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Reciprocity in PR opening vs reviews; banning contributors 

Hi all,

on the OCA days, we discussed that the current situation with having way too 
much input for way too few reviewers is untenable. This has not improved 
since, quite the opposite. It's really hard to find the gems in the noise.

Back then, I called for better automation for this, so here my proposal:

Have a github action that counts lines of PRs somebody opened in a repo, vs 
the lines of PRs the person reviewed in that repo. Everyone must review at 
least twice as much as they submit.

If after asking for more reviews, no reviews come, close the user's PRs 
automatically (in the repo, not all OCA) after some time.

Also add a manual mechanism for banning users who try to cheat with bullshit 
reviews or otherwise undesirable behavior. PRs by banned users are closed 
automatically.

I implemented both in
https://github.com/hbrunn/social/blob/18.0/.github/workflows/reciprocity.yml
resp
https://github.com/hbrunn/social/blob/18.0/.github/workflows/ban.yml

You can test this by creating PRs against my fork after cloning my version of 
the 18.0 branch.
Banning works by adding a handle to a file .banned.txt in the repo's root.

Before proposing this to oca-addons-repo-template, I'd like to hear some input 
from you.

Best regards,
Holger


-- 
Your partner for the hard Odoo problems
https://hunki-enterprises.com
by Holger Brunn - 08:56 - 23 Jan 2026

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Follow-Ups

  • Re: Reciprocity in PR opening vs reviews; banning contributors
    On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 11:42 PM Graeme Gellatly <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:
    This might sound like a crazy way to handle, but how about solving by setting a PR limit per repo. So a PSC can set a policy of say, at any given time, only 10 open PR's are allowed, and no PR can be older than say 4 months. Once limit is hit, no new PR can be accepted until limits resolved. 

    This is basically kanban? I'd be willing to participate in a trial of this on any of the repositories that I follow.
    by Adam Heinz - 02:00 - 27 Jan 2026
  • Re: Reciprocity in PR opening vs reviews; banning contributors 
    > Holger, what do you make of this inverted carrot approach rather than a

> stick?

seeing it fail for 10+ years


-- 
Your partner for the hard Odoo problems
https://hunki-enterprises.com
    by Holger Brunn - 09:50 - 27 Jan 2026

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  • Re: Reciprocity in PR opening vs reviews; banning contributors 
    On 1/27/26 9:37 AM, Enric Tobella Alomar wrote:

> So if we decide to use this data, I think it should be for promotion 

> and visibility, not for banning contributors.
...but what about for kindly, politely and lovingly ranking/labeling 
PR's? Also rather not?
    by Tom Blauwendraat - 09:50 - 27 Jan 2026
  • Re: Reciprocity in PR opening vs reviews; banning contributors
    Hello!

    I like the idea of using statistics to show the path we expect contributors to follow. However, I don’t think we should ban or limit users who don’t follow that path.

    In my experience, newcomers rarely meet these expectations at the beginning. It often takes around a year before people start collaborating the way we would like (doing reviews, participating in discussions, etc.). Some people get there faster, others slower, but we shouldn’t limit them because of that.

    Obviously, we can enforce rules like a 2 reviews : 1 PR ratio for PSCs or maintainers (and IMO, we should), but not for everyone.

    Collaboration data is very interesting, but relying only on data can be counterproductive and, in some cases, unfair. Reviews and contributions are hard to evaluate properly. Should we ban someone who does 3 high-quality reviews (with thoughtful comments and valuable points) and 10 fix PRs (including migrations), while promoting someone who does 10 reviews with no comments and 1 PR that creates a lot of extra work for others due to their way of working?

    This kind of data can be useful when looking at large numbers and trends, but with smaller samples, it’s easy to draw the wrong conclusions. IMO, using it can be a double-edged sword.

    So if we decide to use this data, I think it should be for promotion and visibility, not for banning contributors.

    My 2 cents.

    El mar, 27 ene 2026 a las 9:12, Tom Blauwendraat (<notifications@odoo-community.org>) escribió:
    On 1/27/26 8:57 AM, Jairo Llopis wrote:


> IMHO statistics should be used as a prize, not as a weapon.

Agreed! And it still could achieve the same: if a PR or contributor is 
valued very highly, his/her PR's float to the top of the 
sorting/filtering of reviewers anyway. And also the message to the 
contributors is clear: *this* is how you can get a higher ranking. So it 
still might achieve the same.

Holger, what do you make of this inverted carrot approach rather than a 
stick?

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    CEO & Founder

    by Enric Tobella Alomar - 09:35 - 27 Jan 2026
  • Re: Reciprocity in PR opening vs reviews; banning contributors 
    On 1/27/26 8:57 AM, Jairo Llopis wrote:

> IMHO statistics should be used as a prize, not as a weapon.

Agreed! And it still could achieve the same: if a PR or contributor is 
valued very highly, his/her PR's float to the top of the 
sorting/filtering of reviewers anyway. And also the message to the 
contributors is clear: *this* is how you can get a higher ranking. So it 
still might achieve the same.

Holger, what do you make of this inverted carrot approach rather than a 
stick?
    by Tom Blauwendraat - 09:11 - 27 Jan 2026