[LEDE-DEV] [OpenWrt-Devel] patchwork

[Val Kulkov]

On 19 January 2018 at 05:19, Karl Palsson <karlp at tweak.net.au> wrote:
>> But I would not worry about making the lives of contributors
>> easier [since they come & go]. I would worry about making the
>> lives of core devs easier, since their number is rarely
>> changing, and they have to put in the effort.
>
> An example of wording you may wish to re-examine. This is exactly
> why contributors come and go, they're clearly not always as
> welcome as you might like to claim they are.
>
> For the actual issue, I _completely_ understand wanting to close
> all the old issues, but given that it's a oneoff, please do it
> manually, rather than just blanket closing them all.
>
> The "auto close after x months" or "auto close when reported
> distro has reached EOL" is a _massssive_ turnoff for people
> reporting bugs and submitting patches. Submitting something,
> having it be ignored for x months, and then just closed is....
> practical yes, but you're going to struggle to get anyone new
> permanently like that.
>
> Sincerely,
> Karl Palsson

+1000. "Submitting something, having it ignored for x months, and then
just closed." Think about it. How motivated would a person be to come
back after that? Re-submit in a vain attempt to get someone's
attention?

What I think is needed is a good janitor. Someone who would not be
afraid to merge or close stale issues/PRs.

At least in some cases, or maybe in many cases, once person A sets the
"Changes requested" label to a PR, all other members with write
privileges start treating the PR as the responsibility of person A who
requested changes. They, too, would wait for a response from person A.
If person A does not revisit the PR for months, the PR becomes stale
and there is nothing the contributor can do.

On 19 January 2018 at 03:28, Piotr Dymacz <pepe2k at gmail.com> wrote:
> At least for me, the problem is that GitHub doesn't notify when the PR is
> changed (for example author force pushes some changes). I usually ask
> authors to ping me (using @username) in a separate comment in PR when the
> requested changes are made.

Unfortunately, even a direct ping via @username is GitHub's comments
does not always work to get a reviewing member's attention. At least
in my experience.