Re: Formal Review Retrospective

From: Christian Mazakas (christian.mazakas_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-11-10 16:36:55

On Sat, Nov 9, 2024 at 3:33 PM Klemens Morgenstern via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> 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.
>
> The second guessing without serious reason needs to stop not be encouraged.
> It hurts the review process.
> Serious issues are to be brought up with the review wizards off-list.
> Criticism can be send to the RM off-list as well.
>

Nah. And I know this comment is exactly about me.

The thing is, you're the one deciding that what I said wasn't "serious",
Klemens.

Look, it was just a poorly managed review. That's the point of these
retrospectives and why we're having them.

We need to have these open discussions to talk about what we could've done
better and how we want future reviews to go.

For example, we need to start mandating actual quality decorum from review
managers.

For example, if multiple people on the ML are discussing a design decision
but the author isn't responding, it should be on the review manager to step
in and encourage the author of the proposed lib to participate. This is
something that didn't happen.

Also, review managers should feel an onus to actually write down their
reasoning for accepting a library, even in the face of open-ended design
discussions.

It seems like there was more criticism of my review for being "low-effort"
than there was for the review manager putting in even less effort. But
imagine if I actually had put in more effort only to just be ignored by the
author anyway.

The thing is, if we want Boost review to actually mean something, we have
to actually take steps to ensure that we follow a good process. And a good
process is certainly not what happened for this review.

- Christian