I'm guessing this is about Code Review comments?
I always assume my comments on others' PRs (and other people's comments on my Code Reviews) are "suggestions (non-blocking)", unless indicated otherwise. Shouldn't that be the default, really?
I always assume my comments on others' PRs (and other people's comments on my Code Reviews) are "suggestions (non-blocking)", unless indicated otherwise. Shouldn't that be the default, really?
Even though I also often use Github and Gerrit at my current job, everywhere we observe that convention that a comment is considered blocking unless indicated otherwise. This is because ~80% are typically blocking.
I personally try to encourage both communication and responsibility. So I comment on pretty much everything I don't understand/like/agree with (i.e. over-communication, that's really the only way to ensure adequate communication because by over-communicating according to your standards you're more likely hitting the other person's communication standards, which are necessarily different from your own and fundamentally unknowable), but at the same time I encourage the other person to decide which comments they want to respond to (either by arguing or by changing the code), hence showing I trust them and encouraging their personal responsibility.
The proposal of conventional comments simply clarifies intention and disambiguates it. It's like that salt and pepper question. How do you know which is in which? Regardless of your knowledge and assumptions, it depends on whoever filled them in. This clarifies that.