On Thu, 2008-10-30 at 11:07 -0400, Darren Oh wrote:
There are four bottlenecks in project maintenance:
1. People who complain outnumber people to read complaints. 2. People who read complaints outnumber people who provide patches. 3. People who provide patches outnumber people who review patches. 4. People who review patches outnumber people who commit patches.
A thought about widening bottleneck #3 that requires no technological innovation: Suppose I've submitted a patch that I'm keen to see reviewed and committed. Would it be socially acceptable to review two other patches (preferably related in some way and of a similar level of complexity) and ask the submitters of those patches to review my patch in return? You scratch my patch, I'll scratch yours. Although there would be no guarantee of my patch being reviewed by the other patch submitters, the fact that it might happen would give me more motivation to review patches. I'm a "enthusiast" who runs drupal sites in my spare time rather than doing at as a job. I've contributed to issues and submitted a few patches to modules and core, always in response to running into a bug myself. Although they're all small and fix minor issues, I feel quite proud of my patches, and am keen to see them grow up, mature and join the rest of the drupal code. Like an ambitious parent, I'm willing to put effort into helping my patch-children on in life. I'm guessing that there may be others who feel similarly. David (egfrith)