The Python Developer Guide in section 3.3 about the life cycle of a patch/review process makes no mention that a bug should be "pinged" first before posting to the python-dev@python.org email list requesting a review.  

For more information see this thread on the Python-Dev email list: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2013-January/123453.html

Here is a suggested patch with help from R. David Murray:
"To begin with, please be patient! There are many more people submitting patches than there are people capable of reviewing your patch. Getting your patch reviewed requires a reviewer to have the spare time and motivation to look at your patch (we cannot force anyone to review patches). If your patch has not received any notice from reviewers (i.e., no comment made) after a substantial amount of time first “ping” the issue on the issue tracker to remind the nosy list that the patch needs a review. It is possible that the nosy committers have just forgotten about the issue. After the issue has been “pinged” and if you don’t get a response after a few days then you may email python-dev@python.org asking for someone to review your patch."

This seems like a reasonable addition to me.  Although, I don't like the "substantial amount of time" part (yes I know it was already there).  That should probably be replaced with something more concrete, e.g. one week.

I would also take out the sentence about forgetting about the issue, because that's just one of several possible reasons and I don't think usually the main reason.

I agree with Chris.

+substantial amount of time first "ping" the issue on the `issue tracker`_

I would add a comma after 'time'.

> I don't like the "substantial amount of time" part (yes I know it
> was already there).  That should probably be replaced with something
> more concrete, e.g. one week.

That really depends on the situation.  I think the point of that sentence is to make clear that some time might pass before someone can look at the issue, and I'm not sure it's necessary to quantify this.

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 5:55 PM, Ezio Melotti <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:

> That really depends on the situation.  I think the point of that sentence is to make clear that some time might
> pass before someone can look at the issue, and I'm not sure it's necessary to quantify this.

It currently says:

"""
 If your patch has not received any notice from reviewers (i.e., no
comment made) after a substantial amount of time then you may email
python-dev@python.org asking for someone to take a look at your patch.
"""

That doesn't seem very useful to me because a newcomer is going to
wonder how much time is "substantial".  If you quantify it, then they
don't really have to think about it as much which makes contributing
easier.

I agree with Meador it should be a specific amount of time.  As a beginner at contributing to Python I thought "substantial amount of time" meant one month but it depends on interpretation.  I think making it very specific makes the documentation more clear.  Included in the new patch are the other suggestions made by Mr. Jerdonek.  Thanks for the feedback!

A month sounds good to me.

Ok I changed the time to one month...now the patch reads:
"To begin with, please be patient! There are many more people submitting patches than there are people capable of reviewing your patch. Getting your patch reviewed requires a reviewer to have the spare time and motivation to look at your patch (we cannot force anyone to review patches). If your patch has not received any notice from reviewers (i.e., no comment made) after one month, first “ping” the issue on the issue tracker to remind the nosy list that the patch needs a review. After the issue has been “pinged” and if you don’t get a response after a few days then you may email python-dev@python.org asking for someone to review your patch."

Wording LGTM

New changeset 3f2637a6fbfa by Ezio Melotti in branch 'default':
#16868: mention that you can "ping" issues before writing to python-dev.
http://hg.python.org/devguide/rev/3f2637a6fbfa

Fixed with a slightly different wording (thanks Chris for the suggestion).
Thanks Todd for the report and the initial patch!