On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 12:57:28AM -0500, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:

> There seems to be an assumption that a open, public discussion will
> always give you the best review.  I don't think that's necessarily
> true.  It can often give you a very biased sample from the poeple who
> are most stridently on one side of the debate or the other, as well as
> being biased towards those who believe in the "last post wins" style
> of debate, since they end up speaking most loudly and posting most
> frequently and most aggressively.

> I found it very interesting that by explicitly asking the top ranked
> developers by git statistics for comments and for their sign-off on
> the various update patches, we got a much broader read on what people
> thought, and received some very thoughtful comments --- from people
> who had *not* engaged on the public threads.

One thing that other organisations that do this sort of consultation
process (which is very good and useful) do which didn't seem to happen
here is that they announce that this is going on.  This is useful
because it helps people know what's going on and can help make the
public discussion a bit more useful as a result.  If, as is common,
there's also some way for people to push in comments those can turn up
useful feedback that people you wouldn't have thought to ask aren't
comfortable providing in public though you'll also tend to get a lot of
noise in there as well if it's a contentious area so that's hard work.