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Dedicated "reviewers" section for merge requests: Sidebar widget

Problem to solve

When making a contribution via a merge request, once we find a reviewer we assign them to the MR via the "assignee" field. Once they are done with the first review, they may assign the author back as "assignee" for updates. The cycle repeats as the review goes back and forth. This presents a couple of problems:

  1. Author must go through MR history to find the original reviewer
  2. Unnecessary assigning back and forth is required from everyone
  3. Peers who are coming on to assist cannot easily find relevant players for this merge request
  4. New reviewers can't know if a peer has already reviewed and may pile on, leading to duplicate efforts
  5. Author does not know if a reviewer has reviewed but not approved and more work is needed from them

Intended users

Further details

Proposal

Provide a mechanism which:

  1. (out of scope) Allows MR author to explicitly define Reviewers (not assignees) #216054 (closed)
  2. (out of scope) A notification is sent to reviewers when they are selected/unselected #216054 (closed)
    • Reviewers also get a To-do
  3. In the MR sidebar, show a list of reviewers (this issue)
  4. (out of scope) In the MR list, show the reviewers next to the assignees #237922 (closed)
MR sidebar Select reviewers
Like the MR form, in the sidebar the Reviewers field is also below Assignees and function exactly like the latter. When selecting Reviewers, the dropdown header reads Request review from
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What does success look like, and how can we measure that?

We must be able to determine the percentage of MRs that are using this field in order to track its usage

Links / references

Edited by Pedro Moreira da Silva