Thank your Vinnie for inviting/pushing me into this charming rabbit hole 3:) NO. The review is over with the announcement of the result. IF you add an
official discussion thread you will end up with a review of the review and no final decision will ever be accepted.
I agree, the decision of the Review Manager should be final. This is not incompatible with a Retrospective phase with the clearly established role of working towards improving the Review process for *future* reviews by gathering useful input from the Community about the *past* review in a transparent and structured discussion. The second guessing without serious reason needs to stop not be encouraged.
It hurts the review process.
My experience with communication would suggest that discouraging feedback and silencing frustrated voices can be detrimental. The more you try to suppress concerns or frustrations, the more tension builds, leading to eventual breaking point. For example, I may be a baby on this ML and yet I've already seen obviously heavily invested people quitting the ML quite rageously: from the answers that followed, this breaking point was clearly hurting both the process and the libraries and should be avoided.
Serious issues are to be brought up with the review wizards off-list.
Criticism can be send to the RM off-list as well. Agreed. This will inevitably raise the case of the process surrounding the Review Wizard designation and responsibilities: i) how are they selected, ii) how are conflicts of interests handled at this designation stage, iii) for how long do Wizards operate, iv) what is the process when they quit, v) what is the process in the case of conflict of interest brought up during a Review. It does not seem to be mentioned in the guidelines and should be made explicit to avoid future problems. If you want to discuss a past review it needs to happen after enough time
has passed, so it doesnt turn into a second round of reviews. We could maybe discuss the "reviews of the past year" every december or something
Yearly feedback could be valuable. It doesn’t address the issue of immediate feedback—both positive and negative—that naturally arises during the review process. Such feedback is a crucial part of the community experience and should be collected before it fades away. It often can’t (and maybe shouldn’t) be casted off some private channels, as it fosters transparency and shared learning. Also, let’s be honest: these conversations will likely surface elsewhere (mhhh lemme guess: slack?). It could be as simple as a 1-10 scale poll answering *How happy were you with this formal review?* Whatever the shape it takes, creating a space for immediate dialogue ensures feedback is acknowledged :) Best wishes, rainbow kitties etc, Arno