Am 14. Juni 2025 16:18:40 MESZ schrieb Theodore Ts'o <ty...@mit.edu>:
>
>I think the other reason why these discussions are a bit frustrating
>is that there seems to be an implicit assumptions that all
>contributions from newcomers *must* be good,
dunno.
I think the implicit assumption is that "new *contributors* are good" (which I
can relate to), not necessarily that their contributions are of outstanding
quality.
we all started out stupid and learned but doing...
> and MR's must be reviewed
>ASAP or it's an indication that the project or package is moribund.
>
>Sometimes code contributions are just bad quality. They might
>introduce bugs; or they might make the code unmaintable; or in the
>case of Debian packaging, the patch might be better sent upstream for
>evaluation.
fair enough.
however, submitting a "not acceptable" contribution need not necessarily be a
featuring experience - if we can communicate to the contributor why a
suggestion is rejected.
afaict, frustration arises if there's missing feedback where
- the contributor is lost in "how to contribute" ("what are my possibilities to
act?", aka: they don't know where to start)
- the contributor is lost after they contributed ("what are the effects of my
action?"; aka: they don't know what happened to their work)
so far the discussion was mostly about the first issue, you bring in the second
one.
in this (2nd) case I think it would be helpful for the contributor to receive a
*minimal* response telling them that their contribution was in vain die to the
complexity of the project.
in the end I'm pretty sure it is less effort to write a short (canned) response
("I'm afraid I cannot accept drive-by contributions for such a complex
project") than to be bothered with endless discussions on debian-devel :-)
mfh.her.fsr
IOhannes
