Correction: Thursday the 24th at 7:00pm CEST. - which is 72 hrs from the
beginning of that thread,

And one more comment: I thought for a long time about the metrics "Threads
vs. PRs". For me this is **embodiment** of community-aware, empathic
contributor - on the way to become a commmiter. And I **knew** - because I
checked it before - that practically **all** committers have a very high
number here.

I deliberately never mentioned it in our discussions. As we all know,
anything you set as a goal stops being a useful metric. There are always
ways to game the system.

That's why I waited for quite a while to accumulate the data and showed
completely different numbers - and never discussed the thread vs. PRs idea
- to ensure this particular metric remained totally unbiased.
And - just for the record - this is the last time this metric will be
unbiased—now that we will publicly say we "care" about it.

And here is Claude's analysis on those top-20. And my thinking is that we
should care about the needs of groups in this way: A > B > C.

------------

Three buckets, all 24 (top-19 + the five-way tie at 6 open PRs)

Bucket rule, stated up front so the borderline calls are visible:
engagement = others' threads per open PR (≥1.5 counts as engaged), quality
= all-time merge rate (≥40% healthy). I picked these thresholds to match
where the data actually clusters - there's a real gap between 1.7 and 0.8
on engagement, and between 40% and 31% on the merge rate.

---

A. Net reviewers — they give back more than they ask for (9 people, 103
open PRs)

┌─────────────────┬──────┬─────────────────┬─────────┬─────────┐
│     Author      │ Open │ Threads/open PR │ Reviews │ Merge % │
├─────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ SameerMesiah97  │ 6    │ 60.3            │ 350     │ 90%     │
├─────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ shivaam         │ 6    │ 13.0            │ 55      │ 67%     │
├─────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ Vamsi-klu       │ 10   │ 10.8            │ 58      │ 38%     │
├─────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ Andrushika      │ 9    │ 4.6             │ 33      │ 79%     │
├─────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ yuseok89        │ 12   │ 3.8             │ 49      │ 77%     │
├─────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ steveahnahn     │ 14   │ 3.2             │ 40      │ 59%     │
├─────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ ColtenOuO       │ 23   │ 2.6             │ 70      │ 59%     │
├─────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ stephen-bracken │ 6    │ 2.3             │ 16      │ 56%     │
├─────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ fat-catTW       │ 17   │ 1.7             │ 33      │ 50%     │
└─────────────────┴──────┴─────────────────┴─────────┴─────────┘

Vamsi-klu is the odd one: 108 threads and 58 reviews (bucket-A engagement)
on a 38% merge rate. Placed here because the review effort is unambiguous.
fat-catTW and stephen-bracken are the borderline entries - drop the
threshold to 2.0 and fat-catTW moves out.

B. Shippers, not reviewers - volume with normal merge rates (6 people, 115
open PRs)

┌───────────────┬──────┬─────────────────┬─────────┬─────────┐
│    Author     │ Open │ Threads/open PR │ Reviews │ Merge % │
├───────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ Eason09053360 │ 35   │ 0.3             │ 13      │ 52%     │
├───────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ 1fanwang      │ 34   │ 0.8             │ 36      │ 40%     │
├───────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ rjgoyln       │ 27   │ 0.7             │ 34      │ 53%     │
├───────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ Samin061      │ 7    │ 0.4             │ 4       │ 58%     │
├───────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ jeff3071      │ 6    │ 0.3             │ 7       │ 46%     │
├───────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ YAshhh29      │ 6    │ 0.2             │ 1       │ 45%     │
└───────────────┴──────┴─────────────────┴─────────┴─────────┘

The work lands—merge rates here are ordinary, some above committer-adjacent
levels—but the top three are carrying 96 open PRs between them while having
commented on 56 of other people's threads in total. 1fanwang sits exactly
on the 40% line.

C. Low engagement and low merge rate (9 people, 82 open PRs)

┌───────────────────┬──────┬─────────────────┬─────────┬─────────┐
│      Author       │ Open │ Threads/open PR │ Reviews │ Merge % │
├───────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ bujjibabukatta    │ 16   │ 0.2             │ 5       │ 11%     │
├───────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ anmolxlight       │ 12   │ 0.4             │ 12      │ 31%     │
├───────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ dheerenmohta      │ 10   │ 0.2             │ 0       │ 28%     │
├───────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ namanjain24-sudo  │ 8    │ 1.1             │ 1       │ 11%     │
├───────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ Kunal8954         │ 8    │ 0.8             │ 6       │ 20%     │
├───────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ bramhanandlingala │ 8    │ 0.0             │ 1       │ 22%     │
├───────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ zozo123           │ 7    │ 0.1             │ 6       │ 17%     │
├───────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ GayathriSrividya  │ 7    │ 0.0             │ 9       │ 22%     │
├───────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ nagasrisai        │ 6    │ 0.7             │ 6       │ 29%     │
└───────────────────┴──────┴─────────────────┴─────────┴─────────┘

bramhanandlingala and GayathriSrividya have commented on zero threads they
didn't author. This bucket is 82 open PRs with an aggregate merge rate
around 21% - roughly four reviews spent per PR that eventually lands.



J.


On Mon, Sep 21, 2026 at 9:09 PM Henry Chen <[email protected]> wrote:

> Thanks Jarek and Vincent for the detailed data and perspective that
> context is really helpful. Seeing the actual numbers (especially that even
> the top contributors rarely hit 5 open PRs), a cap of 5 makes sense to me
> as a starting point. Happy to go with it and adjust later if we find it's
> too tight in practice.
>
> Thanks
> Henry
>
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