CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE AN INSTANT WINNER IN OUR PATCH REVIEW LOTTERY

[Elijah Newren <newren gmail com>]

DEAR SIR OR MADAM,

I WRITE YOU IN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE THAT YOU ARE ABLE TO RECEIVE 654
(SIX HUNDRED FIFTY-FOUR) PATCHES NOT MARKED AS REVIEWED THAT HAVE
ACCUMULATED ON BUGZILLA SINCE THE RELEASE OF GNOME 2.8...

Maybe I should quit this spam imitation or it won't get past peoples'
filters.  :-)  We have made a number of changes[1] to try to make it
easier to review patches for everyone, which will hopefully make it so
that we can get more than 80% of patches reviewed[2].  These changes
are:

- You don't have to load a separate page to edit an attachment state
and can change the state of multiple patches at once with the new drop
down boxes in the attachment section of show_bug.cgi (see bug 141386)

- There's a new "see-comments" state that counts as review.  If none
of the other states are quite correct (or if you think they sound too
harsh...), you can mark a patch with this state when adding an
accompanying explanation to a bug (in many cases, there may already be
patches out there with sufficient explanation that just need to be
marked as reviewed; this state should be handy there)

- There's a description of available patch states now
(http://bugzilla.gnome.org/describeattachstatuses.cgi), linked to from
the word "status" where the attachments are shown and also in our
"More reports than you can shake a stick at" reports page
(http://bugzilla.gnome.org/reports/reports.cgi)

Now, as we all know, reviewing patches encourages people to
contribute, gains you some co-maintainers more quickly, increases your
longevity, propels you to hero status, and reduces the risk of Swedish
conspiracies.

Thanks for all your hard work,
Elijah


[1] Besides the changes already made that are listed above, we are
also considering making other changes.  Currently, this includes
patch-nagging and automatically detecting
unmaintained-or-undermaintained modules in order to place a big
warning on show_bug.cgi (and maybe elsewhere).  See
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-March/msg00128.html

[2] It's kind of sad that 1 out of every 5 patches seems to have gone
unreviewed.  Yes, I know I don't have much room to speak lately but we
should be able to do better.  See
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/reports/patch-diligence-report.cgi for more
detailed statistics or to
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/reports/patch-status.cgi to just get a list
of bugs in your module with unreviewed patches (though note that the
latter report doesn't limit to patches submitted between 7 and 180
days ago like the former does).