Re: Mass-abandonment of many 2+-year-old Gerrit patches to mediawiki/core

I know this is sacrilege for some, but in 2026 AI can be a decent reviewer,
even with opensource models. I wouldn't give it a +2, but it could
certainly help improve patches and reducing the load of human reviewers.

Best,
  Strainu

În mar., 31 mar. 2026 la 01:42, Brian Wolff via Wikitech-l <
[email protected]> a scris:

> People have been proposing that for as long as i've been here. Usually
> where it falls down is that to be a good reviewer you usually have to be
> well versed in the specific area of the codebase. A new hire is generally
> not a good code reviewer out of the box, and almost nobody is a good at
> reviewing everything.
>
> Although perhaps someone hired to be a shepard would work (sort of similar
> to what andre does for phab) Just soneone to help shepard things through
> the process and make sure things do not fall thrugh the cracks.
>
> I think a lot of the problem is many people do not feel empowered to say
> no, so we end up wasting a lot of time on silence or vauge platitudes.
>
>
> That said i do think the mw core team has promised to spend part of their
> time reviewing code to good results.
>
> --
> Brian
>
> On Monday, 30 March 2026, Felipe Schenone <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Would it be too crazy to hire one staff member with the specific task of
>> reviewing and merging community submitted patches? Seems to me like it
>> would foster the developer community, and maybe even get more stuff done
>> than if that person were coding directly. What would be the right place to
>> propose something like this?
>>
>> El lun, 30 de mar de 2026, 7:17 p.m., Brian Wolff via Wikitech-l <
>> [email protected]> escribió:
>>
>>> I think we do have a problem with patchsets that have bitrotted and no
>>> longer effectively apply, but at the same time what are you supposed to do
>>> if you believe your patch is still a good patch, nobody has ever commented
>>> on it, and there is nothing obviously wrong with it. Its honestly not that
>>> unusual in our community for it to take months to get a patch merged.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Brian
>>>
>>> On Monday, 30 March 2026, a smart kitten via Wikitech-l <
>>> [email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Earlier today (2026-03-30), all unmerged Gerrit patches to
>>>> `mediawiki/core` that were both attached to a Phabricator task & were 2+
>>>> years old appear to have been abandoned _en masse_: [0]
>>>>
>>>> There was a small amount of discussion after-the-fact in IRC
>>>> (#wikimedia-releng): [1]
>>>>
>>>> I am emailing wikitech-l to announce this myself, as it does not seem
>>>> like this was done by the folks involved in making/actioning this decision.
>>>> Speaking personally, I am saddened that it is apparently the case that
>>>> there was no prior communication about today's action to the Wikimedia
>>>> technical community, and that there was no (or, at least, no _recent_)
>>>> consultation with the wider technical community prior to this highly
>>>> impactful mass-action taking place.
>>>>
>>>> >From the current Gerrit search results at [2] (as viewed while typing
>>>> this email - I'm not sure if Gerrit's search allows for filtering by the
>>>> time a patch was abandoned), it appears that this action may have affected
>>>> ~500-530 individual patches.
>>>>
>>>> There was a Phabricator task filed in May 2025 that proposed the
>>>> automatic abandonment of old changes; however, at the time of this action
>>>> being taken, there had been no comments on that task since May 2025. [3]
>>>>
>>>> Speaking personally again -- I wish that this hadn't happened. I wish
>>>> there had been (wider, and more recent) community consultation. I wish that
>>>> - at the very least - the voices expressing concern in the
>>>> 'auto-abandonment' task [3] had been listened and responded to. That they
>>>> weren't saddens me greatly: why should people take the time to express
>>>> their concerns regarding suggested wide-scale changes such as this, if such
>>>> concerns won't even be acknowledged prior to this sort of mass-action being
>>>> taken?
>>>> Given (e.g.) the thesis quoted in Tyler Cipriani's comment at [4], I am
>>>> also especially concerned about what this sort of action may mean for the
>>>> future health of MediaWiki & other Wikimedia software projects.
>>>>
>>>> I do now hope that these changes can be mass-restored, in the same way
>>>> that they were mass-abandoned; at least, until further community discussion
>>>> on the matter can take place. (But that, I recognise, is an opinion that
>>>> not everyone may necessarily share.)
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>>
>>>> [0] https://sal.toolforge.org/log/QS3ePp0B8tZ8Ohr0YH3W
>>>> [1]
>>>> https://wm-bot.wmcloud.org/browser/index.php?start=03%2F30%2F2026&end=03%2F30%2F2026&display=%23wikimedia-releng#:~:text=!log%20gerrit%3A%20abandon,Txxxx%60
>>>> )
>>>> [2]
>>>> https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/q/project:mediawiki/core+is:abandoned+before:%222026-03-30+14:00:00%22+after:%222026-03-30+12:50:00%22,500
>>>> [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T393376
>>>> [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T393376#10831729
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>>
>>>> -- a smart kitten
>>>> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/p/A_smart_kitten/
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