Documentation/ReviewGuidelines
Contents
Goal
Provide guidelines to improve the quality and speed of the documentation review process.
Critique Categories
Objective
- Commit message
- Content
- Conventions
- Tags
- Patch
- Content
- Conventions
- Grammar
- Style/Phrasing/Wording
- Spelling
Subjective
- Commit message
- Grammar
- Spelling
- Style/Phrasing/Wording
- Patch
- Grammar
- Style/Phrasing/Wording
- Other suggestions
Scope
- Try to keep reviews limited to the contents of the bug, contents of the commit message, and changes made by the patch.
Consistency
- If you find an issue, do your best to mark all instances of it.
- If the author uploads a patch correcting your objective issue and you find another instance that you didn't mark, comment on it and score with a -1. Preferably, upload a patch to fix it.
- If the author uploads a patch correcting your subjective issue and you find another instance that you didn't mark, comment on it and score with a 0.
- If the author uploads a patch correcting your objective and/or subjective issue and you find another objective issue, comment on it and score with a -1. Preferably, upload a patch to fix it.
- If the author uploads a patch correcting your objective and/or subjective issue and you find another subjective issue, comment on it and score with a 0.
- If you find an issue that could affect other portions of a book, provide appropriate comments, score the patch with a -1, and consider mentioning your issue on the mailing list or in a meeting.
- Example: A new service uses "key = value" in the configuration file and all other services use "key=value" in their configuration files. Both methods work, but the book should maintain consistency.
Tagging Additional Reviewers
- In some cases, you should tag one or more people with interest in or experience with the content of your patch to review it.
- How long should an author wait for reviews by these people?
The Waiting Game
- After the first review with a 0 or -1 score, how long should an author wait for additional reviews before addressing issues in the first review?
Review Scoring and Approvals
- Scores available to contributors
- -1, 0, +1
- Scores available to core reviewers
- -2, -1, 0, +1, +2
- Approvals
- A core reviewer can approve a patch with +4 points, typically after it obtains two +2 scores from other core reviewers.
- A core reviewer can +2 score a patch with a +2 score from another core reviewer and approve it.
Note: If you find an issue with a patch that already has a +2 score from another core reviewer, consider commenting on the issue and scoring the patch with a 0 rather than scoring it with a -1.
Considerations for Documentation Aligned with Release Cycles
- Beginning with milestone releases, shift focus to objective issues, especially with new services and existing services with significant changes. Only patches with significant subjective issues should receive a -1 score. Otherwise, comment on subjective issues and score with a 0.
- Beginning with release candidates, focus almost entirely on content issues. Only comment on subjective issues if the patch should receive a -1 score for objective issues.