A browser extension to help perform unbiased reviews of pull requests.
We all have our own code review biases, whether we admit it or not.
- "This person always writes good code, I'm just going to merge it"
- "I better go over this thoroughly because this person screwed things up last time"
- "This was written by a person way smarter than me, I better just approve, they know what they are doing"
- "This person destroyed my last PR, I am going to nitpick the hell out of theirs"
The goal of this extension is to relieve you, the pull-request reviewer, of your known and unknown biases. Treat the code as the code, no matter who wrote it.
Take it for a spin and let me know how it changes your review process.
npm run build- point Chrome at thedistribution/directorynpm run watch- dev mode
- Framework for building browser plugins borrowed from the amazing Sindre Sorhhus and his refined-github project.
- Recoginition of my own bias. Seeing a person's picture or even the recoginition of a cartoon avatar immediately sets the mood of how I am going to review the code. It shouldn't. I know better. But humans are complicated.
- I can't find the original whitepaper published on this topic, but it was pretty interesting. Holler if you can find it. This is close: Gender differences and bias in open source: Pull request acceptance of women versus men, but it was less "women vs men" and more "we ran a study". I'm not solely trying to address the "women vs. men" problem. I think the problem of bias goes much further (young vs old, n00b vs veteran, nice vs pita) - all of which should not influence a code review. The code is the code, no matter where it came from.