[Pipeline130-developers] Group participation

[Chris S. <cs...@uc...>]

Hey guys,

As Nils mentioned in discussion on Friday, our group has a major participation problem. We are supposed to be in active development right now, but only four of us have made any commits to source control. That alone is not necessarily a problem, except that those who haven't written code also haven't really done anything else either. We've already turned in three assignments, and the vast majority of all three was written by two or three of us with almost no input by anyone else. You guys all knew the projects were due, how to do them, and what was needed.

The bottom line is that everybody has to put work into this project. When I write an email to the group asking for your thoughts, that is an easy invitation to participate. Even if you don't think you know enough about the problem, your clarifying questions can bring new insight to the group. And saying "I agree with everything you say" is not enough, because I know fully well that my designs aren't perfect. We need to have more discussion like the debate Nils and I had over Workflow Templates... except there should be more than two viewpoints.

In the next couple days I'm going to try getting the bug tracking system working so we can better keep track of what needs to be done. But you should be taking initiative even before then. Do something for the project. Update a document on the wiki, start working on automated tests, work on a feature, start building a feature, flesh out an existing feature... do anything.

Don't be scared to ask questions, even simple ones. I am more than happy to answer a question if it means you are thinking about the project and preparing to contribute. I didn't intend this email to come across as mean, but it all had to be said.

-Chris