Re: [boost] Languishing review requests

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-06-07 17:36:42

on Thu Jun 07 2007, "Peter Dimov" <pdimov-AT-mmltd.net> wrote:

> John Phillips wrote:
>> Peter Dimov wrote:
>>>
>>> I agree that it could be incredibly hard for a submitter to prepare
>>> an impartial summary of the opinions of the reviewers and that not
>>> everyone
>>> will want to do so.
>>>
>>> That said, if a submitter is willing and able to go through this
>>> experience, we might consider granting him/her the opportunity if a
>>> review manager
>>> hasn't turned up for, say, three months.
>>
>>   This strikes me as one of those jobs where the people who would want
>> it might include some of the people you would least want to give it
>> to.
>>
>>   The general high level of the conversations and professional
>> responsibility on the boost developer list is a credit to the group.
>> However, even here there have been cases of someone claiming to be
>> reasonable and objective while actually being neither.
>
> The potential for abuse is not lost on me. However, the fact that
> the system can be abused does not necessarily mean that it will be
> abused in practice.  If this happens, we can just go back to the
> traditional approach and we'll be no worse off,

Not unless we can somehow undo the abuse.  That's a lot harder than
just changing the system.  You have to be willing to say, "I know we
told you it works like X, and you put all that work into a review, but
we've retroactively changed our mind."  Even getting the group to come
to consensus about retroactively changing its mind on policy is hard
(c.f. uBlas licensing).

> or we can try a hybrid approach allowing more people to qualify for
> the RM role.

I hope more people can qualify.

> It would be nice if we could devise a system that does not suffer from the 
> "silent rejection" problem: you input a review request (or a RM application) 
> into it and receive no output back for months (or at all). 

Agreed.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
http://www.boost-consulting.com