Re: [PATCH] CF app: add "Returned: Needs more interest"

On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 8:00 PM Julien Rouhaud <rjuju123(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> I'm personally fine with the current statutes, as closing a patch with RwF
> explaining that there was no interest is still a feedback,

Hi Julien,

Making that explanation each time we intend to close a patch "needs
interest" takes a lot of time and wordsmithing. "Returned with
feedback" clearly has an established meaning to the community, and
this is counter to that meaning, so people just avoid using it that
way.

When they do, miscommunications happen easily, which can lead to
authors reopening patches thinking that there's been some kind of
mistake (as happened to at least one of the patches in this past CF,
which I had to close again). Language and cultural differences likely
exacerbate the problem, so the less ad hoc messaging a CFM has to do
to explain that "this is RwF but not actually RwF", the better.

> and having a
> different status won't make it any more pleasant for both the CFM and the
> author.

"More pleasant" is not really the goal here. I don't think it should
ever be pleasant for a CFM to return someone's patch when it hasn't
received review, and it's certainly not going to be pleasant for the
author. But we can be more honest and clear about why we're returning
it, and hopefully make it less unpleasant.

> My biggest complaint here is that it doesn't really do anything to try to
> improve the current situation (lack of review and/or lack of committer
> interest).

It's not really meant to improve that. This is just trying to move the
needle a little bit, in a way that's been requested several times.

> Maybe it would be better to discuss some clear rules and thresholds on when
> action should be taken on such patches.

I think that's also important to discuss, and I have thoughts on that
too, but I don't think the discussions for these sorts of incremental
changes should wait for that discussion.

--Jacob