Re: [PATCH] ReviewingGuidelines: encourage positive reviews more

[Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>]

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On Thu, Jul 25, 2024 at 09:31:46AM -0400, Derrick Stolee wrote:
> On 7/25/24 2:51 AM, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 24, 2024 at 02:14:37PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > > I saw some contributors hesitate to give a positive review on
> > > patches by their coworkers.  When written well, a positive review
> > > does not have to be a hollow "looks good" that rubber stamps an
> > > otherwise useless approval on a topic that is not interesting to
> > > anybody.
> > 
> > Oh, yes, this addition is very welcome indeed! It's a painpoint of ours
> > at GitLab, and folks were indeed quite unsure about how to handle
> > positive reviews. I was trying to guide them into the direction of
> > "reverbalizing" and "thinking out aloud" parts of a patch series that
> > are tricky in order to demonstrate that they have indeed read through
> > the patches and understand them. Having all of this written down
> > explicitly should hopefully help them.
> 
> I'll add the perspective of my experience here that this is a good
> pattern to follow. One thing that also helps is to avoid doing an
> "internal review" for experienced contributors.

Absolutely! We originally had an internal review first, but I also
changed that procedure earlier this year. Now we have an optional
internal review in case people aren't yet all that familiar with the
mailing list workflow, but more experienced contributors should send
their patches to the mailing list directly.

For one this has sped up our own processes. But second, it allows
reviewers to get more exposure to the mailing list as they are also
encouraged to always review on the mailing list directly.

> When Microsoft was first building up new contributors in this space,
> we were overcautious and performed an internal review before going
> to the mailing list. While this is good for a contributor's first
> series, it loses the benefits of doing review in the open.

Same.

Patrick

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