Re: Formal Review Retrospective

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-11-10 19:19:49

Claudio DeSouza wrote:
> Thanks Peter for your perspective. I appreciate that.
> 
> I think the main question here is that some feel certain reviews were not given
> a fair shake, so they didn’t inform the process to begin with. How is the
> reviewer being a thorough observer when objections are not outright written
> off? Authors are not asked to reply, etc?
> 
> Of course this is a subjective observation of mine, but it has been at the heart
> of this contention. But in general, yes, it is a position of trust and I understand
> the reasoning behind it.
> 
> Maybe this is the nature of the review process and I am uninformed in my
> expectations, so I’ll defer to you judgement.

We're between a rock and a hard place here; on one hand, we suffer from
a lack of volunteers who would want to manage reviews, on the other, when
Klemens volunteers, people don't like the way he manages the reviews.

It's not clear how we expect this dilemma to magically solve itself.

In this specific case, if one feels strongly that a library does not belong in
Boost in its current state, the in-process way to obtain the desired outcome
is to (a) write a _very well motivated_ rejection review, and (b) get people
who are in agreement with your position to do so as well. Blaming the
review manager after the fact for not counting your -0.2 as -3.14 is not
the way.