Three Monkeys, Three Typewriters, Two Days

Comments: Reviews

Indeed, a shame, not only about not giving an indication about postponing the review, but more importantly because a lot of important and good patches improving on many aspects of the Mozilla applications are postponed, and slip past milestones/releases again and again.

What can we do to make it more interesting for reviewers to complete the reviews sooner?

Posted by Alfred Kayser at October 21, 2005 10:26 AM

So what is a reasonable time period for getting a review? (what is a reasonable time period to get at least a reaction that the review is coming later?)

Posted by Martijn at October 21, 2005 11:42 AM

I try to at least put _something_ in the bug by at most a week after the review was requested, even if it's just a "don't expect review from me for three weeks" kinda thing. That at least lets the requester know that they might want to find another reviewer...

Alfred, I'm not really sure what we can do about the problem.... :(

Posted by Boris at October 21, 2005 12:43 PM

It is a shame indeed. I have no problem with reviews taking a long time; everyone is busy. It would be nice if everyone followed your lead though Boris, and at least state that they have seen the request and will get to it in x amount of time. Or to say "I can't review this."

Perhaps integrate an "Acknowledge Request" function in Bugzilla?

Posted by Daniel Cater at October 21, 2005 4:09 PM

IMHO the number one thing we can do in general (maybe not for bz's list) is to add bugzilla support for each user to specify whether or not he/she is accepting review requests. There's a years-old RFE bug on this...

Posted by Robert O'Callahan at October 21, 2005 4:42 PM

I think the whole review request system itself may be broken.

Wouldn’t it be better if review requests were not asked of a single person, but instead be put in a common (categorised, by component) queue which any available reviewer takes items from?

Setting a review request would then also be a lot easier, just set a flag ‘I want review’ instead of first having to figure out a. who knows enough about the matter to be able to review, and b. who has time, is still actively working, etc.

That way, if someone doesn’t have time for reviewing, someone else can pick up without the review requesters having to reassign the review request.


~Grauw

Posted by Laurens Holst at October 22, 2005 7:23 AM

With that suggestion you have the opposite problem -- reviewers have to figure out which patches they might possibly be qualified to review...

Posted by Boris at October 23, 2005 8:47 AM

... and you may have the problem that nobody feels responsible for doing certain reviews.

Posted by Simon Paquet at October 23, 2005 4:14 PM

How about if a patch which has had requested review for one month (or whatever) automatically gets (one or more of):

- an entry added in Bugzilla, stating that it's been waiting for too long, and that they should seek a review from someone else (possibly with suggestions for other people who can review that area?)

- an email to the reporter/patch provider/both instead

- an email to the reviewer telling them they're late :)

- an email to all the reviewers who can do that section, asking if one of them could take it up (possibly automatically done after say another month instead).

Posted by Ian at October 24, 2005 3:20 AM

Ian, some of those are pretty good ideas. Want to file some RFEs on bugzilla?

Posted by Boris at October 24, 2005 7:33 AM

What are the bug numbers related to Ian's post?

Posted by Wayne Mery at November 7, 2005 9:57 AM
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