Re: New contributor experience
Am 14. Juni 2025 16:18:40 MESZ schrieb Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>:
>
>I think the other reason why these discussions are a bit frustrating
>is that there seems to be an implicit assumptions that all
>contributions from newcomers *must* be good,
dunno.
I think the implicit assumption is that "new *contributors* are good" (which I can relate to), not necessarily that their contributions are of outstanding quality.
we all started out stupid and learned but doing...
> and MR's must be reviewed
>ASAP or it's an indication that the project or package is moribund.
>
>Sometimes code contributions are just bad quality. They might
>introduce bugs; or they might make the code unmaintable; or in the
>case of Debian packaging, the patch might be better sent upstream for
>evaluation.
fair enough.
however, submitting a "not acceptable" contribution need not necessarily be a featuring experience - if we can communicate to the contributor why a suggestion is rejected.
afaict, frustration arises if there's missing feedback where
- the contributor is lost in "how to contribute" ("what are my possibilities to act?", aka: they don't know where to start)
- the contributor is lost after they contributed ("what are the effects of my action?"; aka: they don't know what happened to their work)
so far the discussion was mostly about the first issue, you bring in the second one.
in this (2nd) case I think it would be helpful for the contributor to receive a *minimal* response telling them that their contribution was in vain die to the complexity of the project.
in the end I'm pretty sure it is less effort to write a short (canned) response ("I'm afraid I cannot accept drive-by contributions for such a complex project") than to be bothered with endless discussions on debian-devel :-)
mfh.her.fsr
IOhannes
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