[IPython-dev] No displayhook triggered for raw 'asdf'

[Fernando Perez]

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 2:37 PM, Brian Granger <ellisonbg at gmail.com> wrote:
> Great, I need to spend some time dealing with pull requests/review.
>
> Cheers,
>

Yes, same here :)  I feel terrible that we've gotten a lot of good
contributions recently, and we're falling behind on reviews/feedback.
I'm trying to get plugged back into everything and doing some of that
as well, because I've been *terrible* lately.  This recent excellent
post on building open source communities:

http://www.codesimplicity.com/post/open-source-community-simplified/

really made me think hard about this and how I try to organize my
priorities so that, when faced with very limited time (as I inevitably
am) I can still be effective with the project.  This section in
particular:

"""
Respond to contributions immediately.

The Bugzilla Project has a system of code reviews that requires that
all new contributions be reviewed by an experienced developer before
they can become part of Bugzilla. There have been various complaints
about the system over the years, but analyzing the survey data showed
that people leave the project because getting a review takes too long,
not because the reviews are too hard. In fact, the reviews can be as
hard as you want as long as they happen almost instantly after
somebody submits a contribution.

People don’t (usually) mind having to revise a contribution. They even
generally don’t mind revising it several times. But they do mind if
they post a patch, don’t get a review for three months, and then they
have to revise it, only to wait another three months to be told that
they have to revise it again. It’s the delay that matters, not the
level of quality control.
"""

spells out very well the importance of good feedback to new contributors.

I feel super guilty about having dropped the ball on the wave that
came from Scipy India; I hope those contributors will still keep an
interest in the project.

Anyway, the good thing about screwing up badly is that your next step
is likely to be an improvement ;)

Cheers,

f