Re: [boost] Review procedure

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-07-08 19:47:17

At 04:52 PM 7/8/2002, Thomas Witt wrote:

 >> Online voting for boost members for library acceptance.
 >
 >I am very sceptic regarding this one. Strictly speaking the review 
process
 >is
 >non democratic, and I think that is good. It is the decision of the 
review
 >manager whether a library is accepted. He makes this decision based on 
his
 >own evaluation and the input he got from the review comments made by 
others.
 >
 >To me the actual comments made by the reviewers are more important than
 >their vote.
 >
 >An online voting system as I see it would push the process more towards
 >vote counting and to me this is not desireable.

I agree strongly with Thomas on this - the whole point of peer review is 
quality, not quantity.

A Review Manager can and should give maximum weight to a thoughtful review 
from someone who has carefully studied a library.  And give little weight 
to someone who has apparently not done any homework at all!

That's not to say we can't improve the review process further, but voting 
isn't the way to do it.

--Beman