Hi all,
since our move to Github I noticed a major increase in incoming patches. I like it. It clearly shows that it was a good decision.
But I don't like the fact that Github reviews are cannibalizing issues on BPO. Before the migration decisions regarding a new feature or bug fix were made on the ticket system. For larger changes we used mailing lists or the PEP process. Rietveld, our previous code review tool, was just used to discuss code and implementation details. All important decisions still happened on BPO. We also used BPO to keep the experts or module maintainers in the loop.
With Github I'm seeing a major paradigm shift. New contributors tend to use BPO as ticket number dispenser. Actual discussion seems to happen mostly on Github PRs. For me it makes it harder to follow discussion or to see discussions at all. I find Github notifications inferior to compared BPO's email notification -- mostly because Github spams me with notifications. For me it's not uncommon to have more than 1,000 open notifications waiting for my attention.
This brings me to my questions
Should we try to move discussion back to BPO or are we fine with having major decisions just in Github PRs?
How can we retain enough information on BPO to keep it useful as research database for past decisions?
How can we keep module maintainers and experts in the loop? For example I don't have the resources to read all Github PRs, but I still like to keep an eye on the ssl and hashlib module.
Christian