[pmwiki-users] Recipe stability (was: Why all this zapping?)

Crisses crisses at kinhost.org
Wed May 2 15:00:16 CDT 2007


On May 2, 2007, at 9:50 AM, Sandy wrote:

> Endorsements is a good word. One of the reasons I joined this list was
> to get a feel for the contributors, but that's a luxury many new users
> don't have. They'd still have to get a feel for the endorsers, but  
> more
> names means more chance of recognizing one.
>
> Let's make one thing clear:
>
> A proper evaluation of a recipe involving security or private data can
> take several hours of a senior programmer's time, and setting up
> examples and explaining them takes even more time, time that could be
> spent paying the rent. It's frustrating to be told little more  
> than, "It
> won't work," but, no matter how friendly and helpful the community,
> there will always be recipes that don't get evaluated, simply  
> because no
> expert has that much time to invest in a recipe they don't expect  
> to use.

You said it better than I did.  Thank you.

Although I tried to say something like this, I also tried to add in  
that not every great "developer" is a great "hacker" -- it takes a  
different method of thinking.  On that note, we could hire a group of  
people who do this in their spare time from more shady walks of life,  
but the donations need to be pouring in for that, and from what I  
hear there's not much financial backing for PmWiki.

So, it would be great in theory.  In practice, I think it's one of  
those well-meant suggestions that just won't get the time and energy  
support it needs to work, and to be kept up-to-date.  For one thing,  
no matter how "important" it is, it lacks in the "fun" and  
"recognition" departments that are the motivations for much of the  
developer community behind these projects.  If the "security team"  
got big headlines, kudos, pizza, and ticker-tape parades, it might work.

Crisses



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