On-Call Reviews in #ubuntu-reviews

[Nathan Handler]

On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Daniel Holbach<daniel.holbach at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> It'd be great if we could extend the meme somewhat and have regular
> reviews in #ubuntu-reviews. If you feel like you have an hour of time
> for doing some reviews, join the channel, add your name to the topic of
> the channel and be prepared to get a few questions. :-)

After reading the responses, it looks like for the most part, we are
in agreement that the review process would be on-topic for
#ubuntu-motu. The big question is whether or not it would be better to
have the reviews in their own channel. The way I see it, there are 4
parties involved that we should consider. The first party is the
on-call reviewer. This user would be tasked with reviewing any patches
that users present to them during their designated time period. If no
users are around, they process patches waiting in the sponsorship
queue. For the reviewer, it would be a lot easier to see messages
needing their attention if they are in a separate channel. The
negative of this is that the reviewer is required to be in one
additional IRC channel (for at least the period of time that they are
the reviewer). The second party is the user requesting a review of
their patch. As long as we make it clear in the /topic who the active
reviewer is, I do not think it would be too difficult for the user to
get the reviewer's attention. It might be slightly more difficult for
the user to follow the conversation related to the review of his patch
if the channel is busy, but for the most part, I do not think this
will be an issue. The third party involved are new contributors who
idle in the development channels to learn from other users and
developers. By holding reviews in a separate channel, these users
would have to start idling in one extra channel. One thing we need to
be careful of is making sure that if we move reviews to a different
channel, that these users still feel comfortable talking and
participating in conversations that take place. We do not want to
create a channel where users feel as if only the reviewer and the user
having his/her patch currently reviewed are allowed to talk. The third
party is made up of all of the developers who idle in #ubuntu-motu to
help answer questions. If we move reviews to their own channel, I have
a feeling that a lot of these users will not join the new channel to
help review. I might not be giving our developers enough credit, but I
think that most of them (who are not serving as reviewers) will simply
stay in -motu.

These are simply a few things to consider. I personally do not have
strong feelings either way about where we hold the reviews.

Nathan