Downside to using github teams in CODEOWNERS file

[trask]

I didn't realize, but github team aliases aren't visible by people who aren't @open-telemetry org members and so when they send a PR it appears that the PR has no reviewer assigned to it.

This doesn't seem like the best experience for outside contributors.

I'm wondering if it would be better to list approvers in the CODEOWNERS file, at least for the repos with simple 1-line CODEOWNERS files.

[jpkrohling]

Here's an example of what @trask mentioned:

As a community member, here's what I see:

[mx-psi]

I think we would need to have some tooling if we are going to do this, otherwise the lists would go out of sync very quickly

[anuraaga]

Assuming maintainers change less often than approvers, a middle ground could be to only list out maintainers and use the alias for approvers. Key is making it clear there are eyes on the PR - the collector actually auto assigns people so the screenshot still shows a reviewer and the repo probably doesn't need any change, while other repos like Java can show absolutely no one in the list.

[danielgblanco]

By the way, chatting to @jsuereth I just found out that the same is occurring with projects. See open-telemetry/opentelemetry-specification#4427 for instance.

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So, there is a larger issue about giving end-users and other external contributors more visibility about the team structure and project management structure in issues/PRs. Without compromising security, of course.