Re: Formal Review Retrospective

From: Arnaud Becheler (arnaud.becheler_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-11-10 00:25:50

 Thank your Vinnie for inviting/pushing me into this charming rabbit hole
3:)

NO. The review is over with the announcement of the result. IF you add an
> official discussion thread you will end up with a review of the review and
> no final decision will ever be accepted.

I agree, the decision of the Review Manager should be final. This is not
incompatible with a Retrospective phase with the clearly established role
of working towards improving the Review process for *future* reviews by
gathering useful input from the Community about the *past* review in a
transparent and structured discussion.

The second guessing without serious reason needs to stop not be encouraged.
> It hurts the review process.

My experience with communication would suggest that discouraging feedback
and silencing frustrated voices can be detrimental. The more you try to
suppress concerns or frustrations, the more tension builds, leading to
eventual breaking point. For example, I may be a baby on this ML and yet
I've already seen obviously heavily invested people quitting the ML quite
rageously: from the answers that followed, this breaking point was clearly
hurting both the process and the libraries and should be avoided.

> Serious issues are to be brought up with the review wizards off-list.

Criticism can be send to the RM off-list as well.

Agreed. This will inevitably raise the case of the process surrounding the
Review Wizard designation and responsibilities: i) how are they selected,
ii) how are conflicts of interests handled at this designation stage, iii)
for how long do Wizards operate, iv) what is the process when they quit, v)
what is the process in the case of conflict of interest brought up during a
Review. It does not seem to be mentioned in the guidelines and should be
made explicit to avoid future problems.

If you want to discuss a past review it needs to happen after enough time
> has passed, so it doesnt turn into a second round of reviews. We could
> maybe discuss the "reviews of the past year" every december or something

Yearly feedback could be valuable. It doesn’t address the issue of
immediate feedback—both positive and negative—that naturally arises during
the review process. Such feedback is a crucial part of the community
experience and should be collected before it fades away. It often can’t
(and maybe shouldn’t) be casted off some private channels, as it fosters
transparency and shared learning. Also, let’s be honest: these
conversations will likely surface elsewhere (mhhh lemme guess: slack?). It
could be as simple as a 1-10 scale poll answering *How happy were you with
this formal review?* Whatever the shape it takes, creating a space for
immediate dialogue ensures feedback is acknowledged :)

Best wishes, rainbow kitties etc,
Arno