On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 5:31 PM, Mark A. Hershberger mah@everybody.org wrote:
Or maybe these simply the differences in the sorts of reviews that people like to do? Or maybe its a bit of both?
I think you're right that stylistic differences are at play.
One possible bit of guidance we can give is "make things as simple as possible, but no simpler". That is, having a large change broken up into smaller bits can sometime mean creating a jigsaw puzzle for the reviewer to piece together prior to reviewing your big change.
Nonetheless, I know that, for example, some reviewers prefer to see things broken up, and others don't. An example might be a big change that requires a new API. Some reviewers don't mind reviewing that API in isolation, whereas other reviewers want to see the calling code. If the API is an obvious and welcome change that can stand on its own, then that's going to be the better strategy. However, if the calling code could have been done differently (and much better) with a different API, then refactoring might be made harder by the fact that there are now people depending on the previously reviewed/committed API.
I think most reviewers agree that several unrelated changes bundled up into the Omnibus MediaWiki Cleanup and Terrorism Prevention Commit of 2012 is a bad thing. And no, those reviewers are not in league with terrorists.
Rob