The New Reviewers List

[Jouni Heikniemi]

Benton, Kevin wrote:

> I agree that a personal queue feels more urgent, however, I think we can
> agree that a team queue is more urgent than "from the wind".  Does that
> sound like a better "happy medium"?  I don't think any of us would
> really want to look at the "from the wind" review list much because we'd
> already know before looking at it that the list would be filled with
> "stuff" to be reviewed that we're not reviewing for.

Certainly a team queue would be more urgent than the generic pool.  But 
I believe the point I made in 
<http://www.heikniemi.net/hc/archives/000203.html> is still true: From 
the wind -pool contains crap that nobody wants to touch. As long as 
there is split responsibility, it's easy to avoid looking at the crappy 
patches and just pick the most interesting ones. It's not just a 
question of scope (which files you're ready to review in) but also of 
quality (how much you're ready to work to get a hopeless looking patch 
checked in). Again, being personally responsible tends to help here.

 > pick it up.  Again, my main concern is accounting for what happens
 > when reviewers are (for whatever reason) not available for this
 > particular review.

This is certainly an issue we're facing right now. There are many review 
requests stacked onto people who simply don't have the time to go 
through them. I believe Max's list will certainly work as load balancer 
here. It won't solve all our problems, but I believe keeping the list 
up-to-date will avoid huge review request pileups (as long-term 
unavailability will then be recorded on the list).

Anyway, I can't see review requests as strictly personal unless 
specifically so noted... So even if a reviewer was temporarily gone, I 
don't think there's a particular problem in another one stepping in, 
particularly if the patch author so asks.

> emails could do that too.  We could see how both work for a while and
> make a decision later whether or not to keep the role accounts.  How
> does that sound?

To be honest: Unnecessarily complex. ;-)

I agree with many of your points, but I tend to think it's easier to try 
this approach now and then develop team queues if deemed necessary. 
Testing them both at once will only make it harder for the new 
contributors to pick the appropriate way to request review.


Jouni