MR Gardening - A discussion, please leave your input!

[Carl Schwan]

Hi,

We should never close a MR automatically. Only a maintainer of a project
or the author itself should close a MR. The decision if a MR should be
closed or not is often depending on a context (e.g. a MR required another
MR to be merged first and it is taking more time than expected, the
author is busy with other things but will eventually come back to it, ...)
and a script is unable to see this.

I do not mind poking people semi-regularly (every 6 months or so), but again
this should probably be done manually and with a small personalized message
for example: "Hi, I really like this work, do you intent to continue working
on it or can I take over" than a generic message that feels fake.

I really hate communicating with robots instead of with humans and I really
see the trends of trying to automatize all our interaction with dumb robots and
chat bots in our society really worrying.

If we want to automatize, we should instead try to list the stale MRs and
maybe send the list to the mailing list once a month so that people are
reminded about them and take a look at which one they may be able to unlock.

Cheers,
Carl


------- Original Message -------
Le dimanche 5 mars 2023 à 11:13 AM, AnnoyingRains <annoyingrain5 at gmail.com> a écrit :


> For a short amount of time now, there have been some small-scale
> trials of replying to old MRs with a reminder, and suggesting that the
> author closes the MR if it is either no longer needed or if it needs
> more work and the author does not have time for it.
> 
> This has appeared to have a positive impact on the state of KDE
> software from this (albeit limited) trial. Some MRs have had renewed
> interest, others have admitted that they had forgotten that the MR
> even existed.
> 
> We did consider closing MRs if there was no activity after our ping
> message. We are no longer planning on doing this, as it is more
> destructive than helpful. All decisions on if a MR should be closed
> will be left with the maintainers and the person who opened the MR.
> 
> So, we need a proper discussion about this, should we send these
> reminder messages at all? If so, how old should an MR be before
> sending this reminder? Should closing the MR even be suggested in the
> message?
> 
> If your specific project does not play nicely with this programme,
> please let us know and we can add it to the list of exclusions on our
> KDE Community page.
> 
> I need your input,
> - Kye Potter, KDE Gardening