Re: Ejecting things more aggressively out of 'seen'?

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:

> One state that confuses newcomers quite often is "Will merge to 'next'?"
> with a question mark at the end. If we were to document these we shuld
> probably also document that state.

Hmph, really?  Just like the subject of this e-mail message, a
trailing question mark is my way of saying "I am planning to do
this, but if you think it is a bad idea, please stop me with an
explanation why I shouldn't".

>>  - A topic goes into the "Waiting for response" state once reviewed,
>>    where it remains until the author responds.  After staying in
>>    this state for a month or so, it is demoted to the "Stalled"
>>    state, and eventually dropped.
>> 
>> We should probably have a rule that says "a topic that did not get
>> reviewed for N weeks is ejected from 'seen'".
>
> I think that's reasonable. Becoming a bit more aggressive there doesn't
> make too much of a difference anyway -- if a topic gets evicted from
> "seen" and then later on regains interest then it can still be included
> into "seen" again.
>
> By gut feeling I'd use the same rule as for "Waiting for response".

An obvious alternative is to queue only topics for which I can, by
judging reviews on the list, at least say "Will merge to 'next'?"
with enough confidence.  It would reduce the size of 'seen' and the
friction felt by contributors when their topic is once queued on
'seen' and later ejected unceremoniously through no fault of their
own, other than their topic being forgettable or uninspiring to
others.

I do not know which one is better: educating contributors that their
topics being uninspiring to others is something they should not feel
bad about and giving our reviewers easier access to these candidate
topics, or being strict and mechanical and queuing only topics that
some human reviewers with a certain level of reputation have looked
at and have not just shown interest in, but have said are ready.

I can do either.  It is less emotional stress for me to do the
latter.  Between hitting 'seen' and then later being discarded, and
not getting any response or reaction at all, I am not sure which one
our contributors find more acceptable.