Subject: Re: CoC, inclusivity etc. (was "Re: [...] systemd timers on Linux")

From: Felipe Contreras <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 12:30:21 -0500

Jeff King wrote:
> On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 12:29:01PM +0200, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> 
> > The reason I chimed in on this thread was that I thought concern over
> > one such topic had started to negatively impact another. We've got a lot
> > of people trying to contribute who aren't comfortable contributing in
> > English, or whose proficiency doesn't extend to the latest linguistic
> > trends.
> > 
> > I'm suggesting that it's more helpful to leave certain things be than to
> > pounce on contributors about things that are ultimately not integral to
> > their work, and which can be readily understood.
> 
> Yes, I want to express my support of this point, and not just for this
> particular issue.
> 
> If you're a new contributor (or even an old one), it can be frustrating
> to spend a lot of time working on and polishing up an improvement to the
> software, to be met with feedback that mostly consists of "there's a
> typo in your commit message". Whether that's true or not, or whether it
> improves the commit message or not, it can feel like reviewers are
> missing the point of the patch, which will discourage contributors.
> 
> As reviewers, I think we can do a few things to encourage people,
> especially new contributors:
> 
>   - let little errors slide if they're not important. I think sometimes
>     we get into a mentality that the commit message is baked into
>     history, and thus needs to be revised and perfected. But commit
>     messages are also just a conversation that's happening and being
>     recorded. There will be hiccups, and polishing them forever has
>     diminishing returns.

Yes, polishing forever has diminishing returns, but that's not really
the hard problem here; the problem is when two people (or more) can't
agree on what "polishing" means. That's a more eternal forever.

Fortunately we do have a dictator, and he can make determinations to end
the eternal debate.

He can simply fix the commit message--or any other minor
details--himself.

Sure, that doesn't scale, and ideally we would want the patch
contributors to do these tasks themselves, and not burden the
maintainer. But if the task of herding the cats is taken forever, why
keep insisting? Just fix the commit message and move on.

> I would even extend some of those into the code itself. Obviously we
> don't want to lower the bar and take incorrect code, or even typos in
> error messages. But I think we could stand to relax sometimes on issues
> of style or "I would do it like this" (and at the very least, the
> "temper small corrections" advice may apply).

Plus code can be fixed later. If as a reviewer you really dislike one
aspect of a patch, you don't necessarily need to convince the author to
change it. You can propose a separate patch later on.

Sometimes good is good enough. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras