Hi Dima, On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Dima Pasechnik <dimp...@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP> > 1) it would we good to have a "moderator" who can step in in such > cases. Communication within any open source project is bound to be archived somewhere on the Internet. Contributors need to realize that any communication is done within a public space. In most cases, communication between contributors can break down into hostility merely due to a misunderstanding. In the case you described, I have actually read the ticket in question. And I believe it is more of a misunderstanding between you and the patch author, rather than the case that someone is being rude. First, it is very frustrating that one has to rebase and rework a patch multiple times. A case in point is the situation with the Sage-Combinat team, whose members need to rebase their patches after each Sage release. I can assure you that such a task is very tedious, more so when the Sage-Combinat team has a huge patch queue that totals to a few megabytes in size. In most cases, just doing such a rebase takes up all of one's energy and time for a few days. Second, in most cases, the author of a patch is the only person who understands the algorithm implemented. It can be difficult for someone to review or indeed to find a reviewer. In the current situation, many of ncohen's graph theory tickets that need reviews have been in that state for a long time and no one has had time to do the review. Added to that is the fact that his linear programming tickets have also been in such a state. I do sense his frustration. I for one have time, but not the expertise, so I started a textbook project both to document the graph theory module and to learn enough background materials to review tickets relating to graph theory. Third, in many cases, one can open a new ticket to improve the changes introduced by a patch from an existing ticket. In such cases, I think one can suggest this option to the patch author and leave it to them to either incorporate the changes in the current patch, or to open a new ticket to implement the change. > 2) eventually, in order to prevent these things getting personal, it > might be good to have a possibility to anonymise reviewing. Most of the time, reviewers are also people who contribute a lot to improving a patch. We don't want make such contributors anonymous, but instead to properly credit their ideas, contributions, patches. With reviewers listed on tickets, I think this encourages them to be more careful and thorough in their reviews. -- Regards Minh Van Nguyen -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
