Re: Commitfest problems

* Andrew Dunstan (andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net) wrote:
> On 12/16/2014 01:38 PM, Stephen Frost wrote:
> >* Robert Haas (robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com) wrote:
> >>It has been proposed that we do a general list of people at the bottom
> >>of the release notes who helped review during that cycle. That would
> >>be less intrusive and possibly a good idea, but would we credit the
> >>people who did a TON of reviewing? Everyone who reviewed even one
> >>patch? Somewhere in between? Would committers be excluded because "we
> >>just expect them to help" or included because credit is important to
> >>established community members too? To what extent would this be
> >>duplicative of http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ ?
> >I don't particularly like this idea.
>
> I do. I think it's an emminently sensible idea that gives credit
> without disturbing the readability of the release notes.

So, when I was first getting started with PG however many years ago, I
was ecstatic to see my name show up in a commit message. Hugely
increasing our release notes to include a bunch of names all shoved
together without any indication of what was done by each individual
doesn't feel, to me at least, as likely to change that feeling in
either direction.

On the flip side, I would be strongly against *not* including authors
and reviewers in the commit messages, regardless of some big list in the
release notes.

Basically, I see the value of giving credit in the commit history and
the mailing lists as huge while having a long list of names in the
release notes really isn't valuable.

> >>I'm not necessarily averse to doing something here, but the reason why
> >>nothing has happened has much more to do with the fact that it's hard
> >>to figure out exactly what the best thing would be than any idea that
> >>"we don't want to credit reviewers". We do want to credit reviewers,
> >>AND WE DO, as a quick look at 'git log' will speedily reveal.
> >Agreed.
>
> I can't believe how much we are tying ourselves up in knots over
> this. It's not a good sign. Surely we trust the committers and the
> preparers of the release notes to use some judgement, once we agree
> on general guidelines.

I agree with this.

Thanks,

Stephen