PRs are being closed for bogus reasons :-(

[Allan Jude]

On 2018-06-01 11:27, Kristof Provost wrote:
> On 1 Jun 2018, at 17:09, Warner Losh wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 1, 2018 at 8:53 AM, <rb at gid.co.uk> wrote:
>>>> On 1 Jun 2018, at 15:41, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
>>> The sad truth is that only about 10-15% of them have comitable
>>> patches in
>>> them when submitted. And that number decays over time as things age in
>>> bugzilla. [etc]
>>>
>>> Sure. But the best a non-comitter can do is to supply a patch tested
>>> against HEAD. If the patch rots because it hasn’t been committed six
>>> months
>>> down the line it’s not my fault.
>>>
>>
>> Well, not quite true. I've had several people send me pointers to bugs
>> over
>> the years and engage me when I tell them that the patch isn't quite
>> right.
>> That conversation is easier, to my mind, in Phabricator, though.
>> There's no
>> substitute for making good connections and motivating volunteers to
>> want to
>> help you. That gives much better results than filing and forgetting and
>> hoping for the best. As a committer, I find it a low return on investment
>> to go looking at random PRs. I find it a much higher return on investment
>> when I have a history with someone (even a short one).
>>
>> Fixing this broken state of affairs is not going to be easy...
>>
> This is also true for bug reports with no patches attached to them.
> Bug reports with more information, more reports from people affected by the
> same bug, simplified test cases, follow-up with confirmation that other
> versions are affected too and so on are more likely to attract attention.
> 
> For better or worse, the fact is that both patches and bug reports fare
> better
> if their submitter actively advocates for them.
> 
> I don’t mean to suggest that it is somehow the fault of the submitter if
> bugs
> don’t get fixed. Instead I want to point at this as something people can
> do to
> help, even if they don’t have commit access, or even if they don't know
> how to
> read or write code.
> 
> Regards,
> Kristof
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This point was well made by one of Ed Maste's interns for the spring
semester. A good glimpse into the 'new contributor' experience:

https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/guest-blog-what-i-learned-during-my-freebsd-internship/


-- 
Allan Jude

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