Guidelines for reviews - McNamara84/ladis GitHub Wiki

For both (authors of pull requests and reviewers of pull requests)

Be respectful / Ask - Explain - Suggest

Always be considerate and respectful, specifically:

• don't judge
• don't blame
• don't be arrogant
• don't use sarcasm.

Instead:

• ask questions, assuming that everyone is intelligent and well-meaning
• explain your point of view in an explicit manner, even if it's a bit more verbose
• suggest.

Respect and humility remove all frictions. Clarity dispels all doubts about your intentions. Suggesting creates the conditions for improvement.

At the end, the goal is to have better, more meaningful conversations and to save time and energy.

Offer encouragement & appreciation / Give positive feedback

Code reviews often just focus on mistakes, but they should also offer encouragement and appreciation for good practices.

Whether you learned something thanks to a comment written by one of your peers, or when you read an elegant piece of code, or even just to congratulate the good work, say: "thank you!", "great!", "nice!".

It makes a huge difference to receive positive feedback!

For authors

The first reviewer is you

After creating the pull request and before inviting anyone, take some time to assess your own code. Reviewing your changes outside of your IDE could help you spotting inconsistencies, mistakes, missing parts, or even finding easier ways to solve the problem at hand.

For reviewers

The other person is you

Always consider the potential impact of your words, not just their original intent. Ask yourself how you would react to the words you're about to post. Take some time to write comments that are not only helpful but also kind as the other person is you.