Survey Results: Pinging Neglected Patches (was: Survey: Pinging Neglected Patches)

[45mg <45mg.writes@gmail.com>]

Hi Guix,

In this message are the results of the above survey.

In total, there were 22 complete responses to this survey (LimeSurvey
would only have allowed a total of 25 on a free plan anyway), and 13
'incomplete' ones (seems like it counted people who clicked on the
survey but didn't fill it). So bear in mind that the sample size here is
quite small. The survey ran for 10 days (01/17/25 - 01/27/25).

Both questions were 'select all that apply' multiple-choice questions,
with an 'Other' option that allowed free-form text input.




--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

Where can/should a ping be sent?
================================

Answer                                                           Count   Percentage
---------------------------------------------------------------- ------- ------------
Don 't send pings at all                                         3       8.57%
To the Debbugs address for the patch (eg. 12345@debbugs.gnu.org) 17      48.57%
To the Guix-Devel mailing list                                   6       17.14%
To a dedicated thread or list meant for pings (hypothetical)     8       22.86%
Other                                                            5       14.29%
Not completed or Not displayed                                   13      37.14%

'Other' responses:

ID   Response
---- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
6    IRC
8    to team members maintaining the affected packages
9    To dedicated maintainers for the series (as per CC or teams.scm); to IRC
     or similar channels
20   You could send it directly to the reviewer, if your relationship with
     them makes you think it would be effective. It really depends on the
     reasons that the review is delayed and the patch submitter needs to make
     at least some effort to understand that context.
22   to one of the commiters via IRC (politely)




How long should a contributor wait before sending a ping?
=========================================================

Answer                              Count   Percentage
----------------------------------- ------- ------------
Don 't send pings at all            2       5.71%
After a year                        0       0.00%
After six months                    2       5.71%
After a month                       10      28.57%
After two weeks                     9       25.71%
After a week                        3       8.57%
After three days                    0       0.00%
After one day                       0       0.00%
Other                               2       5.71%
Not completed or Not displayed      13      37.14%

'Other' responses:

ID   Response
---- -----------------------------------------------------
20   It depends on the situation.
30   A week but it depends on volume of emails in the list

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---




The plain-text tables seen above were generated by exporting the results
from LimeSurvey as .xlsx (the 'Excel' export option), saving that as
.csv via LibreOffice, converting sections of the .csv file to Markdown
tables via Pandoc, and finally, painstakingly cleaning up whitespace and
alignment by hand in Emacs. (As you might have gathered, this was a
ridiculous amount of work. Maybe I should've just done the lazy thing
and attached the PDF export...)

Side note - LimeSurvey has the worst UX of any web app I've ever used. I
do NOT want to touch that thing ever again. Would not recommend.
(Apparently Cryptpad has a Google Forms equivalent, in case anyone else
is thinking of doing something like this.)

Thank you to everyone who responded,
45mg

45mg <45mg.writes@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Guix,
>
> I have seen different opinions [1][2] regarding sending pings to patches
> that aren't getting reviewed or are otherwise lacking attention.
>
> To get a better idea of peoples' opinions, I've created a survey. Please
> do take it, it's only two questions long.
>
> https://sneakmonkey.limesurvey.net/286966?lang=en
>
> I think it would be good for Guix to have stated guidelines on this
> subject, so that everybody knows in advance what is considered
> acceptable and what isn't. Right now it is difficult for a new
> contributor to judge whether sending a ping will help or not. Hopefully
> the survey is a step in the right direction.
>
> Thanks,
> 45mg
>
> P.S. Regarding the option 'To a dedicated thread or list meant for pings
> (hypothetical)': I was thinking along the lines of NixOS's monthly 'PRs
> ready for review' threads [3].
>
> [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2025-01/msg00072.html
> [2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2025-01/msg00100.html
> [3] https://discourse.nixos.org/t/prs-ready-for-review-december/1711