On 11 Mar 2014 at 8:18, Rob Stewart wrote:
Robert Ramey has ideas on improving the process. Others have made suggestions over the years, but we've made little change to it this far. Still, if you've got concrete ideas for improving the backlog, speak up.
You'll see my suggestion for filtering out the libraries submitted in an earlier post, but I'd like to reraise an earlier idea of mine which wasn't popular: the submitted libraries ought to ranked according to the number of peer reviews previously managed by the submitter. That ought to shake loose some more review managers. Having managed TypeIndex v2.0 with me managing TypeIndex v3.0 in about a month from now, I don't think there is much potential conflict of interest. As manager you're just collating other people's votes and trying to tease votes out of people. You then count up the votes and objectively list stated sentiments in the report, and that's peer review done. One's ability to influence the outcome is actually quite limited because people will call you if your report isn't fair.
For example, I would be willing to review some of these libraries, but I am not qualified to be a review manager (since I am not very active in the community).
Being a review manager is a big job. You need to ensure that the library is ready, you need domain expertise in order to well and fairly judge the review comments, and you need to commit time to the review period and writing the report. That's a significant burden and it's little wonder few are stepping up to do it.
It's also open ended: if a library needs a second or third peer review round then you're likely to manage those too. Committing to being a review manager can be a three or four month thing. Niall -- Currently unemployed and looking for work in Ireland. Work Portfolio: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/nialldouglas/