Use pending state for pull requests from unknown accounts

[dontcallmedom]

Instead of marking with a red flags pull requests from accounts that have not been linked to their W3C equivalent, there was a suggestion (from @tidoust?) they could be marked as pending instead.

[tidoust]

The title and description seem to contradict themselves. Do you want to use the pending for PR from unknown accounts or for PR from accounts that have been linked to their W3C equivalent?

Why restrict that state to either of those? I do not know how practical that can be, but I would essentially use the pending state for all situations that cannot get a green flag.

For me, a red flag on a PR suggests that the contents of the pull request needs to change. For instance, in theory at least, when a bot runs tests against a PR, a red flag outcome signals that the PR broke some tests and thus that the PR needs to be fixed.

The IPR bot has nothing to say about the actual contents of the PR. It merely says that additional info or commitments are needed before the PR can get a green flag from an IPR perspective. I would avoid using a red flag. A pending state is not perfect either, but it captures the status better: "Stay tuned, we're trying to gather additional info/commitments...". Plus it's more welcoming than a red flag.

[dontcallmedom]

the reasoning behind the red flag is that it's important that repo owners DO NOT merge pull requests with unsatisfactory IPR status; I think most repo owners would understand that overriding a red flag is not something you should do, while moving beyond a "pending" / orange flag might seem less scary.

I guess we could combine moving to orange flag with requiring that the green flag be required before merging, but that's a pretty substantive operational change.

[dontcallmedom]

The title and description seem to contradict themselves. Do you want to use the pending for PR from unknown accounts or for PR from accounts that have been linked to their W3C equivalent?

the former - I've updated the description accordingly

[deniak]

the reasoning behind the red flag is that it's important that repo owners DO NOT merge pull requests with unsatisfactory IPR status; I think most repo owners would understand that overriding a red flag is not something you should do, while moving beyond a "pending" / orange flag might seem less scary.

Are you suggesting that merging PRs from unknown contributors is acceptable?

[dontcallmedom]

Are you suggesting that merging PRs from unknown contributors is acceptable?

I'm not, although I agree my statements are somewhat inconsistent :)

I guess I see a distinction between "we don't know if something is wrong" and "we know something is wrong" as the motivation behind using orange vs red; but to my latter point, in both situations we don't want the PR to be merged, so maybe the real solution is to use "pending" in all cases and make the check required?

[deniak]

Updating ash-nazg to report a status "pending" is pretty easy but it seems the requirement for the green flag will have to be configured on each repo.