Emily Shaffer <emilyshaffer@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > It seems to me that the friendly template text we prefill when someone > opens a pull request in github.com/git/git isn't being fully appreciated > by many interested contributors. For some time now, Johannes has been > slogging through the list to try to narrow it down to folks who are > still interested in contributing, and yesterday on #git-devel said he > was pretty happy with the progress so far. > > But to me, this seems like a sort of Sisyphean task ... Yeah, I would not stop Dscho if he likes doing so, but it does sound like a waste of talent. > ... want to make contributions and not read the template text, and we will > have more PRs being ignored forever, especially if Johannes decides he > doesn't want to shepherd those changes anymore (I would have decided > that long ago, in his shoes). > > To that end, I wonder if we should add an Action to automatically close > PRs on that repo. > It looks like https://github.com/dessant/repo-lockdown > would do the trick. Personally, I think that it would not help, it would be a waste of our time to set up, and it would be a waste of our attention having to worry about giving yet another external read/write access to PRs to a third-party tool. I've looked at those PRs, and noticed that the issues that the ones with unedited prefilled template try to address are mostly those that would cost more to give help polishing the patch into an acceptable shape than some of us redo them outselves (more clarifications below). Quite honestly, "drive-by contribution" is overrated. Surely it is nice if those little typoes and forgotten free()s and off-by-ones got fixed by somebody without taking too much of our attention, and it would be nicer if we can help those who started from "drive-by" status eventually grow to full fledged contributors. But step back and think about these two a bit. Those tiny typoes, missing calls to free(), etc. that are low hanging fruits tend to be "bugs" that have only one obvious way to "fix", without leaving much room to express the patch in any other way. It's not like that they now own the bug and the right to make a patch to fix it because they found and sent a PR first. If somebody else makes the same fix with patch text that happens to be identical, that is perfectly fine. The _only_ real contribution to us made by such a PR is to let us know where such a trivial problem resides; once that is identified, anybody would fix it the same way. It would be far more effective use of the time of the community to make the same fix by any member who already knows how such a patch should look like, while giving a proper credit for discovering the issue. I can already hear people saying that by investing to educate the original drive-by contributors (instead of "stealing" their patch and doing it outselves) would yield a larger value in the longer term, as it could help grow the drive-by contributors into our community. I would agree with that argument in principle, but I do not think that would apply to the drive-by stuff with unedited prefilled template still intact. The thing is, I do not think we can expect those who do not even bother to read the prefilled template to grow to full fledged contributors. Certainly before they start paying attention to what are told to them. So, I would certainly not veto auto-closing, but I do not think it would help. Thanks.
