Open Stack

Excerpts from Davanum Srinivas (dims)'s message of 2017-09-22 13:47:06 -0400:
> Doug,
> Howard (cc'ed) already did a bunch of reaching out especially on
> wechat. We should request his help.
> 
> Howard,
> Can you please help with communications and follow up?
> 
> Thanks,
> Dims

Thanks, Dims and Howard,

I think the problem has reached a point where it would be a good
idea to formalize our approach to outreach. We should track the
patches or patch series identified as problematic, so reviewers
know not to bother with them. We can also track who is contacting
whom (and how) so we don't have a bunch of people replicating work
or causing confusion for people who are trying to contribute. Having
that information will also help us figure out when we need to
escalate by finding the right managers to be talking to.

Let's put together a small team to manage this instead of letting
it continue to cause frustration for everyone.

Doug

> 
> On Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 1:43 PM, Doug Hellmann <doug at doughellmann.com> wrote:
> > Excerpts from Matt Riedemann's message of 2017-09-22 08:26:31 -0500:
> >> On 9/22/2017 7:10 AM, Tom Barron wrote:
> >> > FWIW I think it is better not to attribute motivation in these cases.
> >> > Perhaps the code submitter is trying to pad stats, but perhaps they are
> >> > just a new contributor trying to learn the process with a "harmless"
> >> > patch, or just a compulsive clean-upper who hasn't thought through the
> >> > costs in reviewer time and CI resources.
> >>
> >> I agree. However, the one that set me off last night was a person from
> >> one company who I've repeatedly -1ed the same types of patches in nova
> >> for weeks, including on stable branches, and within 10 minutes of each
> >> other across several repos, so it's clearly part of some daily routine.
> >> That's what prompted me to send something to the mailing list.
> >>
> >
> > As fungi points out, education and communication are likely to be
> > our best solution. Maybe one approach is to identify the companies
> > and individuals involved and find one of our community members to
> > contact them directly via email.  We would want the person doing
> > that to be willing to explain all of the reasons the community does
> > not want the sort of activity we are rejecting and to provide
> > guidance about more useful contributions (Matt's comment is a great
> > start on both). I imagine that conversation would take a good deal
> > of patience, especially after the second or third time, but a personal
> > touch frequently makes all the difference in these sorts of cases.
> >
> > If we have someone willing to step into that sort of role, I would
> > be happy to help craft the initial contact messages and advise as
> > needed.
> >
> > Does anyone want to volunteer to work with me and actually send the
> > emails?
> >
> > Doug
> >
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