessible by logged-in users).

Well, having it publicly visible was a way to give our testers some extra recognition.

There is a testers group in Archweb so this could be done, question is if people consent with their public information being shown on the website. This isn't something I am going to work on anytime soon.

On practice, we do not hardly require any real / personal info. People are free to put whatever they want in their profile. Maybe some communication in e.g. A-D-P to warn people upfront about their profile becoming public (to give them a chance to update their info beforehand) would do? 🤔

[Antiz96]

question is if people consent with their public information being shown on the website.

A potential solution would be to have an additional checkbox to control the profile indexing from the profile settings, similar to the various checkboxes already present in Archweb/AURweb for notifications preferences or hiding email address. That way we could make public profile indexing opt-in, covering the above concern.

This mechanism could even eventually be extended to every profile's roles, maybe some staff people would be interested in being able to control the public indexing of their profile.

[coruja-eu]

What @Antiz96 suggested sound like a very good idea to me, having an opt-in checkbox for enabling public listing/visibility of testers' (or even staff's) profiles or profile details.

At least this sounds clearer and more promising than some mass e-mail to all testers including a call for giving consent/dissent. The aspect of including staff's profiles during this change - without knowing details - and so kind of unifying profiles technically maybe could even make profile management and maintenance easier in future.

On the other hand, this solution needs some code to be written or changed at least, so I'd like to kindly ask Archweb developers if this is possible to have, if they are willing to implement this, and what people like me (or @Antiz96) could do to support implementing this.

[jelly]

On the other hand, this solution needs some code to be written or changed at least, so I'd like to kindly ask Archweb developers if this is possible to have, if they are willing to implement this, and what people like me (or @Antiz96) could do to support implementing this.

Sure, the userprofile model can be extended, but would require it to be default False, and existing data to be set to True.

[christian-heusel]

I don't think it is something that we should call "official testers" however sharing who might be willing to test a given package / ecosystem and ways to test this would be good! 🤔