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I dislike this proposal on several grounds:
- Overly beaurocratic. We need to keep a running tally of all the sponsorship points a person has throughout their account's life.
- Complexity. If someone gets +1'd to the required number they get provenpackager. But the next day they could fall below the threshhold again. And the next day likewise. On any given day that you want to get something done you might or might not have the status you need to do the work.
- Not obvious. I log into FAS seldom -- and when I do it isn't as part of my duties as a packager. If this is only seen there, then it's not obvious that there have been people applying for provenpackager and awaiting via this mechanism.
- Requires feedback outside of my normal tools. This ties into the above. I check email every hour. But I log into FAS very seldom. So logging into FAS for the purpose of +1 or -1'ing someone is an extra step.
- Requires code. This isn't something that's needed for general FAS users so it's better done in a plugin. But it also touches things that are so basic that it is hard to make it a plugin. So doing this is somewhat hard. It's also code that no one has signed up to do yet.
- Lends itself to popularity contests. Instead of having a review process -- where someone's merits as a packager are shown on a mailing list with links to relevant information, etc, there's just an anonymous entry on a FAS page where you make your judgements. Any research that you do ends up being research that only you do... no one else is there to raise objections and praise that you might not have noticed (or had the time to notice)
I somewhat agree with the problem stated at the beginning of the proposal (one person acting alone being able to sponsor someone else into provenpackager) but would much rather see a review process like we have for sponsors in the packager group. I also note that we haven't yet had any problems with someone running amuck with packager or provenpackager so trusting that people will use both it and sponsorship responsibly is also an option. We do need better guidance on what is acceptable use of provenpackager powers if we go that route, though.
--abadger1999 22:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)