Open Stack

On 09/04/2014 08:54 AM, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> On 2014-09-04 11:01:55 +0100 (+0100), Derek Higgins wrote:
> [...]
>> How would people feel about turning [auto-abandon] back on?
> 
> A lot of reviewers (myself among them) feel auto-abandon was a
> cold and emotionless way to provide feedback on a change. Especially
> on high-change-volume projects where core reviewers may at times get
> sucked into triaging other problems for long enough that the
> auto-abandoner kills lots of legitimate changes (possibly from
> new contributors who will get even more disgusted by this than the
> silence itself and walk away indefinitely with the impression that
> we really aren't a welcoming development community at all).
> 
>> Can it be done on a per project basis?
> 
> It can, by running your own... but again it seems far better for
> core reviewers to decide if a change has potential or needs to be
> abandoned--that way there's an accountable human making that
> deliberate choice rather than the review team hiding behind an
> automated process so that no one is to blame for hurt feelings
> besides the infra operators who are enforcing this draconian measure
> for you.

The thing is that it's also pushing more work onto already overloaded
core review teams.  Maybe submitters don't like auto-abandon, but I bet
they like having a core reviewer spending time cleaning up dead reviews
instead of reviewing their change even less.

TBH, if someone's offended by the bot then I can't imagine how incensed
they must be when a human does the same thing.  The bot clearly isn't
making it personal, and even if the human isn't either it's much easier
to have misunderstandings (see also every over-reaction to a -1 ever).

I suppose it makes it easier for cores to ignore reviews, but from the
other discussions I've read that hasn't gone away just because
auto-abandon did, so I'm not convinced that's a solution anyway.

/2 cents

> 
>> To make the whole process a little friendlier we could increase
>> the time frame from 1 week to 2.
> 
> <snark>How about just automatically abandon any new change as soon
> as it's published, and if the contributor really feels it's
> important they'll unabandon it.</snark>
>