On Fri, 17 May 2024 at 17:59, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
> If they
> get attention, it's much more likely to be because somebody saw their
> email and wrote back than it is to be because somebody went through
> the CommitFest and found their entry and was like "oh, I should review
> this".
I think this is an important insight. I used the commitfest app to
find patches to review when I was just starting out in postgres
development, since I didn't subscribe to all af pgsql-hackers yet. I
do subscribe nowadays, but now I rarely look at the commitfest app,
instead I skim the titles of emails that go into my "Postgres" folder
in my mailbox. Going from such an email to a commitfest entry is near
impossible (at least I don't know how to do this efficiently). I guess
I'm not the only one doing this.
> Honestly, if we get to a situation where a patch author is sad
> because they have to click a link every 2 months to say "yeah, I'm
> still here, please review my patch," we've already lost the game. That
> person isn't sad because we asked them to click a link. They're sad
> it's already been N * 2 months and nothing has happened.
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad for an author to click the 2 months
button, if it would actually give their patch some higher chance of
being reviewed by doing that. And given the previous insight, that
people don't look at the commitfest app that often, it might be good
if pressing this button would also bump the item in people's
mailboxes.