Survey: Pinging Neglected Patches

Survey: Pinging Neglected Patches

[45mg]

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

Re: Survey: Pinging Neglected Patches

[Liliana Marie Prikler]

Am Freitag, dem 17.01.2025 um 09:32 +0000 schrieb 45mg:
> 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.
For context, I already took the survey, but here are some comments that
didn't quite make the cut for lack of a free-form field with additional
concerns:

1. You should only ping a contribution that require action from
committers/reviewers to be pushed forward.  Do not ping contributions
that have received reviews on which you haven't acted yet.

2. You should not automate the process of pinging old bugs, but instead
ping issues that are still important to you after the delay has
elapsed.

3. If possible, send updated patches rather than pings.  For instance,
if your commit that bumps libfoo to x.y.z hasn't received attention,
you may still, without review, submit a v2 that bumps it to x.y.z+1. 
Likewise, you may improve code style, etc. to keep your patch fresh.

4. Avoid contextless pings – do provide information for readers to move
your patch forward.

5. Make sure that the right people are informed.  (For example, consult
etc/teams.scm)

Hope that helps ;)

Re: Survey: Pinging Neglected Patches

[45mg]

Hi Liliana,

Thanks for taking the survey!

Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prikler@gmail.com> writes:

> For context, I already took the survey, but here are some comments that
> didn't quite make the cut for lack of a free-form field with additional
> concerns:

I had assumed the 'Other:' option could be used for additional comments,
but I didn't realise just how tiny its text box would be; can't blame
you for not wanting to type into that. And it doesn't look like I can
modify much without stopping the survey. Oops x~x

For anyone else taking the survey - you could always type out detailed
comments (if you have any) in your favourite text editor, then paste
them into that text box. There doesn't actually seem to be a limit on
how much text can go in there; it's just hilariously bad UI on
LimeSurvey's part. Which is a phrase that basically sums up my
experience with that site :P Still, my bad there, sorry.

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

[45mg]

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