@marcan >To be clear, reasonable code quality comments aren't the problem, and helping out less experienced folks in a kind way is a tangential (but also important and frequently related) issue.
Yah, agreed. Especially the "frequently related" bit.
I was interpreting the "every new contributor has to build that list from scratch" with a bit of a focus on the "how to deal with them" bit & maybe I focused on that part too much as it kinda resonated with me. I just don't wanna be someone that people have to learn to deal with!
w.r.t the second paragraph:
I didn't think you were suggesting that people should take bad code. Sorry if it came across that way at all.
The alignment thing you suggested is a good example - I never know if I can or can't change that stuff in a patch that I add something, which is just silly.
Another one that I find silly is "that's not the right way to do x", without any hints as to what the right way might be. Certainly feel like the knowledge about how linux works is being gatekept in situations like that.
I've seen at least one of the interactions you're referring to (and probably can guess who the list.txt maintainer is).
One thing that is kinda frustrating is not knowing which maintainers are willing to fix up x, y or z on application and which want a respin for a $subject change.
Reviewing patches as a non-maintainer is a bit of an odd spot. If you don't mention some nit in v5 of a trivial driver, there's a chance noone spots it & if there's a v6 it'd not change. Not the end of the world I guess though most of the time.
I feel bad as said reviewer when someone re-submits to fix something that could likely be fixed on application, but not as if I can speak for the actual maintainer.