Add Setting: Prevent MR Author from Resolving Comment Threads

Release notes

Make MR review workflow more manageable by saving users from themselves to 'jump the gun' with resolving comment threads.

Problem to solve

Currently, all users can resolve comment threads in MRs which is problematic when authors resolve them as they have a vested interest in getting them resolved so they may 'rush' to resolve some prematurely. Further, GitLab (reasonably) collapses resolved comment threads making them harder to find once they are resolved, so having some level of quality-control on getting comments to the resolved state would be helpful (by disallowing Authors from resolving threads).

Proposal

Add a setting to GitLab Projects to prevent an MR's Author from resolving comment threads in that MR.

Intended users

This feature will help developers that work on MRs.

Feature Usage Metrics

If there was a way to get metrics on how many resolved comment threads go back to unresolved, that'd be an interesting measurement to compare with and without this feature in place. Similarly maybe tracking the number of Incidents that are written, as a measure of rework where 'missed comment threads' may be a contributor to the rework.