Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?

[Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu>]

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Ricardo,

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:

> Giovanni,
>
>> You are obviously free not to contribute your patches upstream but the
>> fact that you decided not to because it's "too hard" (my executive
>> summary about your complaints about Change Log content rules) to write
>> commit messages suitable for contribution it _not_ a Guix maintainers
>> fault, not at all.
>
> As a former Guix co-maintainer I disagree with this take.  (Nobody even
> brought up the word “fault”, which is a particularly unhelpful lens for
> understanding social issues, in my opinion.)

sorry for using "fault", I can't find a better term

> “too hard” sounds (perhaps unintentionally) derisive.

the complete sentence is: «"too hard" (my executive summary about your
complaints about Change Log content rules)»

what can I add about my intentions?

[...]

> It’s not that writing commit messages is hard.  It’s one of many
> obstacles,

IMO one of the very little ones

> and the lack of clear objective guidelines (fun fact: we aren’t
> actually following the Changelog rules)

Guix have /some/ objective guidelines, they can be enhanced, please help
the project find better rules or document it better; the fun fact Guix
is not actually following the "rules" is because they are actually not
rules but guidelines for best practice in documenting commits for rewiew
purposes

> that means that even something as trivial (compared to the rest of the
> work) as the commit message must be placed on the pile of chores.

You (and others) find it chore, I (and others) find it a very useful
work.

> Add on top of that that there’s a low probability of gratification,
> because committers like myself are getting burned out and so patches
> simply go unacknowledged or only ever see a first cursory review.

I know and understand this class of probolems but this have nothing to
do with the ChangeLog format.

> We can’t blame anyone for seeing these two piles and come to the
> conclusion that it’s not worth the hassle — especially when operating
> your own channel is so easy in comparison.

I'm not blaming Katherine, I respect her decision; I just wanted to say:
please don't blame the guidelines about ChangeLog for the two (or more)
piles.

I see there are several different management problems, I'm not trying to
say all is fine and good, but IMO the "manage git commit messages
following the Guix guidelines" is the last of this management problems.

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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