Dear upstream maintainers.
-
Is my approach OK or too harsh in your opinion?
2/2
Your priorities seem to differ from the ones of the upstream maintainer. Did you check if other PRs were handled, maybe bug fixes that might be more urgent than just adding to the documentation.
If you delete the PR the merge will never happen, if you let it remain maybe some day it will be merged.
-
Is my approach OK or too harsh in your opinion?
2/2
@jwildeboer I can't imagine a case where the upstream maintainer ignores such a PR out of malice, so while I understand the frustration, I don't think this helps anyone.
-
Is my approach OK or too harsh in your opinion?
2/2
@jwildeboer be gentle, open source maintainers are people with time constraints like all of us. That pull request is not about you after all
Better to add a friendly reminder after a few weeks, if you ask me.
-
Dear upstream maintainers. When a simple pull request to add a few sentences to the project documentation sits around for 10 days with no clear indication if it's OK or if there is a problem that I need to fix, I assume you are not interested and I will simply delete the pull request, to remove a bit of work from your and my TODO list. Very motivating experience

1/2
Depends.
If a company is behind it, maybe.
If it is a free project, it’s not O.K.
Some project only have one maintainer (or very few), he/she may be on vaction, ill, whatever. -
Is my approach OK or too harsh in your opinion?
2/2
@jwildeboer Is this the maintainers full time job or are they fitting it in when they can? Are they on vacation?
-
Is my approach OK or too harsh in your opinion?
2/2
@jwildeboer I think people ignore low stake stuff when they have more urgent/important things going on.
A month would probably be more useful if you want it looked at.
-
@jwildeboer I can't imagine a case where the upstream maintainer ignores such a PR out of malice, so while I understand the frustration, I don't think this helps anyone.
@jwildeboer I think it is totally justified to no longer respond to review comments after some time. I'd consider the offering of actively working on the change to be only valid for a limited time frame.
-
Your priorities seem to differ from the ones of the upstream maintainer. Did you check if other PRs were handled, maybe bug fixes that might be more urgent than just adding to the documentation.
If you delete the PR the merge will never happen, if you let it remain maybe some day it will be merged.
@kinghaunst Now I need to check for new releases of the project and verify that my pull request is still correct. I will do that for a while but not for a long time.
-
Is my approach OK or too harsh in your opinion?
2/2
I generally assume that what that means is that it's an unpaid developer donating their time, and not always paying attention to their project.
Surely that is unfortunate, but unless this is a big, funded operation, then yes, I think it's a bit harsh. They are probably also laboring without much outside acknowledgement.
Of course, it may also be a sign that the project is effectively dead.
-
Dear upstream maintainers. When a simple pull request to add a few sentences to the project documentation sits around for 10 days with no clear indication if it's OK or if there is a problem that I need to fix, I assume you are not interested and I will simply delete the pull request, to remove a bit of work from your and my TODO list. Very motivating experience

1/2
-
Is my approach OK or too harsh in your opinion?
2/2
@jwildeboer
If it's just documentation, why not leave it there and remove it from your list? At a minimum it will show the maintainers that there is some interest in the project, or show other potential users that the project is dead (after months without being touched). So it does serve *some* purpose. -
@jwildeboer I think people ignore low stake stuff when they have more urgent/important things going on.
A month would probably be more useful if you want it looked at.
@mxfraud In that month the project could make changes that render my added documentation wrong, wasting time on their side, which is what I want to avoid. So I will check every week if my changes are still correct and hope for the bast, but when I feel that getting a burden to me, I prefer to delete the PR to keep my TODO list sane.
-
Is my approach OK or too harsh in your opinion?
2/2
@jwildeboer I understand that it's frustrating if a maintainer doesn't get around to your PR quickly, but why delete it? If the maintainer gets around to it he can still proceed how they want. But as a maintainer I don't expect a contributor to still be around if a lot of time has passed.
In your specific case it's even more frustrating as the change is really small, but as a lot of maintainers do this in their spare time I don't think it's too much asked to just be patient. -
@jwildeboer I understand that it's frustrating if a maintainer doesn't get around to your PR quickly, but why delete it? If the maintainer gets around to it he can still proceed how they want. But as a maintainer I don't expect a contributor to still be around if a lot of time has passed.
In your specific case it's even more frustrating as the change is really small, but as a lot of maintainers do this in their spare time I don't think it's too much asked to just be patient.@jkoan I also feel responsible for my PR, so I now feel the need to check at least once a week if my PR still contains valid information or if something has changed in the project that forces corrections, perhaps a rewrite. Outdated PRs are even more annoying to maintainers, I talk from experience.
-
@joschi hahaha @jwildeboer