From: rra@debian.org 
  
 Otto Kek€€l€€inen  writes: 
  
 > I have now witnessed several cases where a maintainer blatantly 
 > ignored the MRs their package received. 
  
 As several of us have been noting for some time now, it is very easy to 
 accidentally ignore Salsa MRs because the defaults don't send email to the 
 maintainer when an MR is opened. I realize that this may look like 
 "blatantly ignoring" an MR to people who regularly use Salsa, but for 
 maintainers who do not, it's often entirely accidental. 
  
 Also, speaking as someone who works on Debian and other free software 
 projects in bursts, sometimes I just forget about things even if I saw 
 them. I try to use checklists and work through any open issues 
 systematically before uploading, and I still cannot count the number of 
 times that I have uploaded a package with open bugs because I forgot to 
 check the BTS before uploading because I was thinking about something 
 else. I will doubtless do the same thing with Salsa MRs as well. 
  
 It's not personal! And people taking it personally or thinking that it's 
 some sort of political statement or intentional snub are reading hostile 
 emotions into something that's simply due to being human. 
  
 > It is demotivating to new aspiring Debian contributors to put in 
 > significant effort to learn the complexities of Debian packaging and 
 > submit an improvement, only to see that the maintainer two months later 
 > didn't look at the MR at all, and instead implemented the same change 
 > themselves, and the submitter's work essentially got wasted. 
  
 Yes, this sucks when this happens. It also often sucks for the maintainer, 
 who may have done unnecessary work. And yet, I have done this, because I 
 looked at things in the wrong order during a moment of free time in an 
 evening when I was a bit tired and not thinking clearly, and I will 
 doubtless do this again. It's not personal, and I'll try to avoid it, but 
 let's also not create unrealistic expectations that this won't happen. 
  
 It's also often the case that something that took someone a couple of 
 hours of work and testing for a new contributor only took the maintainer 
 five minutes because of their experience, so it never occurred to them to 
 look for an MR before they fixed something that randomly annoyed them for 
 unrelated reasons. This is in no way a problem with the contribution. 
 Making those contributions is how we all learned and how we got to the 
 point where it only takes five minutes. But it helps explain why 
 maintainers sometimes don't notice the MR. 
  
 The best way to ensure that someone new gets appropriate attention and 
 encouragement is for someone to volunteer to be a mentor and commit some 
 time to that. I think this is great whenever people are willing to do it. 
 I don't have the free time, and I did *not* volunteer to do that, so 
 people need to adjust their expectations accordingly. 
  
 -- 
 Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               
  
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