Re: [PATCH] Documentation/CommunityGuidelines

> Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu> writes:
> 
>> I would prefer a community standards document that looks more like this:
>> ...
>>
>> * Be welcoming to new community participants.  Help them get oriented,
>> and be patient with their questions.  Gently introduce them to our
>> community standards, above all by setting a good example yourself.
> 
> I agree that on-boarding is an important process.
> 
> In addition to the reviews I'd give to regulars, I personally try
> to do some of these things:
> 
>  - Even in a negative review, end the message with "Thanks".  More
>    important is to express that the particular patch is rejected but
>    contributor's future contribution (either a reroll or a separate
>    topic) is welcome.
> 
>    This is free, and there is no reason not to be nice.
> 
>  - Point out problems in a milder way than usual.  Instead of saying
>    "Why is this done like so?", risking to be misinterpreted that I
>    am saying the patch did something wrong and the contributor was a
>    horrible programmer, rephrase it to "Hmph, this may work in such
>    and such cases, but I wonder how well it would in this case?",
>    followed by "How about going this route instead, which would
>    cover all these cases?"
> 
>    Doing so is more time consuming at reviewers' end; once you know
>    the current design well enough, you can immediately smell a wrong
>    approach a lot faster by just looking at code and design in a
>    patch, without having to come up with a concrete example.
> 
>  - Instead of just pointing out minor nits and have the new
>    contributor reroll, point them out, and then show how the patch
>    should have looked like, often after "-- >8 --" and the "From:"
>    line that keeps attribution.
> 
>    Again this is more work at reviewers' end.
> 
> Coaching new contributors, like mentoring GSoC students, is often
> more time consuming than scratching the same itch yourself for any
> reviewer, but it is an investment, which hopefully yields dividend
> in the longer term.