On 10/31/2013 10:36 PM, Jeremy Stanley wrote: > As has been said many times already, OpenStack does not lack > developers... it lacks reviewers.
In regards to reviews in general and in particular for welcoming new committers I think we need to be careful about reviewers NAK'ing a submission for what is essentially bikeshedding [1]. Reviewers should focus on code correctness and adherence to required guidelines and not NAK a submission because the submission offends their personal coding preferences [2]. If a reviewer thinks the code would be better with changes which do not affect correctness and are more in the vein of "style" modifications they should make helpful suggestions but give the review a 0 instead of actually NAK'ing the submission. NAK'ed reviews based on style issues force the submitter to adhere to someone else's unsubstantiated opinion and slows down the entire contribution process while submissions are reworked multiple times without any significant technical change. It's also demoralizing for submitters to have their contributions NAK'ed for reasons that are issues of opinion only, the submitter has to literally submit [3]. [1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding [2] Despite the best attempts of computer science researchers over the years software development remains more of a craft than a science with unambiguous rules yielding exactly one solution. Often there are many valid approaches to solve a particular coding problem, the selection of one approach often boils down to the personal preferences of the craftsperson. This does not diminish the value of coding guidelines gleaned from years of analyzing software issues, what it does mean is those guidelines still leave plenty of room for different approaches and no one is the arbiter of the "one and only correct way". [3] to give over or yield to the power or authority of another. -- John _______________________________________________ OpenStack-dev mailing list OpenStack-dev@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev