Jack of All Trades, Master of None - Let's work together to offer ultimately better content, faster

Question

Nhgrif pointed out a great idea: Teamwork

"I think it's probably best if the question instead has several good answers that each address a specific topic. The result will be that no single answer is complete, but every problem is addressed between all the answers."

Alright, so that may not be the kind of "teamwork" we're looking for, but seriously guys and gals:

Reviews take a long time...

I'd say that so far roughly 90% of the great reviewers here spend nearly 40 minutes or even an hour per review giving great, positive feedback, touching on all the aspects of the code.

Even smaller code, which we should promote, requires lots of time and effort to touch on everything fully. This has two results:

1. When potential answerers see a question that is either too long, too complex, they skip it.

2. It takes too long to cover a single review, reviewers don't always get rewarded properly for it, and the huge effort needed turns away would-be-active-reviewers.

But together, we can each achieve more, faster

If each reviewer sees the question and grabs one aspect of the code that they're interested in improving, and spends just 15 minutes on their review, they can post a kick-*ss review that will get the same amount of upvotes, and allow other users to share the rep, and post their own kick-*ss reviews of different aspects of the code.

Things like:

• Structure

• Formatting & Comments

• Suggesting an OOP design

• Single Function Function

• Decoupling and all of the great strategies that promote it

• better ways to write a function, and why

Each of these aspects of a code review can take up 3-5 paragraphs alone and there's no reason for that not to be considered a good review. Together, by each focusing one one Trade, we avoid becoming Master of None in our reviews.

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Code review is the perfect community for teamwork!

Instead of everyone trying to spend a monster amount of time, stretching their focus thin on huge, Jack of All Trade reviews, we can work together to touch on everything more fully, sharing the rep, allowing us to handle questions faster, and ultimately making it funner to review peoples code.

Share the rep! Team up on a review!

Answer 1

Collecting some useful resources as part of the teamwork approach:

• The help centre indicates that reviewers can focus on any, or all facets of the code - in other words, there is no requirement that an answer is comprehensive
• Posting short answers is OK!
• There is a process in place for when there are multiple good answers - Which answer to accept

Bottom line, teamwork approach is fine, common, and well-documented as being "allowed". If you want to contribute a portion of an answer, feel free to be part of the team.

Answer 2

I often mention other answers (if I think they are good) in my own answer. Sometimes I may use a point or piece of code from their answer (always saying so and giving credit).

From my own experience, there are several ways to collaborate in reviews without sharing an answer.

1. Comment on other answers, praising good points.
2. Comment on other answers, asking follow up questions which may lead them to expand their answer. They may pass the baton on to you, of course.
3. Comment on the question, asking for clarification of constraints and input/output examples, particularly where existing answers show a need for them
4. Be willing to concentrate on as-yet undiscussed aspects of the problem rather than compete over the main points of existing good answers. Explain this in your answer.
5. If you do post alternative solutions, be generous in reference to existing ones and explain the shortcomings (as well as the benefits) of your own solution in comparison.
6. Don't be afraid to answer if you can only answer one aspect of the problem, even if it is. The advice is often still very welcome. Somebody who is expert on the main problem may be less adept in your area and find it boosts their answer.

There is absolutely no point getting hung up on not being the accepted answer. If questioners all had good judgement in choosing the best answer, they would probably not need to post here in the first place.

I feel rather lonely in my pet areas, which seem to be relatively niche and have a very small number of reviewers. We'd all benefit from more answers, no matter how narrowly-focused and succinct.