Suggested by jhodgdon in #2457875-89: [policy] Evolving and documenting Drupal core's structure, responsibilities, and decision-making → , because maintainers carry a "bigger stick," it makes sense to explicitly call out that they should be mindful of their tenor when commenting on issues. The proposal here is to add some wording about this to the Maintainership document:
Tone in issue responses
An issue comment from a Maintainer (of any type listed in this document), when commenting on an issue in their area of maintainership, will automatically be perceived as carrying more weight than the comments from non-maintainer contributors. Because of this, besides following the Drupal Code of Conduct (expected of any contributor), maintainers need to take extra care in their comments to be:
- Appreciative of the time and effort put in by the other issue contributors.
- Respectful of the knowledge, expertise, ideas, and opinions of the other contributors.
- Constructive and gentle in offering suggestions for how the patch or idea can be improved, including links to instructions and standards documents if applicable.
Tone in issue responses
An issue comment from a Maintainer (of any type listed in this document), when commenting on an issue in their area of maintainership, will automatically be perceived as carrying more weight than the comments from non-maintainer contributors. Because of this, besides following the Drupal Code of Conduct (expected of any contributor), maintainers need to take extra care in their comments to be:
- Appreciative of the time and effort put in by the other issue contributors (at a minimum, say thank you).
- Respectful of the knowledge, expertise, ideas, and opinions of the other contributors.
- Constructive in offering suggestions for how the patch or idea can be improved, including (if time permits and if applicable) links to instructions and standards documents.
- Gentle (while remaining firm) in rejecting an idea or patch as "Won't fix" or "Works as designed", including (if time permits and if applicable) links to design documents, previous discussions, and pages explaining what is allowed during the current development phase.
That said, there are rare cases where being appreciative and gentle are less appropriate, such as in cases where the issue participants are coming close to violating our Code of Conduct, or are otherwise themselves not behaving appropriately. In these cases, a firm tone is more appropriate than a gentle and appreciative tone.
Tone in issue responses
When a Drupal core contributor makes a proposal or a patch on an issue and another contributor replies, it can often be discouraging to the first contributor, because many responses, although valid, are inherently negative (such as marking a patch Needs Work). To counteract this, everyone commenting on an issue (besides following the Drupal Code of Conduct) should try to be:
- Appreciative of the time and effort put in by the other issue contributors (at a minimum, say thank you).
- Respectful of the knowledge, expertise, ideas, and opinions of the other contributors.
- Constructive in offering suggestions for how the patch or idea can be improved, including (if time permits and if applicable) links to instructions and standards documents.
- Gentle (while remaining firm) in rejecting an idea or patch as "Won't fix" or "Works as designed", including (if time permits and if applicable) links to design documents, previous discussions, and pages explaining what is allowed during the current development phase.
- And if all of this is not feasible on a particular issue in a particular moment, consider asking someone else to review or waiting for another day.
These guidelines are especially important when the contributor whose work is being reviewed is new to the project (new contributors are more prone to getting discouraged and leaving), or when the reviewer is a component or branch Maintainer (their comments automatically carry more weight). Of course, there are also rare cases where being appreciative and gentle are less appropriate, such as in cases where the issue participants are coming close to violating our Code of Conduct, or are otherwise themselves not behaving appropriately. In these cases, a firm tone is more appropriate than a gentle and appreciative tone.
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Policies
It is used to alert the BDFL that an issue change affects the governance, philosophy, goals, principles, or nature of Drupal and their signoff is needed. See the governance policy draft for more information.
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