Rename "Approvers" to "Reviewers" in GitLab docs
Problem to solve
We want to replace the instances where we use the term Approver
with Reviewer
.
This change is to help clarify the role of Reviewer was someone who provides an approval.
The term "Approver" should not be used in the long term future to avoid confusion by conflating the terms.
For example in merge request approval rules - add approval rules, it currently reads as:
From Add approvers, select users or groups that are eligible to approve. GitLab suggests approvers based on previous authors of the files changed by the merge request.
The change would read as:
From Add reviewers, select users or groups that are eligible to approve. GitLab suggests reviewers based on previous authors of the files changed by the merge request.
Another common usage of the term approvers is in rules such as "Prevent authors as approvers". Here saying "Prevent authors as reviewers" doesn't hold the same meaning because in this context it we don't want authors to approve their own changes so a suggestion to phrase this is "Prevent approvals by authors".
Further details
The work to do this can be challenging as it requires making UI changes as well as doc changes.
APIs and security policy YAML files would still use the term approvers
so there might need a different plan to handle this.
Attached is a search result of areas where we would need to address changes: