[R-pkg-devel] CRAN student assistants

Hi all,

The thread seems to have drifted off topic. I really didn't want this
to devolve into a discussion about when cat() or message() is more
appropriate ? I have complete faith in Jenny Bryan's ability to
understand technical tradeoffs and pick the most appropriate given the
constraints. I am most interested in understanding what level of
discretion CRAN's "Studentischer administrativer Mitarbeiter" have to
critique the implementation of R packages, particularly for packages
that do not yield R CMD check problems or otherwise violate CRAN
policies.

I mean no disrespect towards the CRAN maintainers (whose tireless
efforts are a crucial part of making R the success that it is), but I
don't think it's unreasonable to enquire as to who is involved in a
crucial piece of open source community infrastructure, and, if
students are involved, what their scope of work is and how they are
trained and supervised.

I do recognise that my question "Who are they?" may have been
perceived as overly intrusive. To clarify: I don't want to know names
or other personally identifying information, but I would like to know
in general terms how many there are, and what backgrounds they have.
Similarly, I don't want to know how much they are paid, just whether
or not they are volunteers or employees.

Hadley

Hi all,

Several people on my team have received responses to their CRAN
submissions from new members of the CRAN team who appear to be student
assistants (judging from their job titles: "Studentischer
administrativer Mitarbeiter"). From the outside, they appear to be
exercising editorial control[^1] and conducting design reviews[^2].

CRAN is a critical piece of R community infrastructure, and I am sure
these students have been surrounded by the proper checks and balances,
but it's not obvious what their role is from the outside. I'd really
appreciate knowing a little more about them:

* Who are they?

* Are they paid employees or volunteers?

* What is their scope of work?

* How are they trained?

* If we believe that they have made a mistake, how do we request
  review from a senior CRAN member?

* They appear to be able to apply additional discretionary criteria
  that are not included in R CMD check or documented in the CRAN policies.
  Is this true? If so, what is the scope of these additional checks?

Hadley

[^1]: The devoid package was rejected because the student assistant
did not understand the purpose of the package.

[^2]: The gargle package was rejected because the student assistant
believed that the use of cat() was incorrect. It was not.

--
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