
Ask HN: How you approach addressing PR comments in Open Source projects - ahmadassaf
Hello,<p>I have been a bit active recently on a Chrome extension repo that I found very useful with PRs and enhancements suggestions. However, sometimes I felt that the comments are very opinionated by the maintainers and at some point made me just stop trying to &quot;contribute&quot; and just maintain my fork. I am wondering if there are any best practices in dealing with OS collaboration.<p>On a similar note, I want to ask how people usually approach addressing PR comments. For example, for one PR I had over 10 comments and the Github page was flooded with comments that I wanted to address. It was crazy at some point to keep track of them as I dont want to push every commit for every fix I did so that I can see the `outdated` collapsable code block that Github shows. I have came up with this idea https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sindresorhus&#x2F;refined-github&#x2F;pull&#x2F;1407 which allows you to have a task-list like feature on the PR comments.<p>Would love your thoughts on this.<p>Thanks
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ptdel
I've found that not just with open-source but even in the private sector
(engineers at big companies can also be extremely prideful and opinionated) I
need to essentially treat them with kid gloves, even if they're a 50 year old
bearded man.

I acknowledge the merits of their work in the body of my comments, and I posit
that I'm merely trying to further refine their already good ideas. Did I
mention how good their ideas are? What great ideas that I'd love to contribute
to. Each time I get push back I acknowledge the points addressed, and I
carefully guide them to realizing that my pull request is in fact their idea,
and it's a great idea because all their ideas are great.

for adressing PR comments I usually try to classify them first upon whether or
not their filler (meaningless), require addressing (valid questions) or
require action (code change). Sometimes issue tags and stuff can also be
helpful. I'll typically go back through the comments after fixing stuff, and
like a :thumbs-up: to say i read it, and i'll @ them link to the change if
it's action required.

It's really tricky man. Even though we all call ourselves engineers--we're all
still just humans. Just remember you're dealing with humans and if it comes
down to you've got your own fork you maintain--well make it better and then
people will use your fork :D

