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Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?


From: Liliana Marie Prikler
Subject: Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2023 00:20:31 +0200
User-agent: Evolution 3.46.4

Am Samstag, dem 09.09.2023 um 21:40 +0200 schrieb Ricardo Wurmus:
> 
> Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prikler@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > > Must we force a single workflow on everyone, even if our track
> > > record in reviewing and merging doesn’t clearly show that our way
> > > is superior?
> > Again, define superior.
> 
> No, I won’t.  I think it’s obvious that our review process isn’t
> working *well*.  So the argument that our current workflow allows for
> effective review is dubious.  Not saying that you made that claim,
> just that it’s hard to convince others of adopting our ways when the
> results just aren’t great.
What do you consider "the results" here?  The rate at which patches are
merged?  This is hardly an issue our project alone is fighting and I'm
not convinced that technology, more or less, will shift it in either
direction.  

Let's take our importers as an example.  Bugs aside, they allow us to
bump any package to the newest released version.  Naturally, similar
tools have evolved over in the forge world as well.  The end result? 
Bots are now writing merge request that end up ignored much like there
are bugs in Guix that receive little attention due to what might as
well be unfortunate timing.

I'm also not sure how we can tie back contribution throughput to
cognitive overhead.  In fact, there might well be a Jevons paradox
hiding somewhere in that less overhead per patch means that more
patches can be written, which results in the same overall cognitive
overhead in the long run.  

Now, you are probably right in that our review process probably isn't
working well for some value of well that yet needs to be defined. 
However, without any frame of reference it is also a statement that can
neither be verified nor falsified.  I could be sitting in a burning
house claiming "this is fine" or sitting in the finest restaurant
claiming "this place sucks" and since you can't see me, there's no way
for you to infer that I'm a cat.

Cheers



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