Yesterday a thread started on freebsd-cvs-ports about peer-reviews and policies. So here is my opinion on this:
Unfortunately recently there have been two tendencies that I dislike.
First several people got a ports commit bit, that take peer-reviews as a personal
offense. This discourages people from doing peer-reviews, which is bad.
I am all with dougb: “Peer review IS a critical part of what makes any open source project successful.”
So i think mentors should pay attention, that their mentees understand the concept of peer reviews, before they let them fly solo.
Second there are way too many policies. E.g. I don’t think there is a need for a policy about silencing mkdir commands and similar issues (BTW: I only use @ in Makefiles for silencing echo or printf). Trying to add policies like this will either end in a bikeshed or unhappiness.
To quote Pav: “Oh no more policies, please!”