Xref: utzoo comp.sources.d:6579 comp.sources.wanted:15518 alt.sources.d:1540 alt.sources.wanted:989 news.admin:12468 news.groups:28293 Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!think.com!mintaka!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!dkuug!tfl.dk!karsten From: karsten@tfl.dk Newsgroups: comp.sources.d,comp.sources.wanted,alt.sources.d,alt.sources.wanted,news.admin,news.groups Subject: Re: CALL FOR VOTES -- comp.sources.reviewed Message-ID: <1991Mar1.082855.149@tfl.dk> Date: 1 Mar 91 07:28:55 GMT References: <1991Feb28.053121.7739@rick.doc.ca> <1991Feb28.160555.8446@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM> Organization: TFL, A Danish Telecommunication Research Laboratory Lines: 93 In article <1991Feb28.160555.8446@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM>, kent@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM (Kent Landfield) writes: > In article <1991Feb28.053121.7739@rick.doc.ca> andrew@calvin.doc.ca (Andrew Patrick) writes: >>This is an official Call for Votes for the proposed newsgroup >>"comp.sources.reviewed". "Comp.sources.reviewed" will be a moderated >>newsgroup (moderator: Andrew Patrick [andrew@calvin.doc.ca]) with the >>following charter: >> >> "Comp.sources.reviewed" is a moderated newsgroup for the >> distribution of program sources that have been subjected to a Peer >> Review process. Similar to the process used for academic >> journals, submissions are sent to a moderator who then sends the >> sources to Peer Review volunteers for evaluation. > > Question: What types of packages are you envisioning on reviewing ? > Packages like elm, mush, perl, ... have their own beta test groups > who usually do a solid job of testing their software. For that matter, > any software that has a beta test team would probably not need or have > any reason to post through this group. Those packages submitted to the moderator would be reviewed if possible. > Question: Are you planning on accepting any type of software running > on unix, dos, coherent, minix, acorn, amiga ...? Or will this be focused > for a specific operational environment? How will you locate enough > reviewers for packages that run in other than the major environments. I know many would like the group to be one operating system only, but USENET can be carried on other operating systems. This is written on VAX/VMS. Currently we got a group for reviewed UNIX software, but none for other operting systems. There should be a group for other operating systems. Many of the bested public domain packages have been ported from UNIX to other operating systems, and some the other way. In the future, we can expect people will comply with the posix standards, which will supported on many operating systems. So in the future packages will not be for one operating system. For these reasons it would be stupid to limit the group to one or a few operating systems. > Question: What happens when you cannot find enough people to review the > package ? Is the submission rejected ?? Are we going to be seeing a lot > of "requests for reviewers" on the net ? There would be no alternative to rejecting such packages, and ask the submitter of the code to post it to some other group. My guess is that "reguest for reviewers" will be rare because most public domain software is written for a few popular operating systems. Andrew has already 20-30 reviewers. > Question: This whole thing seems to have started as an emotional reaction > to delays in postings to c.s.unix. What are the expected time delays in > submissions through this group ?? Just the setup to evaluate a package > by your description is going to take a bit of time. The review by multiple > people will take time. [ Even the reviewers have real jobs... :-) ] If > there are any questions, problem etc., that will take more time. My > guess is that you are looking at a 45 to 60 day delay on the optimistic > side. Doesn't this procedure usually take 6 to 9 months for submissions > to be accepted and published in academic journals ?? Journals use paper mail for transporting papers. After the paper has been reviewed, it must be typeset, and proff read. These things takes time. Besides, papers for conferences are normally reviewed in a few months. The moderator will need ca 1 week for assigning moderators and submitting the code to the reviewers. The reviewers could use one month, and the moderator one week for collecting the results and taking action. That's 6 weeks, and You must admit that both the moderator and the reviewers have been given enough time. It would of course take more time in case the code has to be corrected, and so what? Then the whole USENET won't vaste time on installing a collecting of bugs. > I can see that there could be a use for this group but I don't think that > there has been enough discussion for a real call for votes. In the > discussion period I have seen a grand total of 5 articles on the topic and > three of them have come from Andrew Patrick [andrew@calvin.doc.ca]. If > we are going to do this, lets do it right. There has not been enough > discussion to warrant a vote. My intention here is to try to get some > information and to stimulate a discussion so that any vote is based on > merit and not emotion... Perhaps. I have only seen a posting raising the first point of your posting, i.e., which operating systems should be supported. Have I missed some postings, or why didn't You raise the other points in the period of discussion? > -Kent+ > -- > Kent Landfield INTERNET: kent@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM > Sterling Software, IMD UUCP: uunet!sparky!kent > Phone: (402) 291-8300 FAX: (402) 291-4362 > Please send comp.sources.misc-related mail to kent@uunet.uu.net.