[tei-council] Taking on Sourceforge tickets

[Brett Barney]

All,

Most of you will probably want to skip this, as it's mostly addressed to
Lou and boils down to a plea for tutoring, but I decided to write to the
list because it's a reaction to something that came up during the call just
a minute ago and because it's possible that others besides Lou will have
and be willing to share helpful pointers.

I want to start by publicly copping to being the person (or at least one of
the persons) who submitted a bunch of "easy" tickets w/o fixing them
myself. I am honestly sorry both for having given Lou more work to do and
for just being annoying. It's now clear to me now that I've been operating
under a false sense that I had a reasonably good understanding of how the
Sourceforge ticket system is supposed to work. My submitting Sourceforge
tickets at all owes to the fact that Lou explained to me, after I pointed
out a problem with the guidelines in a public talk, that the proper way to
address such things was to submit a Sourceforge ticket. That was the first
I had ever even heard of TEI on Sourceforge. And I know it's probably
surprising, but even after the wonderfully clear and detailed discussion of
how to make changes it wasn't clear to me that I had license to just plow
ahead. Is it by virtue of my Council membership that I'm being allowed to
unilaterally decide what's a non-controversial change and implement it? If
so, I guess I can get my mind around that idea, but it had just never
occurred to me, frankly. Is that something that I should have recalled in a
description of my responsibilities? It did cross my mind as I was filling
out the ticket that it would just be less hassle for everybody if I quietly
went in and made the changes, but I didn't seriously consider doing it,
since I'm not an editor (nor a member of the "editorial board"). Is it
perhaps the case that the Council as a body has now assumed the duties of
the editorial board, which as I understand it is no longer being funded? I
suspect that the Sourcefourge framework, especially that "Assignee" column,
implied something more . . . formal. I suspect that another part of my lack
of vision is cultural: Votes of confidence or no confidence are pretty
foreign to US politics, but we *are* big on "checks and balances." So
people aren't generally allowed both to decide what the law should be AND
enforce it.

None of that was intended as complaint. I'm actually just embarrassed and
frustrated that I'm still not doing the right thing. Would you mind just
quickly explaining what sort of thought process I should be using as I look
through the tickets trying to lighten Lou's burden?

Thanks,
Brett