two points

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Thursday, 9 February 2017 at 08:02:23 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> The PR in question:
>
>   https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/4745
>
> It took me a while to find it, because you were using a 
> pseudonym that I did not recognize. There are a number of 
> frequent contributors to D using pseudonyms, and all have this 
> issue with varying degrees.

This is a fair point in its own right, but it's completely 
orthogonal to the issue Nick is complaining about -- which is 
that after some initial interest and feedback, the PR just got 
left alone with no decision to accept or reject it, and no 
indication of why.

That's really a very unpleasant situation to face, regardless of 
whether the contributor in question is a well-known name or some 
complete anonymous stranger.  I have a PR of my own that's been 
in this situation for (only!) a month now, and it's distinctly 
frustrating, particularly because it was a contribution that 
Andrei specifically called for on these forums:
https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/5011

(... Andrei's request: 
https://forum.dlang.org/post/o1cqdb$245o$1@digitalmars.com)

Contrast this with the experience I had the one time I submitted 
a (tiny, trivial) patch to rust: immediately after submitting the 
PR I got a message from their 'highfive' robot that included:

   * a friendly thank you for the PR;

   * the GitHub ID of a contact who I could expect to be taking 
responsibility
     for the PR, who was also assigned as a reviewer;

   * some helpful notes on how to add changes to the PR if 
requested;

   * a link to the contributor guidelines.

By contrast with a Phobos PR it's not clear who to contact if 
review or decision-making is not forthcoming.

There's clearly in part a scaling problem here (in terms of how 
many people are available in general, and in terms of how many 
people have expertise on particular parts of the library) but it 
also feels like a few simple things (like making sure every PR 
author is given a reliable contact or two who they can feel 
entitled to chase up) could make a big difference.