Approval sought for review queue entry policy change

[Niall Douglas]

Can I ask the committee for thoughts upon and potential approval of the following new review queue entry policy:

1. All libraries in the review queue without managers attached are
removed (including my own!) and the authors emailed to say the following
new policy applies. The review queue is therefore emptied.

2. For a library to enter the review queue in future, it requires at
least one (and preferably more) named members of the Boost community to
publicly endorse the library to enter the review queue. Their names will
be listed alongside the library in the review queue page at
http://www.boost.org/community/review_schedule.html under a new column

"Seconded By".

3. Endorsing a library has NO RELATION to review managing a library.
If only one person endorses a library for review, they are not
permitted to act as review manager. It is expected that if you endorse

a library to enter the review queue, you are highly likely to provide

a review to a review manager at a later date, but this is not binding.

4. To find someone to endorse a new library for review, the library
author ought to ideally canvas for a library's motivation before they
ever begin writing or designing it, but failing that they need to
approach boost-dev and publicise their library seeking people to
publicly endorse it for review. Other forums work too e.g. reddit/r/cpp,
the Incubator or anywhere else.

5. Any member on boost-dev can endorse a library for review. Unlike

review managing, no prior conditions exist.

As mentioned on the thread on boost-dev, this pushes the new library bottleneck up out of the review queue page so an ever growing list of libraries awaiting review doesn't appear on a public Boost webpage, where the current 23 libraries in the queue gives a bad impression of Boost (Michael pointed out, very validly, that one third of that queue is being processed, and we know some of the libraries in the queue are stale and their authors no longer wish to have a Boost review. Many of the remainder could never pass any Boost review due to being incomplete).

It is particularly hoped that this new policy will help new library authors get some early feedback instead of submitting a library for review and getting nothing but silence for several years.

Niall

[Jon Kalb]

 

Niall,

 

My first thought is the first thought I always have when a request for the committee comes in:

                Does this really need to be decided by the committee?

 

The Boost community ran itself without the Steering Committee for the first decade and a half of its existence. This worked pretty well, but the committee was created to deal with those issues where it didn’t work so well. Here are some of these areas:

·         Resources need to be committed

·         A binding agreement with an external organization needs to be made

·         An internal issue needs to be resolved and all attempts to reach consensus within the community have failed

 

The one that looks to me like it might apply here is the last item, but that is true only if a) it this needs to be resolved by the committee and b) an attempt to reach consensus has failed.

 

Is there a reason that the review managers can’t or won’t just decide to adopt this change?

 

Why is there no consensus? What is the argument(s) of those that are opposed to this change? Is no compromise possible?

 

Jon

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[Jon Kalb]

Niall,

 

I’m glad to hear this.

 

You will be able to say (assuming it is still true after a reasonable period of delay), “After we discussed this, we ran the consensus by the members of the Steering Committee and they raised no objections.

 

Note that, although I questioned whether the committee needs to make a decision on this, I’ve nothing against the proposition itself.

 

Jon

 

From: Niall Douglas <nialldo...@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, March 17, 2017 at 12:46 PM
To: "jon...@boost.org" <jon...@boost.org>
Subject: Re: [boost-steering] Approval sought for review queue entry policy change

 

Actually it's the end result of a discussion where a consensus was achieved. Technically it therefore needs no involvement from the steering committee at all, however library admission policy is something members of the committee and those others subscribed to boost-steering have thought long and hard about and perhaps those who haven't yet commented on boost-dev have an opinion. If they say nothing to my post, I'll take that as no objection and go ahead and update the website. Ronald then can flush the review queue.

 

What I was really seeking was my ass to be covered when annoyed new library submitters complain about the change. If I'm covered, I'm good.

 

Niall

[Rob Stewart]

The proposed changes seem to ramble somewhat and parts are not normal policy so much as changes to affect the review queue as it exists.

My suggestion on the policy update:

"Libraries may only be on the review queue (http://www.boost.org/community/review_schedule.html) when they have garnered at least one public endorsement from a member of the Boost Community. The name(s) of the endorser(s) will be listed with the library on the review queue.

"If a library gets only one endorsement, that endorser may not act as the library's review manager. Endorsers are expected to submit reviews when the library comes up for review (reviews can be submitted early, if necessary).

"Library authors are encouraged to get endorsements by posting to the Boost Developer's mailing list, though other sources, such as The Boost Library Incubator (http://blincubator.com/), Reddit (reddit/r/cpp), etc., exist.

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[Michael Caisse]

Rob - I think your updates look good. There has been a good discussion on the ML.

Nial - Do you think your current version reflects all of the ML input? Thank you for driving this.

[Niall Douglas]

On Tuesday, March 21, 2017 at 7:54:44 PM UTC, Michael Caisse wrote:

Rob - I think your updates look good. There has been a good discussion on the ML.

There has. I was surprised a consensus on a specific change emerged. My thanks to the steering committee members who added valuably to the discussion.

Nial - Do you think your current version reflects all of the ML input? Thank you for driving this.

In the sense that nobody has objected to the current version as currently written, then yes. Lack of objection is probably agreement that the proposed text isn't terrible. Ronald came in with quite detailed feedback on the first draft and I adjusted the text to match his comments, he has not come back on the changes, so I guess he doesn't hate the current version.

There have been a number of statements wanting more change to the process, but there is not consensus on that, people want different things in different forms.

I do feel some concern that after this change that there could be a highly dispiriting outcome where library authors ask repeatedly for endorsements for review, but everybody ignores their request rather than saying what is wrong with their submission. I could see this happening with extremely niche but very nicely made libraries for example. But we'll cross that bridge if it occurs, best not to worry about ifs until they happen.

Niall