Update approver and maintainer practices (#4684)

Co-authored-by: opentelemetrybot <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti <[email protected]>

Author: 3 people

content/en/docs/contributing/development.md

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ title: Development
 description:
   Learn how to set up a development environment for the opentelemetry.io site.
 weight: 60
+cSpell:ignore: chalin
 ---
 
 The following instructions explain how to set up a development environment for
@@ -131,9 +132,27 @@ approvers and maintainers while doing code reviews:
   one by a SIG approver:
   - Doc approver label such PRs with `sig:<name>` and tag the SIG `-approvers`
     group on that PR
+  - After a doc approver has reviewed and approved the PR, they can add the
+    label
+    [`sig-approval-missing`](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry.io/labels/sig-approval-missing).
+    This signals to the SIG that they need to handle the PR
   - If no SIG approval is given within a certain grace period (two weeks in
     general, but may be less in urgent cases), docs maintainer may use their own
     judgement to merge that PR
+- PRs created by bots can be merged by the following practice:
+  - PRs that auto-update versions in the registry can be fixed, approved and
+    merged immediately
+  - PRs that auto-update the versions of SDKs, zero-code instrumentations or the
+    collector can be approved and merged except the corresponding SIG signals
+    that merging should be postponed
+  - PRs that auto-update the version of any specification often require updates
+    to scripts for the CI checks to pass. In that case often
+    [@chalin](https://github.com/chalin/) will handle that PR. Otherwise those
+    PRs can as well be approved and merged except the corresponding SIG signals
+    that merging should be postponed.
+- PRs with changes to translations should aim for two approvals: one by a docs
+  approver and one by a translation approver. Similar practices apply as
+  suggested for the co-owned PRs.
 - If the PR branch is `out-of-date with the base branch`, they do not need to be
   updated continuously: every update triggers all the PR CI checks to be run!
   It's often enough to update them before merging.
@@ -148,11 +167,31 @@ approvers and maintainers while doing code reviews:
 - Words unknown to cspell should be added to the cspell ignore list per page by
   PR authors. Only approvers and maintainers will add commonly used terms to the
   global list.
+- Approvers and maintainers have different work schedules and circumstances.
+  That's why all communication is assumed to be asynchronously and they should
+  not feel obligated to reply outside of their normal schedule.
 - When an approver or maintainer won't be available to contribute for an
   extended period of time (more than a few days or a week) or won't be available
   in that period of time, they should communicate this using the
   [#otel-comms](https://cloud-native.slack.com/archives/C02UN96HZH6) channel and
   updating the GitHub status.
+- Approver and maintainer adhere to the
+  [OTel Code of Conduct](https://github.com/open-telemetry/community/?tab=coc-ov-file#opentelemetry-community-code-of-conduct)
+  and are friendly and helpful towards contributors. In the case of a conflict,
+  misunderstanding or any other kind of situation that makes an
+  approver/maintainer feel uncomfortable they can step back from a conversation,
+  issue or PR and ask another approver/maintainer to step in.
+
+The following workflow can be applied by maintainers to merge PRs:
+
+- Make sure that a PR has all approvals and all CI checks pass
+- If the branch is out-of-date, rebase update it via the GitHub UI.
+- The update will trigger all CI checks to run again, wait for them to pass or
+  execute a script like the following to make it happen in the background:
+
+  ```shell
+  export PR=<ID OF THE PR>; gh pr checks ${PR} --watch && gh pr merge ${PR} --squash
+  ```
 
 [clone]:
   https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/creating-and-managing-repositories/cloning-a-repository

static/refcache.json

@@ -2503,6 +2503,10 @@
     "StatusCode": 200,
     "LastSeen": "2024-01-30T15:25:16.58574-05:00"
   },
+  "https://github.com/chalin/": {
+    "StatusCode": 200,
+    "LastSeen": "2024-06-14T09:35:29.965101669Z"
+  },
   "https://github.com/cloudflare/cfssl": {
     "StatusCode": 200,
     "LastSeen": "2024-01-18T19:36:55.954418-05:00"
@@ -4311,6 +4315,10 @@
     "StatusCode": 200,
     "LastSeen": "2024-01-18T19:09:43.270324-05:00"
   },
+  "https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry.io/labels/sig-approval-missing": {
+    "StatusCode": 200,
+    "LastSeen": "2024-06-14T09:35:27.61260596Z"
+  },
   "https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry.io/pull/2130": {
     "StatusCode": 200,
     "LastSeen": "2024-01-30T15:26:13.725828-05:00"