Re: Promoting Git developers

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 12, 2015, 22:58 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq7ful257z.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20150312223836.GB24492@peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Seeing my name in "shortlog" was nice, but not that exciting. I
> submitted a patch, it was taken, and of course it ends up in any
> automated lists of authors. What was much more rewarding was being
> mentioned specifically in "A note from the maintainer" as a helpful
> person. That had much more value because:
>
>   1. It was one of a handful of names.
>
>   2. It was picked by a human.
>
> So in that sense, it is quite the opposite of including shortlog output
> in the release announcements (I still think the shortlog thing we have
> been discussing is a good thing, but not at the same level).

Yes, and that cuts both ways, unfortunately. There always will be "I am doing more reviews than X and my reviews are higher quality. Why was X singled out and got thanked but not me?", "X is really doing a good job reviewing in this cycle, but could other people who send reviews of lessor quality (to my mind) feel that it is unjustified if I thanked X and nobody else?", etc. A mechanically generated list avoids these issues, but the satisfaction you get from being on the list is not very high, exactly because it is not hand picked.

> I do not know that it is worth having a "Best of 2015" Git awards
> ceremony, but it is sometimes nice to thank people personally when
> you appreciate their efforts. I sometimes mail people off-list to
> do so.

Yeah, I do the same, but revealing that we do so would defeat what we tried to achieve by doing so off-list in the first place. Now those who haven't got such a piece of e-mail for a while can start to suspect that they have fallen out of favour or something ;-(.