Dear all,
Over the last few months I have felt an increasing level of
concern over
the lack of response to patches. This email is rather long, but
please,
bear with me. The goal is to start a discussion on the problems
this
creates, and consider short and long-term solutions.
When both community and maintainer response to new patches is
lacking,
many first-time contributors are actively dissuaded from
contributing
again. Furthermore, each patch represents a considerable time
investment
--- particularly if it's from an individual who is new to the
mailing
list / patch workflow. Org-mode is not "done" and still requires
the
support of long-term contributors to keep improving, anything
that
discourages them from contributing back to the community needs
to be
carefully understood and resolved if we want to continue
harmoniously.
Take for example Jay Bosamiya's patch from September last year
[1]. It
appears to be his first submission to this mailing list, and yet
there
has been absolutely no response to it. There are currently 24
other
patches listed on the updates.orgmode.org which have seen no
response
from this community, some of which are from first-time
contributors.
There are 36 other patches with at least two replies, but yet to
be
resolved. Bastien's updates.orgmode.org is fantastic in helping
prevent
contributions slip through the cracks, but it is also
highlighting the
lack of community response to a significant number of patches.
This mailing list was my first experience with an email+patch
based
contribution workflow. Thankfully, I received prompt and
friendly
feedback and was guided through the adjustments needed so it
could be
merged in a timely manner. Should my patch have been similarly
ignored,
I would have been quite disheartened; it is not an overstatement
to say
I would likely have written off this mailing list and not tried
again.
Simply put, this is not good enough. This does a disservice to
those
that have dedicated time and effort to try and better this
project only
to be ignored. Not rejected, not even acknowledged, nothing.
It is imperative that this community improves our response to
contributions for the long-term health of this project. Do not
take me
to be a doomsayer; I have faith that Org is going to keep on
improving
regardless. However, failing to welcome and encourage
contributors has a
deleterious effect on the health of the project.
I do not blame the maintainers in the slightest. As Bastien
brought up
in a recent worg discussion, as time goes on we find ourselves
taking on
more and more life responsibilities. Therefore it's in our best
interest
to delegate some of the maintainer responsibilities to
consistently
active, and supportive community members to "pass down the
torch" so the
community and platform can continue to expand with grace and
care.
What can the community do?
I don't know of any silver bullet, but I believe there are some
steps
which could help, namely:
+ The development and publication of "reasonable expectations"
which
contributors should have when submitting a patch, and that the
maintainers should strive to uphold (e.g. "expect a response
within
<some timeframe>").
+ A community effort/sprint to respond to those patches that
have been
seemingly abandoned
+ Onboarding of new maintainers, when reasonable and suitable
candidates
exist (I'd very willingly throw my hat in the ring for
consideration).
If it's too much work, spread it out as much as possible.
If any other ideas come to mind, please share them so we can
discuss
them further.
Finally, it's not all bad.
While this discussion has called for some criticism, I don't
want to
give the false impression that I think nothing is working and
nobody is
supporting contributors. This is not the case at all, there are
some
standout individuals one the mailing list who have been
fantastic. Kudos
to you all.
My best to everyone,
Timothy
[1]
https://orgmode.org/list/CAOywxZg1cBL07THLZXHBBCzm6te2vMtqnmM0w63331gybrjZuw@mail.gmail.com/
[2] https://orgmode.org/list/87h7qi2l2m.fsf@gmail.com/