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(maintain.info)Clean Ups

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Cleaning Up Changes
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   Don't feel obligated to include every change that someone asks you to
include.  You must judge which changes are improvements--partly based
on what you think the users will like, and partly based on your own
judgement of what is an improverment.  If you think a change is not
good, you should reject it.

   If someone sends you changes which are useful, but written in an ugly
way or hard to understand and maintain in the future, don't hesitate to
ask person to clean up per changes before you merge them.  Since the
amount of work we can do is limited, the more we convince others to help
us work efficiently, the faster GNU will advance.

   If the contributor will not or can not make the changes clean enough,
then it is legitimate to say "I can't install this in its present form;
I can only do so if you clean it up."  Invite per to distribute per
changes another way, or to find other people to make them clean enough
for you to install and maintain.

   The only reason to do these cleanups yourself is if (1) it is easy,
less work than telling the author what to clean up, or (2) the change
is an important one, important enough to be worth the work of cleaning
it up.

   The GNU Coding Standards are a good thing to send people when you ask
them to clean up changes (Note: Contents.).  The Emacs
Lisp manual contains an appendix that gives coding standards for Emacs
Lisp programs; it is good to urge authors to read it (Note: Tips and
Standards.).