2011/3/28 Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org:
By definition, our volunteer developers have lives outside of MediaWiki. We have to fit in with their schedules. I don't think we should give them a kick in the teeth just because they committed something on Sunday and have to go to school on Monday.
If a commit is insecure, or changes interfaces in a way that will be disruptive to other developers, or breaks key functionality, then sure, we should revert it right away. There's no need to wait 24 hours. But I don't think we need to be issuing death sentences for typos in comments.
+1
Reverting is a blunt instrument and should only be used when appropriate. I think it's perhaps a bit underused currently, but that doesn't mean we should swing to the other end of the spectrum. Reverting a revision is appropriate if it breaks things or if its presence in the repository causes other problems, like Tim said. Also, if a revision is problematic and can't be fixed quickly, it should be reverted, not left in a fixme state for two weeks. OTOH reverting things for minor issues is needlessly disruptive (not to mention demotivating), and reverting a *volunteer* developer's revision simply because *paid* reviewers (most of them are paid anyway) didn't get around to reviewing it is the kind of dickish behavior that will scare off volunteers very effectively.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)