META - Review Team

[thehowl]

• Automed label to highlight non-core PRs (using actions/labeler?) PR label automation #3072
• Updates to contributing, to set up guidelines - continuing docs(CONTRIBUTING): refactor, add versioning, remove nightlies #2477. Codify the PR review process #3073

[Kouteki]

Notes

• The review team should focus on PRs only, they are currently a bottleneck.
• The review team should focus on contributor PRs, and ignore PRs made by the core team. Over time, and as contributors get more familiar with the project, we'll revisit this decision.
• Failing CI is a valid reason to reject a PR.
• Guideline content: if a PR is intentionally failing CI, the guideline should state that the author needs to state that it's intentional.
• Guideline content: PRs should reference the issues they are addressing
• Guideline content: dependabot PR guidelines
• The review team should feel free to review PRs from their teams (i.e. be the 1st review). The 2nd review should be the core team.

Action items

• @Kouteki to tag all issues that the review team should look at
• @Kouteki to notify the review team once the labels are added, so they could start reviewing
• @Kouteki to research possible improvements to the New issue templates

[jefft0]

A related issue uses the term "facilitators", which I like. We are using the label "review team" which is confusing. (One contributor thought that removing the "review team" label means that the PR won't be reviewed.) Can we rename the "review team" label to "facilitators"?

[Kouteki]

Notes from the Oct 17 meeting:

• The review team's goal shouldn't be to address the huge PR backlog; that's on the core team. Instead, they should help us with the top of the funnel, i.e. new PRs from external contributors that will only increase in volume over time.
• Right now we have multiple PRs trying to tackle the review flow: Setup "nice" stale PRs' bot #1445 Proposal: improving review process with bot-assisted checkboxes #1007 chore: add code facilitators ci #1660
• We'll add the PR review flow on the core team agenda next week
• In the short term, I've changed the label 'review team' to 'review/triage-pending' and updated the label description
• Once we have a bot up, we'll automate the flow so that the review team can be assigned automatically on external PRs
• Our best idea right now is to get rid off CODEOWNERS, don't assign anyone automatically.
• We'll use the Signal chat for internal coordination, and this meta issue for note keeping and planning.

[Kouteki]

Optimum review flow

• Pick a PR with 'review/triage-pending'
• Assign yourself & review a PR
• Approve or request changes
• Remove the 'review/triage-pending' label

[Kouteki]

A couple of updates:

• chore: disable CODEOWNERS #3022 merged
• Dependabot should be treated as an external contributor. Review Dependabot PRs if you feel comfortable, they will be tagged for this team.

[Kouteki]

Reviewers have a triage role. This means that they:

• Can open/close issues & PRs
• Can review PRs
• Can't review conversations on other people's PRs