On Sunday, 26 January 2020 at 09:01:03 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
I'm making a change to the way we solicit feedback during DIP
review rounds. The goal is to separate explicit feedback from
discussion. Discussion is vital to the process, but it also
makes it difficult to find the actionable feedback buried in
the 20+ pages that some DIP reviews generate (particularly
Walter's). So henceforward, we're going with two threads per
review round: one for discussion and one for feedback
(critique).
It's all laid out in this blog post:
https://dlang.org/blog/2020/01/26/dip-reviews-discussion-vs-feedback/
Also on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/d_language/comments/eu4fi8/dip_reviews_discussion_vs_feedback/
I think this new policy wants some further pondering. In the
feedback theard, if the DIP author replies and the reply
indicates that he/she has missed the point of the review, we have
a problem. The reviewer cannot answer to the author in the
feedback theard, so it has to be done on the discussion theard.
With high likelihood, the author will miss the reply on that
another theard, and the misunderstanding remains in effect.
I think you should let a reviewer to answer to the author in the
feedback theard, when the intention is clarify the review.
Replying just to disagree with the author, or to comment other
reviews still belongs to the discussion thears. That's the
minimal fix.
However, I suspect there is an alternative arragement, which if
as follows:
The manager will still create only one feedback theard, where
peaple can freely about the DIP and all the reviews given. But to
provide a real review, the reviewer will open a new theard and
drop a link to to it in the general theard. In the personal
review theard, only the reviewer, the author and the DIP manager
can talk, and the rules are the same as in the "feedback" theard
in the "minimal fix" I described above. To force people to give
reviews instead of just bikeshedding in the general theard, there
could be a rule that only those who have left a review can
participate in the general theard.
After the review, the DIP manager will only check the reviews for
the review summary. I think this would increase the quality of
the reviews, as each reviewer can talk with the author without
having the concurrent conversations to drown each other.
Thanks for the blog post!
