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From: Greg Smith <greg@2ndQuadrant.com>
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Last gasp
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:27:16 -0400
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On 04/09/2012 11:12 PM, Christopher Browne wrote:

> It seems as though we need to have a "bad guy" that will say, "that
> sure isn't ready to COMMIT, so we'd better step back from imagining
> that it ought to be completed as part of this COMMITfest."

There's no reward for anyone in the PostgreSQL community to be a bad 
guy.  If you're too aggressive about it, submitters get mad; too loose, 
and you get both committers and people worried about the release 
schedule mad.  And the community is tight enough that the person you 
tick off today might be someone you have to work with next week.

Having sat in this particular seat several times now, I'd say the role 
needed here is more mediator than pointy-haired boss.  When I write bad 
news e-mail to submitters, I try to make the tone more about clarifying 
what was learned and what is needed to improve things for a next round 
of submissions.  It's not easy to adopt a writing tone for that sort of 
message while not coming off as insulting to someone.

Getting a feature punted forward is easier to take if a submitter leaves 
with a better roadmap and idea what standards they have to meet.  On 
bigger features in particular, that sometimes requires feedback from a 
committer earlier in the process, even if they haven't reached "Ready 
for Committer" via a reviewer yet.  My comment upthread about nailing 
down the committer for big features earlier than smaller ones was along 
these same lines.

> I wonder if we're starting to have enough data to establish meaningful
> statistics on feedback.

I had Robert send me a dump of the data that's in the CF app the other 
day.  I'm hoping to do some useful data mining on it before PGCon.

-- 
Greg Smith   2ndQuadrant US    greg@2ndQuadrant.com   Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services, and 24x7 Support www.2ndQuadrant.com



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