[bksvol-discuss] Re: validation notification
- From: "Gerald Hovas" <geraldhovas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 21:56:28 -0600
Jill,
Informing the validator when a book is accepted or rejected is not
difficult, but it's not a trivial change either. Even small Engineering
efforts cost money and have to be accounted for in the budget due to the
fact that even simple changes need proper testing then operations must
update the Bookshare system to include those changes.
I would also expect there to have to be a second message created
specifically for the validator rather than just copying the validator on the
message to the submitter since not every volunteer would want their name and
e-mail address to be made available to the other volunteer.
My background is in a different area of Software Engineering, but I would
guess that this change would take somewhere from 2 to 5 days to implement,
test, and release depending on whether or not there is still someone there
who is familiar with the code which is causing the messages to be sent out
in the first place, and nothing unforseen takes place during testing and
release. I know my estimate probably seems far excessive to many of you,
but it's never trivial when updating a working system which needs to remain
up and running 24/7. The reason I would expect for the minimum time to make
the change to be 2 days, is that I would personally not trust releasing a
change which had been tested for less than a couple of days. I would also
consider having the second message first sent to a fixed e-mail address at
Bookshare and have the new message contain the validator's e-mail address
appended to the subject in order to verify that the system is pulling up the
correct destination address for the message and not sending it to the wrong
address before fully releasing the change.
I can reassure the list that Janice and Gustavo are aware that volunteers
would like this change because I have discussed it with them, and I believe
they have even gone as far as to look into what it would cost to implement
it. The problem has been the lack of funding and choosing which changes to
pay for first when more funding for Engineering changes becomes available.
As you can probably guess, there are many changes on Bookshare's list of
changes they need/want to make, and there is only so much money to allocate
for Engineering changes due to Bookshare being a nonprofit organization.
It's my impression, too, that Bookshare doesn't have its own dedicated
Engineering team, but shares one with all of Benetech's projects. If this
is the case, then Bookshare must compete with other projects for
Engineering's time and resources, as well as come up with the funds to make
the changes to their system.
HTH
Gerald
-----Original Message-----
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jill O'Connell
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 3:17 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] validation notification
For those of you who are really computer savvy, how difficult would it be
for a copy of the approval notice sent to the person who scanned a book to
be sent to the validator as well? From previous posts on this list, I think
we would all appreciate having this information. In the meantime I will let
Jim know that I have validated Pay It Forward. I have submitted Ya-Yas in
Bloom and would appreciate knowing when it has been uploaded if one of you
on the list take it. Thanks all. Jill
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