[python-committers] Github reviews are cannibalizing BPO

[Christian Heimes]

Hi all,

since our move to Github I noticed a major increase in incoming patches.
I like it. It clearly shows that it was a good decision.

But I don't like the fact that Github reviews are cannibalizing issues
on BPO. Before the migration decisions regarding a new feature or bug
fix were made on the ticket system. For larger changes we used mailing
lists or the PEP process. Rietveld, our previous code review tool, was
just used to discuss code and implementation details. All important
decisions still happened on BPO. We also used BPO to keep the experts or
module maintainers in the loop.

With Github I'm seeing a major paradigm shift. New contributors tend to
use BPO as ticket number dispenser. Actual discussion seems to happen
mostly on Github PRs. For me it makes it harder to follow discussion or
to see discussions at all. I find Github notifications inferior to
compared BPO's email notification -- mostly because Github spams me with
notifications. For me it's not uncommon to have more than 1,000 open
notifications waiting for my attention.

This brings me to my questions

1) Should we try to move discussion back to BPO or are we fine with
having major decisions just in Github PRs?

2) How can we retain enough information on BPO to keep it useful as
research database for past decisions?

3) How can we keep module maintainers and experts in the loop? For
example I don't have the resources to read all Github PRs, but I still
like to keep an eye on the ssl and hashlib module.

Christian