Guidelines on taking over a pkg from another maintainer

[sckott]

sort of related to #127 - we've had a few of these so far, and will likely have these situations moving forward inevitably.

We should give some guidance on how this works, and what happens in different scenarios.

[maelle]

@sckott what exactly do you mean by different scenarios? I'm assuming

• Package not on CRAN yet
• Package on CRAN
• Package archived on CRAN

or do you mean something else?

[sckott]

Yeah, and scenarios related to maintainers, e.g.

• current maintainer is completely missing and not responding

Also, detail that current maintainer needs to contact CRAN and say who the new maintainer is, etc.

Maybe we should also discuss some suggestions for taking over related to the actual code:

• can the new maintainer rip everything out and start new essentially? or should we implore the new mtaintainer to keep some amount of consistency, at least the public API
• any rules about them adding new contribs with admin access?
• anything else?

[maelle]

Regarding changing stuff yes keeping the interface.

Somewhere in the guide we ask folks to let us with admin rights to the org invite folks cf https://ropensci.github.io/dev_guide/collaboration.html#welcoming-collaborators-to-ropensci this is IMO independent of maintainer changes.

Would you have time to make a PR? Would this be a new short chapter in the maintenance part?

[maelle]

current maintainer is completely missing and not responding

I think this is our job as editors/staff to handle this, the chapter could be for someone invited to be a new maintainer, but we could tell folks to contact us if they think a package would need a new maintainer and they want to volunteer?

[sckott]

i can do a PR but i think you're more familiar with the dev guide, do you think it's a new chapter, or just a short section in an existing chapter?

[maelle]

Thanks! I don't see an existing chapter where it would fit and most chapters of that part are short. Maybe between chapters 9 and 10? Or as very last chapter after the one after contributing.

[maelle]

No hurry for the PR btw, next week is fine.

I know the dev guide better but you recruited all the new maintainers 😉

[noamross]

I think this is a new chapter but it is something that could use extra visibility and feedback, as I don't think it's been summarized/articulated anywhere else. Why don't we write it as a blog post, see what forum/twitter/etc feedback we get, and then incorporate it into the guide in the next cycle?

[maelle]

I like the idea!

[maelle]

@sckott would you be up to first-authoring that blog post? It'd be the occasion to highlight your work on recruiting new maintainers.

Also linked to Julia Silge's post to be published today https://deploy-preview-444--ropensci.netlify.com/blog/2019/04/30/qualtrics-relaunch/

[sckott]

Sure, can do.

[maelle]

Thanks! I added it to the release after the one we're working on, so you can publish that post in the next months and we can add the corresponding content in August (well, I can't add it but I hope someone can; I can help with the post if you start within the next weeks 😸 ).