Open-Source Contribution Review: English Collocations
Reviewing and accepting open-source contributions requires both technical rigour and clear communication with contributors from around the world. From reviewing pull requests and addressing issues to closing stale contributions and merging accepted work, the open-source review process has its own precise professional vocabulary. This exercise covers the collocations used by project maintainers in pull request workflows and contributor communication.
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1 / 5
The maintainer asked two senior contributors to ___ the pull request before it was merged into the main branch.
Review the pull request is the canonical open-source contribution collocation — PRs are formally 'reviewed' by maintainers and contributors who check code quality, correctness, and style. 'Approve' is the action that follows a review; 'check' is informal; 'assess' is broader. 'Review a pull request' is the standard phrase in GitHub, GitLab, and open-source collaboration documentation.
2 / 5
The project maintainer left detailed comments to help the contributor ___ the issues flagged during the code review.
Address the issues is the standard code review follow-up collocation — contributors 'address' review comments by either making changes or explaining their approach. 'Fix' implies bugs only; 'resolve' is used for marking comments as done; 'correct' implies errors. 'Address' is the idiomatic verb for responding to the full range of review feedback, including suggestions, questions, and style notes.
3 / 5
The maintainer decided to ___ the contribution after the contributor failed to respond to review comments for thirty days.
Close the contribution is the standard open-source project management collocation — stale or inactive pull requests are 'closed' as a neutral administrative action. 'Reject' implies a quality judgement; 'abandon' describes inaction; 'drop' is informal. 'Close' is the GitHub and GitLab term for ending a pull request or issue without merging, and is the accepted protocol for stale contributions.
4 / 5
The core team updated the CONTRIBUTING.md to ___ the expectations for commit message format and test coverage for new contributors.
Outline the expectations is the natural contribution documentation collocation — CONTRIBUTING guides 'outline' what is expected of contributors without being exhaustively prescriptive. 'Specify' is more precise and technical; 'list' implies bullet points without context; 'describe' is more narrative. 'Outline' is the standard verb for providing a structured, high-level summary of expectations in open-source documentation.
5 / 5
The maintainer was pleased to ___ the feature contribution after all tests passed and the design concerns were resolved.
Merge the contribution is the precise open-source Git workflow collocation — accepted contributions are 'merged' into the target branch once all checks pass. 'Accept' describes the decision; 'approve' precedes the merge; 'include' is informal. 'Merge' is the canonical technical action in pull request workflows and is the standard term in open-source community communications.