Hey all, While we are talking about contribution quality and ownership in various separate threads, I do want to say that demanding reviews are one of the best things this project has, and I'd hate for us to come out of these various conversations having quietly lowered the bar to feel more welcoming.
The reviews I have learned the most from weren't the ones that approved my code. They were the ones that asked "why this way?", "what does this do to the person debugging it in two years?", "is this even the problem we should be solving?" Ash's reviews are the example I keep coming back to. We disagree plenty, and he's caught things in my own PRs I'd have merged otherwise. Those questions take real time and care, there is no metric or leaderboard that rewards asking them, and they are exactly the judgment that doesn't easily automate. After his review comments, I often asked myself why I hadn't thought of that approach. Bolke did the same to me in my early days ( https://github.com/apache/airflow/pull/2810). The review stung at the time and made me a better engineer. Most long-time contributors here probably have a story like it. Holding a high bar isn't unwelcoming. It's how contributors actually grow, and how the codebase stays something we can all still reason about. Waving work through to dodge friction helps no one, least of all the contributor. To be clear, this is a stance on the bar, not on any one way of delivering feedback. I just don't want the two collapsed into each other, because the answer to a tone problem is never less rigor. Thanks to Ash, and to everyone here who puts this kind of care into reviews. It's a lot of unsung work, and a big part of why I still trust this codebase. Regards, Kaxil
