I don’t really have much experience with large open source projects but I have
some experience with having lots of issues with no one handling them.
Automation proved a good solution in my experience, but one thing that I found
which was really important is giving people a chance to say “don’t close this
please”.
Basically, because closing you can send an email to the reporter (and probably
people who are watching the issue) and tell them this is going to be closed.
Allow them an option to ping back saying “don’t close this please” which would
ping committers for input (as if there were 5+ votes as described by Nick).
The main reason for this is that many times people fine solutions and the issue
does become stale but at other times, the issue is still important, it is just
that no one noticed it because of the noise of other issues.
Thanks,
Assaf.
From: Nicholas Chammas [via Apache Spark Developers List]
[mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2016 12:42 AM
To: Mendelson, Assaf
Subject: Re: Improving volunteer management / JIRAs (split from Spark
Improvement Proposals thread)
I agree with Cody and others that we need some automation — or at least an
adjusted process — to help us manage organic contributions better.
The objections about automated closing being potentially abrasive are
understood, but I wouldn’t accept that as a defeat for automation. Instead, it
seems like a constraint we should impose on any proposed solution: Make sure it
doesn’t turn contributors off. Rolling as we have been won’t cut it, and I
don’t think adding committers will ever be a sufficient solution to this
particular problem.
To me, it seems like we need a way to filter out viable contributions with
community support from other contributions when it comes to deciding that
automated action is appropriate. Our current tooling isn’t perfect, but perhaps
we can leverage it to create such a filter.
For example, consider the following strawman proposal for how to cut down on
the number of pending but unviable proposals, and simultaneously help
contributors organize to promote viable proposals and get the attention of
committers:
1. Have a bot scan for stale JIRA issues and PRs—i.e. they haven’t been
updated in 20+ days (or D+ days, if you prefer).
2. Depending on the level of community support, either close the item or
ping specific people for action. Specifically:
a. If the JIRA/PR has no input from a committer and the JIRA/PR has 5+ votes
(or V+ votes), ping committers for input. (For PRs, you could count comments
from different people, or thumbs up on the initial PR post.)
b. If the JIRA/PR has no input from a committer and the JIRA/PR has less than V
votes, close it with a gentle message asking the contributor to solicit support
from either the community or a committer, and try again later.
c. If the JIRA/PR has input from a committer or committers, ping them for an
update.
This is just a rough idea. The point is that when contributors have stale
proposals that they don’t close, committers need to take action. A little
automation to selectively bring contributions to the attention of committers
can perhaps help them manage the backlog of stale contributions. The
“selective” part is implemented in this strawman proposal by using JIRA votes
as a crude proxy for when the community is interested in something, but it
could be anything.
Also, this doesn’t have to be used just to clear out stale proposals. Once the
initial backlog is trimmed down, you could set D to 5 days and use this as a
regular way to bring contributions to the attention of committers.
I dunno if people think this is perhaps too complex, but at our scale I feel we
need some kind of loose but automated system for funneling contributions
through some kind of lifecycle. The status quo is just not that good (e.g. 474
open PRs<https://github.com/apache/spark/pulls> against Spark as of this
moment).
Nick
On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 4:48 PM Cody Koeninger <[hidden
email]</user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=19310&i=0>> wrote:
Matei asked:
> I agree about empowering people interested here to contribute, but I'm
> wondering, do you think there are technical things that people don't want to
> work on, or is it a matter of what there's been time to do?
It's a matter of mismanagement and miscommunication.
The structured streaming kafka jira sat with multiple unanswered
requests for someone who was a committer to communicate whether they
were working on it and what the plan was. I could have done that
implementation and had it in users' hands months ago. I didn't
pre-emptively do it because I didn't want to then have to argue with
committers about why my code did or did not meet their uncommunicated
expectations.
I don't want to re-hash that particular circumstance, I just want to
make sure it never happens again.
Hopefully the SIP thread results in clearer expectations, but there
are still some ideas on the table regarding management of volunteer
contributions:
- Closing stale jiras. I hear the bots are impersonal argument, but
the alternative of "someone cleans it up" is not sufficient right now
(with apologies to Sean and all the other janitors).
- Clear rejection of jiras. This isn't mean, it's respectful.
- Clear "I'm working on this", with clear removal and reassignment if
they go radio silent. This could be keyed to automated check for
staleness.
- Clear expectation that if someone is working on a jira, you can work
on your own alternative, but you need to communicate.
I'm sure I've missed some.
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