Subject: Re: Promoting Git developers

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2015 15:58:24 -0700

Jeff King <[email-masked]> writes:

> Seeing my name in "shortlog" was nice, but not that exciting. I
> submitted a patch, it was taken, and of course it ends up in any
> automated lists of authors. What was much more rewarding was being
> mentioned specifically in "A note from the maintainer" as a helpful
> person. That had much more value because:
>
>   1. It was one of a handful of names.
>
>   2. It was picked by a human.
>
> So in that sense, it is quite the opposite of including shortlog output
> in the release announcements (I still think the shortlog thing we have
> been discussing is a good thing, but not at the same level).

Yes, and that cuts both ways, unfortunately. There always will be "I
am doing more reviews than X and my reviews are higher quality. Why
was X singled out and got thanked but not me?", "X is really doing a
good job reviewing in this cycle, but could other people who send
reviews of lessor quality (to my mind) feel that it is unjustified
if I thanked X and nobody else?", etc. A mechanically generated list
avoids these issues, but the satisfaction you get from being on the
list is not very high, exactly because it is not hand picked.

> I do not know that it is worth having a "Best of 2015" Git awards
> ceremony, but it is sometimes nice to thank people personally when
> you appreciate their efforts. I sometimes mail people off-list to
> do so.

Yeah, I do the same, but revealing that we do so would defeat what
we tried to achieve by doing so off-list in the first place. Now
those who haven't got such a piece of e-mail for a while can start
to suspect that they have fallen out of favour or something ;-(.