[python-committers] More explicit Code of Conduct for the issue tracker & core mailing lists?

[Meador Inge]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 10:08 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

> That last one is actually an area where I *dis*agree with the FreeBSD
> guidelines - I see asking for someone to revert a change as a big
> deal, as it means we're laying claim to a non-trivial amount of their
> time. A non-urgent request for clarification is a different story, but
> I also see us occasionally repeating a pattern where long before the
> person that actually made a change has a chance to respond to a
> thread, there'll be half a dozen or more people jumping in saying
> "Yeah, I want an answer too!".

I have seen a couple of these too.  Sometimes it is a pile on, but
other times it is a very reasonable question to python-dev that goes
completely unanswered.  Those cases (which are admittedly
few) are unfortunate b/c if one person has a question about a
commit, then others probably to do.  When the question goes
unanswered, then we miss out on learning something.

For example, I remember a case from a few months ago where someone
(don't remember who off the top of my head) made a micro-optimization
and there were post-commit questions about it.  As far as I can tell, the
question went unanswered and I sincerely was curious what the rationale
for the change was.  I felt like there was something we all could have
learned from the potential discussion around the question that was asked.

> Given the global nature of the lists, I think we should be giving
> folks *at least* 24 hours to reply to a question before assuming
> they're not going to respond, and given that only some of us get to
> count reading and replying to python-dev threads as work time, a few
> days leeway would be better (perhaps even a week to account for folks
> that are busy with other things during the week and mostly contribute
> on weekends). Those of us that *do* get paid for this also need to try
> to remember to account for that asymmetry in available time for
> participation.

To me this depends on why the change is being questioned.  If there is
a question about why a change was made or a minor bug was found in
post-commit review*, then I agree it can wait a few days.  On the other
hand, if someone commits a change that turns all the build-bots red and
doesn't respond for several hours, then I would think that is fair game
to revert.

So, I do think reverting changes is a very reasonable course of action at
times.  It should just be used judiciously.

-- Meador

* Ideally these kinds of things would be caught in pre-commit review, but
I understand that it is not always practical to expect that everyone gets
a chance for pre-commit review for every change or that every bug is
caught in pre-commit review.