I’ve lived in a lot of collective houses. I’ve seen a lot of chore systems come and go. What I’ve decided is that it’s folly to try to enforce accountability.

I’ve lived in a lot of collective houses. I’ve seen a lot of chore systems come and go. What I’ve decided is that it’s folly to try to enforce accountability. A good system provides visibility, that’s it. Who did what? Document it, but allow implicit social process to handle enforcement. Hard rules just lead to people cooking the books, or opting out of the system entirely. I feel the same about code review. Document who reviewed. But it’s up to individuals to take responsibility for the outcome. And at the end of the day it’s the committer’s code. It’s their name in the git history.