Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [RFC PATCH 3/3] libnvdimm, MAINTAINERS: Subsystem Profile

[Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 12:37 PM Rodrigo Vivi <rodrigo.vivi@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 8:38 AM Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 06:10:36AM -0800, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> > > Em Thu, 15 Nov 2018 09:03:11 +0100
> > > Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org> escreveu:
> > >
> > > > Hi Dan,
> > > >
> > > > On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 6:06 AM Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com> wrote:
> > > > > Document the basic policies of the libnvdimm subsystem and provide a
> > > > > first example of a Subsystem Profile for others to duplicate and edit.
> > > > >
> > > > > Cc: Ross Zwisler <zwisler@kernel.org>
> > > > > Cc: Vishal Verma <vishal.l.verma@intel.com>
> > > > > Cc: Dave Jiang <dave.jiang@intel.com>
> > > > > Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
> > > >
> > > > Thanks for your patch!
> > > >
> > > > > --- /dev/null
> > > > > +++ b/Documentation/nvdimm/subsystem-profile.rst
> > > >
> > > > > +Trusted Reviewers
> > > > > +-----------------
> > > > > +Johannes Thumshirn
> > > > > +Toshi Kani
> > > > > +Jeff Moyer
> > > > > +Robert Elliott
> > > >
> > > > Don't you want to add email addresses?
> > > > Only the first one is listed in MAINTAINERS.
> > >
> > > IMO, it makes sense to have their e-mails here, in a way that it could
> > > easily be parsed by get_maintainers.pl.
> >
> > I personally think that list of "trusted reviewers" makes more harm than
> > good. It creates unneeded negative feelings to those who wanted to be in
> > this list, but for any reason they don't. Those reviewers will feel
> > "untrusted".
>
> I'd like to +1 on this concern here. Besides leaving all the other
> people demotivated.

Yes, that's a valid concern, I overlooked that unfortunate interpretation.

>
> A small group of trusted reviewers doesn't scale. People will get overloaded.
> Or you won't be able to enforce that all patches need to get Reviews.
>
> Reviews should be coming from everywhere and commiters and maintainers
> deciding on what to trust or re-review.
>
> Also the list is hard to maintain and keep the lists updated.

I understand the concern, and as I saw feedback come in I realized
there were more people that I would add to that reviewer list for
libnvdimm.

Stepping back the end goal is to have an initial list of recommended
people to follow up with directly to seek a second opinion, or help in
cases where a contributor otherwise needs some direction / engagement
that they are not readily receiving from the maintainer. Typically
someone just lurks on the mailing list for a few weeks to get a feel
for who the usual suspects are in the subsystem, but for a new
contributor identifying those individuals may be difficult.

One of the contributing factors of lack of response to a patchset is
that they are sent with the implicit expectation that the maintainer
will get to eventually, and typically other people feel content to sit
back and watch. If instead a contributor sent a direct mail to a
"trusted reviewer" saying, "Hey, Alice, Bob seems busy can you help me
out?" that seems more likely to rope in additional review help.