
Blind Reviews Experiment to remove code reviewer bias on Bugzilla and GitHub - cpeterso
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/blind-reviews/
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Arete31415
FYI, when orchestras started doing blind auditions, the numbers of women hired
skyrocketed. Even though you'd think music would be the one area where what a
person looked like & whether they were male or female would be irrelevant.

I think this is a great idea.

~~~
legostormtroopr
Except sometimes blind hiring doesn't go the direction you are hoping.

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-
tria...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-
improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888)

~~~
mpweiher
Yep. Also, the orchestra thing was 1952.

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TheChaplain
This seems like a problem that needs a cultural solution, not a technical one?

Because knowing who submitted the code, I can better manage my time. E.g. if
the submitter is known for producing high quality code, I only need to spend
minimal time browsing through it.

But, if the submitter is known to cut corners I can prepare myself to spend
more time and review each line carefully because I most certainly will find
issues.

~~~
jadedhacker
I think it could be helpful for screening first time contributions at the very
least. You're right that a cultural solution is necessary, but in the mean
time one way to deal with bias when you know you are biased is to remove the
ability for it to operate (when practicable).

Otherwise, you're stuck in this zone where you know you're liable to make bad
decisions, but you rationalise to yourself that you can correct them. No
matter how you slice it, it's never going to be possible to exactly correct
for your biases, you're going to undershoot or overshoot. Better to minimize
their scope of operation.

I really like this line of thinking because it crashes into this realm of
philosophy where some people think you can feel your way to a good result,
whereas the other approach is to initially intuit the just result, and
rationally design a system that achieves it regardless of your instantaneous
emotions. Of course, such systems thinking is very very sensitive to getting
the right intuition up front, so it's very important to train it and build in
feedback systems in case you start getting things you didn't expect.

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cheez
Great idea in general. Software dev has an unnecessary amount of politics, and
this could reduce it.

~~~
grv07
Yes, this improves the environment :).

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codingdave
Interesting idea, but everyone I've worked with has their own distinct flavors
of how they code, so this wouldn't really hide identity much, not unless you
didn't know the coder in the first place.

