Don't "nitpick:" in pull requests
Have you ever told your spouse: “Hey, I like how you look! Just a nitpick, your wrinkles really show today. It’s not a problem for me though.”? Most likely not. And if you had, your spouse would have probably replied: “Well ok, if it’s not a problem, then why did you tell?”.
Similarly, insulting someone and adding “no offense” doesn’t make it less of an offense. What “nitpick” and “no offense” both have in common is shifting the responsibility from the speaker to the listener. The listener had no voice in the decision to speak these words. Only the speaker had. And he chose to speak them even though he could have not.
Pull requests should be reviewed with the same point in mind. There are heaps of good articles which describe how pull requests should be reviewed. One of the most important points is to focus on the bigger picture and to not get lost in “nitpicking” details. Remember, no PR from another person will ever be exactly like you would have done it.
Coming back to the “nitpick:” prefix. If you, as a reviewer, decide to voice a comment about a certain part of the code, it must be bugging you a fair amount. Which is fine. If you find something to improve and you believe it’s worth improving, all the power to you. No need to prefix it with “nitpick:”.
However, if you find something and you feel the urge to add “nitpick:”, you shift the responsibility to the creator of the PR. Now it’s up to the creator to decide if a thing they haven’t done (maybe they forgot, maybe they thought it’s fine) is small enough to ignore and ignore the reviewers comments. They can’t possibly know how the reviewer felt when writing the comment. Is it really a small thing? Is the reviewer just trying to be polite, but it’s a big thing? Maybe the creator feels it’s fine the way it is and now wonders how to reply to not upset the reviewer.
As reviewer, you should keep in mind that reviews are not there to make a pull request exactly like you would have done it. If there are things which should be fixed, go through the normal comment flow.
- Explain the problem or your confusion
- Ask for clarification
- Provide a potential solution or way forward
Still, no need for “nitpick:”. If there are small things which you feel like should be fixed, great. Go through the same flow again and it will be clear to the creator of the PR why you commented and that you’d like this to be fixed. Last but not least, if you can live without the change and you will forget about it in the next five minutes, just don’t comment.
TL;DR: Prefixing comments with “nitpick:” provides no value. Either you want them to be fixed or just don’t comment.