On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 5:04 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
> Jacob Champion <jacob.champion@enterprisedb.com> writes:
> > ... Similar to how people currently use the
> > Reviewer field as a personal TODO list... it might be nice to
> > officially separate the ideas a bit.
>
> Oh, that's an independent pet peeve of mine. Usually, if I'm
> looking over the CF list for a patch to review, I skip over ones
> that already show an assigned reviewer, because I don't want to
> step on that person's toes. But it seems very common to put
> one's name down for review without any immediate intention of
> doing work. Or to do a review and wander off, leaving the patch
> apparently being tended to but not really. (And I confess I'm
> occasionally guilty of both things myself.)
>
> I think it'd be great if we could separate "I'm actively reviewing
> this" from "I'm interested in this". As a bonus, adding yourself
> to the "interested" list would be a fine proxy for the thumbs-up
> or star markers mentioned upthread.
>
> If those were separate columns, we could implement some sort of
> aging scheme whereby somebody who'd not commented for (say)
> a week or two would get quasi-automatically moved from the "active
> reviewer" column to the "interested" column, whereupon it wouldn't
> be impolite for someone else to sign up for active review.
I really like the idea of an "interested" column of some sort. I think
having some idea of what patches have interest is independently
valuable and helps us distinguish patches that no committer was
interested enough to work on and patches that no one thinks is a good
idea at all.
As for having multiple categories of reviewer, it's almost like we
need someone to take responsibility for shifting the patch to the next
state -- where the next state isn't necessarily "committed". We tend
to wait and assign a committer if the patch is actually committable
and will get committed. Lots of people review a patch without claiming
that were the author to address all of the feedback, the patch would
be committable. It might be helpful if someone could sign up to
shepherd the patch to its next state -- regardless of what that state
is.
- Melanie