Re: Kudos for Reviewers -- straw poll

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 10:37 AM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net>
> wrote:
> > I'd like to see prizes each release for "best contribution" and "best
> > reviewer" - I've thought for years something like this would be worth
> > trying. Committers and core members should not be eligible - this is
> about
> > encouraging new people.
>
> Encouraging new people is good, but recognizing sustained, long-term
> contributions is good, too. I think we should do more of that, too.
>

Conforming with David Fetter's pointer to the notion that sometimes attempts
to reward can backfire, I'm not sure that it will be super-helpful to
create "special"
rewards.

On the other hand, to recognize reviewer contributions in places relevant
to where
they take place seems pretty apropos, which could include:

a) Obviously we already capture this in the CommitFest web site (but it's
worth mentioning when trying to do a "census")

b) It would be a pretty good thing to mention reviewers within commit notes;
that provides some direct trace-back as to who it was that either validated
that the change was good, or that let a bad one slip through.

c) The release notes indicate authors of changes; to have a list of
reviewers
would be a fine thing.

If it requires inordinate effort to get the reviewers directly attached to
each
and every change, perhaps it isn't worthwhile to go to extreme efforts to
that
end.

It could be pretty satisfactory to have a simple listing, in the release
notes,
of the set of reviewers. That's a lot less bookkeeping than tracking this
for
each and every change.

The statement of such a list is a public acknowledgement of those that help
assure that the quality of PostgreSQL code remains excellent. (And that may
represent a good way to sell this "kudo".)

This allows organizations that are sponsoring PostgreSQL development to
have an extra metric by which *they* can recognize that their staff that
do such work are being recognized as contributors. It seems to me that
this is way more useful than a free t-shirt or the like.