Subject: Re: Should we auto-close PRs on git/git?

From: Emily Shaffer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 13:09:29 -0800

On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 08:11:06PM +0100, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> Hi Emily,
> 
> On Fri, 8 Nov 2019, Emily Shaffer wrote:
> 
> > It seems to me that the friendly template text we prefill when someone
> > opens a pull request in github.com/git/git isn't being fully appreciated
> > by many interested contributors.
> 
> That is probably due to our confusing use of the template as a stop sign
> ;-)
> 
> > For some time now, Johannes has been slogging through the list to try
> > to narrow it down to folks who are still interested in contributing,
> > and yesterday on #git-devel said he was pretty happy with the progress
> > so far.
> 
> I don't mind it, and quite honestly, it does not take a lot of time,
> most of the time.
> 
> > But to me, this seems like a sort of Sisyphean task - more folks will
> > want to make contributions and not read the template text, and we will
> > have more PRs being ignored forever, especially if Johannes decides he
> > doesn't want to shepherd those changes anymore (I would have decided
> > that long ago, in his shoes).
> 
> The PRs are not bad. What is bad is all those comments on commits coming
> in as of recent, some developers thinking that they do not need to
> research the best way to reach the Git contributor community and instead
> just assuming that adding comments via GitHub's UI is a valid way.
> 
> I should probably refrain from trying to help those developers because
> it makes me very cranky, but I just don't want Git to be an unfriendly
> project.

I guess my concern is this: when I reply to some code review, email,
whatever, when I am cranky, it makes me seem unfriendly; when I do so
while wearing a maintainership hat (I maintain another project
elsewhere) it makes my project seem unfriendly :) Besides, I don't think
that anybody wants a contributor to be regularly doing work that makes
them cranky.

> > PS: Today we have 17 PRs open against git/git, and I think all of them
> > have been nudged by dscho in comments to open against GGG instead. Many
> > are in a state where dscho is sending a ping every few weeks to see if
> > the committer is interested in following through.
> >
> > https://github.com/git/git/pulls

> They all have been nudged, sometimes to clean up the patch first, or to
> suggest that maybe the goal of the PR might not be all that desirable.
> 
> Some of the PRs probably can be closed, but as I said, I would like to
> think of Git as a friendly project, a helpful one, so I want to err in
> favor of talking to the contributors rather than shutting the door in
> their face, so to say.

I do agree that meeting a patient human instead of silence is a good
contributor experience, and I appreciate all the work you're putting in
that direction.

 - Emily