During ?DebConf25, a new process has been defined.

A first announcement about this has been send on debian-devel-announce (<link>).

/!\ The heuristics and process described below are WORK IN PROGRESS and will be refined once the implementation and deployment work happens.

Heuristic

This is for now restricted to Debian Maintainers and uploading Debian Developers.

  1. an heuristic will be defined to identify possibly inactive contributors
    • 0.1 the initial criteria will be:

      • 0.1.1 uploading DD or DM
        0.1.2 "last activity" recorded in contributors.debian.org is older than 180 days (~6 months)

      0.2 the criteria will be regularly reviewed for improvements

Process

  1. an automated system will email the individuals found
    • 1.1 this email will contain two links:
      • 1.1.1 one link to confirm one is around, closing up the process, no further contact for a period of time
        • 1.1.1.1 clicking this link will feed back to point 0, and it will be counted towards such heuristic
        1.1.2 one link to confirm inactiveness and gracefully retire ("one click emeritus")

      1.2 the email will also explain the origin of the data and why the email was triggered, so if the email was due to buggy data it can be fixed
      1.3 responses to such emails will be handled by the MIA team similarly to how they are now, but please note that no answer is needed, just clicking through links

  2. In case of no answer or action to the previous emails, the system will send further, similar emails monthly for a total of six months
  3. After six months of unactioned automated emails, the case will be referred to the MIA team for further *human* action
  4. The MIA team will follow up with the following:

    • 4.1 personally try to further reach out to the person, indicating that packages will be orphaned (if applicable)
      4.2 in absence of a reply within a month of the previous email:

      • 4.2.1 the packages will be orphaned
        4.2.2 debian-private@ will be involved about the case, similarly to what is currently done (WAT -Where Art Thou)

      4.3 one month after the previous email, in case no answer has been received or any other contact established the case will be referred to DAM for further action

FAQ

1. The heuristics are WRONG!!!1!

If you received an automated email but you strongly believe you shouldn't have, check your profile on contributors.debian.org. Check in particular that you have enough identifiers associated with your account, as maybe some contributions were not associated with you.

If the area of the Project you work on does not report contribution data to contributors.debian.org, provide a new data source!

More information on either of those topics on DebianContributors.

2. Will the bots kick me out?

No! There will be always be humans at some point, and you are welcome to contact mia@qa.debian.org if you have any concerns.

3. What about emails that can't be delivered

The emails will be sent from debian.org infrastructure and properly signed by a valid DKIM key.

The automation will try multiple known email address for any given person (i.e., all the uids listed on the !OpenPGP key). And there will still be the final parts done manually and reaching out also on debian-private in case somebody else knows alternative contact methods.

4. How can I improve the heuristics?

Reach out to mia@qa.debian.org to discuss the topic, if you have good ideas. If you do, make sure to provide actual good data points.

5. How do I know if a team is currently ingested into contributors.d.o? How do I add my team?

Check DebianContributors for instructions.

Can we add confidential sources to contributors.d.o?

It is currently not possible to have data sources used for internal calculations but not publicly visible. But this is being working on, as we do plan to implement the feature for this specific reason.

Contact nm@debian.org if you believe you are in need of such feature as well.

Isn't contributors.d.o a bit stalky? GDPR etc?

See DebianContributors#Handling_privacy

WIP