Jeff King writes: > - temper small corrections with positive feedback. Especially for new > contributors, being told explicitly "yes, what you're trying to do > here overall is welcome, and it all looks good except for this..." > is much more encouraging than "this part is wrong". In the latter, > they're left to guess if anybody even values the rest of the work at > all. When I see only a minor nit like that I assume that by default, that means there are no more serious issues, fix the typo, and resubmit. If a new contributor thinks that means they aren't welcome then I think they have an expectation mismatch. > - likewise, I think it helps to give feedback on expectations for the > process. Saying explicitly "this looks good; I think with this style > change, it would be ready to get picked up" helps them understand > that the fix will get them across the finish line (as opposed to > just getting another round of fix requests). That would be nice, but such comments can really only come from a maintainer that plans on pushing the patch. Most comments come from bystanders and so nessesarily only consist of pointing out flaws, and don't really need to be bloated with a bunch of fluff. I prefer short, and to the point communication. > I would even extend some of those into the code itself. Obviously we > don't want to lower the bar and take incorrect code, or even typos in > error messages. But I think we could stand to relax sometimes on issues > of style or "I would do it like this" (and at the very least, the > "temper small corrections" advice may apply). Isn't saying "I would do it like this" already a tempering statement? I take that as meaning there isn't anything neccesarily wrong with what you did, but you might consider this advice.
