Re: Commitfest II CLosed

On 22/10/13 02:56, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> On 21.10.2013 16:15, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>> On 10/21/13 1:31 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
>>> The point of the CF is exactly that all
>>> patches get at least one good round of review. Moving unreviewed
>>> patches
>>> to the next CF will let them just suffer the same fate there.
>
> Agreed. People have different views on what the purpose of a
> commitfest is, but IMO the point is to make sure that every patch
> submitted gets at least a cursory review in a timely fashion. Pushing
> patches to the next one because no-one has gotten around to review
> them is a failure.
>
>> What is the alternative?
>
> If no-one really cares enough about a patch to review it, mark it as
> "rejected, because no-one but the patch author cares". Harsh, but
> that's effectively what pushing to the next commitfest means anyway.
> Better to be honest about it. At least that way the author can promote
> the patch's virtues more on the mailing list, or personally contact
> someone who might be interested, to get some attention, and resubmit
> if he thinks that it might have a chance on the next commitfest.
>
> Another alternative is to push harder to make sure that every patch
> gets some review. I don't know how to accomplish that. Robert Haas did
> a great job at that in the first few commitfests (IIRC), but only
> because he personally spent a lot of time not only managing the
> commitfest but actually reviewing the patches that no-one else
> bothered with. That's a great way to make sure that every patch gets
> some attention, but I don't think we have any takers for that role.
>
> I feel guilty to complain, while not actually volunteering to be a
> commitfest manager myself, but I wish the commitfest manager would be
> more aggressive in nagging, pinging and threatening people to review
> stuff. If nothing else, always feel free to nag me :-). Josh tried
> that with the infamous Slacker List, but that backfired. Rather than
> posting a public list of shame, I think it would work better to send
> short off-list nag emails, or chat via IM. Something like "Hey, you've
> signed up to review this. Any progress?". Or "Hey, could you take a
> look at X please? No-one else seems to care about it."
>
> - Heikki
>
>
Hmm...

From at different area, but I think it may apply here...

When I was running a magazine for a computer user group, I regularly
phoned people up to encourage them to write articles, I think I managed
to get 50% of them to contribute articles.

In the pg context: this might mean contacting patch submitters &
potential reviewers, listening to their moans... and encouraging them.
Sometimes they may simply need some advice, or to be put in contact with
someone who can explain something that is obscure to them - it might be
a simple mental block, in someone that is otherwise extremely competent.
A lot of this should be done behind the scenes, the idea is more to
empower than to shame (I'm sure that could be phrased better!).

Cheers,
Gavin