[ Forwarding from private@ with an addition between triple dashes and
some paragraphs omitted altogether. ]
Methodology: In my dev@ mailbox, I looked at "Re: svn commit" threads
where the subject line contained "trunk" somewhere, filtered by date
(using, e.g., «~s 'Re: svn commit' !~<( ~s 'Re: svn commit' ) ~d '<730d'
~s trunk» in Mutt¹). I then did a author histogram (the moral equivalent
of «SELECT author, COUNT(*) AS cnt FROM results_of_the_filter GROUP BY
author ORDER BY cnt»).
With the date filter set to ">6 years ago", the histogram is:
.
1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, 13, 19, 27, 49, 58, 86
.
Top three: 28.1%, 19.0%, 16.0%.
With the date filter set to "<2 years ago", the histogram is:
.
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 30
.
Top three: 64%, 10.6%, 8.5%.
Do we have a bus factor problem?
---
I'm deliberately not posting the author identities part of the
histograms. It's public info (and I literally did just post
instructions for how to compute it, for reproducibility), but
no individual's contributions or contribution statistics are the point.
The histogram is of the authors of commit review threads, not of
everyone who participated in such threads.
---
Having few reviewers is problematic in various ways:
- Bus factor
- Single point of failure (cf. Linus' Law)
- Possibility of zero reviews for some areas of the code
- Review standards should be seen as community standards rather than
a reviewer's idiosyncrasies; cf. the point about new projects needing
at least two mentors ("parents"), rather than just one
- [not an exhaustive list]
Cheers,
Daniel
¹ There may be a better way to express "first in a thread". I tried
«!~<(^)», but couldn't get it to work.
