If Evil Coder sends an email to Noble Coder describing the vendetta-motivated reversions, then sure, something might happen. When would it ever be so obvious, however? If this is done quietly, and Noble happens to work in different parts of the codebase every cycle, she might not even realize the reversions have occurred for a few cycles. Even then, many people would assume there was some fair-minded rationale the first few times. After it is clear that something is going on, Noble can make a stink, but she might also just want to cut her losses and make a lateral move.
Hmm. I suppose that's a disadvantage of having a less formal code-review process, compared to one in which the reverter would have to specify a reason for each reversion, making it easier to detect spurious reversions.
You'd think that a site like GitHub would have mandated code review for all commits by now. Especially after that time a few years ago when they managed to accidentally delete all the pull requests in the entire site, or something like that!
Wait, they're a ruby shop, they don't even believe in letting the compiler help you avoid making basic mistakes. dons flame-retardant suit
