Re: Perl Magpie, a next-generation CPAN Testers reporting platform

On 05/04/2025 21:10, Doug Bell wrote:
> It is wonderful to see that there's a team of folks with enough time and 
> tuits[1] to offer substantial contributions in the domain of CPAN 
> testing. It's been so long that I had stopped asking, and hoping, for 
> someone to join me on the main project.
> 
> Finding people to join the team has been the most difficult part of this 
> project, despite my marketing efforts.
> I stopped asking.
 >
 > Offers to help have been > shallow and infrequent, so I avoid wasting 
effort and demoralizing
> myself with onboarding people who then disappear.
 >
> And I thought, "Who knows, maybe 
> the dramatic change and highly-visible request for help will generate 
> interest."
> 
> And now, as announced on this e-mail thread, there's a team of folks who 
> are ready, willing, and able[11] to help with what needs doing.

First off, i agree that it would be preferable to improve the existing 
codebases and infrastructure, and i think in general everybody else 
would like to see the same. In fact, i will be at PTS and it is a 
substantive goal of mine to talk to you to collaborate about improving 
the situation or at the very least documenting what is needed to improve it.

That said: Much of what you're saying and particularly the things above 
are surprising to me and probably many others.

The issues cpantesters had in keeping running have been noted and many 
people have interest in and made efforts to contact you, enough people 
that in #cpantesters-discuss many people ended up trying to find 
information on how to help, finding little of that, and subsequently 
trying to contact you. The general concensus was to not overwhelm you 
and leave it to the emails sent by user scottchiefbaker, while trying to 
figure out from the cpantesters website and the git repos how else to 
possibly contact you.

However those were unanswered and nobody else knew how to contact you. 
Tux gave us the news that you would be at PTS, so we put our hopes in 
contacting you there. Ruth will to my knowledge also be there. User jnap 
mentioned a week ago that Braswell contacted you, but we don't know what 
came of that.

I have not asked Ruth about the exact motivation for Magpie, and i say 
the following not to put down any blame, but to try and offer an 
explanation: I suspect it was spurred largely by cpantesters seeming to 
get worse and worse every week, and a simply complete lack of any 
responses from you, resulting in the search for a way forward in the 
case it disappears without further communication.

I expect that active collaboration with you is what would before all be 
desired.

-- 
With regards,
Christian Walde