<div dir="ltr"><div><div>Ah. I suspect another factor in my perspective is that I am very open to pair programming. Often (as the reviewer) I would get on the phone with the author and work through some code to the point that we were both aligned. The author could then fix their code, and I could re-review it. <br><br></div>The case when the original author is asleep or on vacation, and the patch needs to be pushed through, is different. I know it happens, but I wonder if the norms were set up to discourage modifying someone else's patch, how often it would be worth breaking those norms. In other words, how often are people modifying patches because it's normal to do so, versus because it is actually helpful and/or necessary. <br><br></div>In case it's not clear, I'm not that familiar with development at the WMF. Every environment is different, but I'm just sharing what worked (really well) for me somewhere else. Some may apply here, and I'm sure some won't. I am intentionally trying to poke at some existing conventions and biases; if they stand up to some scrutiny, great, but hopefully folks are open to re-thinking them when it makes sense. Maybe we don't have to cut the ends off our pot roasts[1].<br><br>[1] <a href="http://selfdefinedleadership.com/blog/?p=158">http://selfdefinedleadership.com/blog/?p=158</a><br><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><span><font color="#888888"><br>Kevin Smith<br>Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation<br></font></span><font><font><i><font color="#888888"><br></font></i></font></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 11:00 AM, Subramanya Sastry <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ssastry@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">ssastry@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">On 03/16/2016 01:33 PM, Kevin Smith wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
I'm curious what the inherent benefit is of having multiple people collaborate on a patch, as opposed to having a series of patches by different people, each of which advances the product incrementally. At least, it sounded like you (Rob) were advocating collaboration for its own sake.<br>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
Here are some numbers from the Parsoid codebase to show patches that had an explicit co-author tag. This doesn't account for other patches where someone other than the author tweaked the patch slightly (that doesn't quite count as co-authoring) and merged them.<br>
<br>
[subbu@earth bin] git log --oneline --no-merges | wc<br>
5465 50651 349772<br>
[subbu@earth bin] git log | grep -i Co-author | wc<br>
18 82 1013<br>
<br>
Not a whole lot, but a non-trivial number of patches.<br>
<br>
Here are two patches that had the co-author tag:<br>
* <a href="https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/238957/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/238957/</a><br>
* <a href="https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/181177/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/181177/</a><br>
<br>
Both were tricky pieces of code to get right. Sometimes, it is hard to communicate a fix / problem in a patch via review comments. It is easier to write the code and show. Sometimes, that is simply the best way to address a problem. Sometimes, the original author is lost in some other project / is on vacation / ... whatever ... and patch needs to be pushed forward.<br>
<br>
Subbu.<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>