One of the biggest issues with scikit-learn as a project is managing its backlog of issues; another is release scheduling. Some of this cannot be fixed as long as our model of voluntary contribution (with a couple of important exceptions) does not change. However, it may be worth considering the new project management features in Github.
At the moment we have the following management: * labels corresponding to type (bug, enhancement, new feat, question), scope (API, Build/CI, ?Large Scale, Documentation), difficulty (easy, moderate), status/scheduling (needs contributor, needs review, sprint). * PR status management with title prefixes [WIP], [MRG], [MRG+1], [MRG+2] Firstly, we might benefit from prefixing labels by category, i.e. difficulty:easy so that complementary labels appear together. In truth, PRs have roughly these statuses: * WIP (not ready for review) * waiting for review * waiting for changes (with or without one of the following) * in dispute (i.e. fundamental doubts about the PR) * the above together with 1 or 2 "official" approvals * ready for merge (pending minor changes such as what's new documentation) New github features: * reviews with "approved" or "request changes". A list of approvers can be found in the merge/CI panel. We could replace the MRG+1 annotation with this and use it to track disputation too. I'm not sure how it works with changes that are added after approval. I think it would have avoided one improper merge by me... One downside is that there does not yet seem to be a way to search for PRs with a specified level of approval (while searching for "MRG+1" sort-of works). * Milestone prioritising: issues in a milestone, such as https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit-learn/milestone/21, can be ranked with drag-and-drop. I think this could help with release scheduling as it would allow us to identify the top priorities for a release and see when enough of them are completed. * The Kanban-style workflow management of the new Projects tool https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit-learn/projects is another way of managing status and, I think, priority, for a small set of related issues. This might be an alternative way of managing milestone scope, or of working towards big changes like the one just completed for model selection; like proposed expansions to get_feature_names expansion; like estimator tags; making utilities public/private... So with the goal of making it easier to track where attention is most needed, and when to move to release: What's worth trying?
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