MIA Team
This page is for internal documentation. Please always check for the readme file on qa.debian.org and keep it in sync with this page when editing!
For an introduction to the MIA team, see its team page.
The MIA Scripts
On the host qa.debian.org you can find several scripts in /srv/qa.debian.org/mia. The most important tool is "mia-query" where you can see the history from the person, which packages he/she maintains and the last-activity. This is accessible by DDs and useful even before contacting the team about someone. Maybe he/she is already being tracked by us.
Terms and Abbreviations
- MIA
- Missing In Action
- WAT
- Where Art Thou (or WaT: Where are They?)
Fixed ping-intervals
During the QA meeting we decided the following intervals:
(the indicated tags are possible status/prod-level for that email)
- First contact (tag: nice/(busy|inactive)).
- After _wait 15 days_, send the same mail again in case that it was lost. (tag: nice/(busy|inactive)).
- After _wait 15 days again_, send another mail where you mention something like orphaning, this is the most important step and _the maintainer has 30 days to reply_ to the e-mail (tag: prod/(busy|inactive|unresponsive)).
- Send another mail where you tell the inactive person that you _will orphan the packages in exactly 15 days_ if we don't hear anything from the person (tag: last-warning/unresponsive).
- After _15 days more_, orphan all the packages and send another mail. (tag: last-warning/mia).
- Finally, _after 90 days_ send the person a "Good-Bye" mail and set the tag "needs-wat", the DAM will then care about these people. (This step is for DDs and DMs only) (tag: last-warning/needs-wat)
Trying to resume this on a table:
What |
Tag |
Notes |
Next action in |
First contact |
nice |
Always remember to be gentle |
2w |
Second contact |
nice |
- |
2w |
Suggest orphaning |
prod |
Send another mail where you mention something like orphaning, this is the most important step and _the maintainer has 30 days to reply_ to the e-mail. |
4w |
Tell that you are going to orphan |
last-warning |
Send another mail where you tell the inactive person that you _will orphan the packages in exactly 15 days_ if we don't hear anything from the person. |
2w |
Orphan packages |
inactive |
Orphan all the packages and send another email . |
3m |
Good-Bye |
needs-wat |
Only for DDs and DMs: send the person a "Good-Bye" mail and set the tag "needs-wat", the DAM will then care about these people. |
- |
(All those mails *must* be signed)
There are templates for those mails at qa.debian.org/MIATeam/Templates. Improvements are welcome.
Team maintenance
If one package of the person is maintained in a team, at the step where we send the prod-mail we file a Bug of severity "minor" against the package, requesting that the person is being removed from the Uploaders/Maintainers-field.
Don't forget to set the mia-teammaint mia@qa.debian.org usertag:
User: mia@qa.debian.org Usertags: mia-teammaint
How to get involved
You can already do a lot by informing the MIA team about possibly MIA DDs (and DMs and so on of course). We appreciate any help. As a DD you can also check with the mia-query tool on quantz for the MIA status of maintainers.
Joining the team means long-term involvement. The MIA process is about sending several mails per maintainer and, since they are usually MIA somehow :), they often respond slowly. That can lead to weeks or even months of latent activity. We can use another MIA worker but we want to be clear on this: we can only use volunteers who are committed to deal with MIA stuff really long-term.
Please also see Debian Developer's Reference's Dealing with inactive and/or unreachable maintainers and qa.debian.org:/srv/qa.debian.org/mia/README.
mia-tracker
Mario Iseli wrote a tool called "mia-tracker" which is now also installed on the qa.debian.org-host and it has been added to the VCS. It makes possible to add a field like this to the ping-mails:
X-MIA-Tracker: 20071230 mario@debian.org
This means that a notification will sent to the address on 20071230, so you can easily track the periods. Please note that this script isn't really tested well until now, but it will be documented soon in the README file and tested.