seems fine, though the permission to set it are a bit annoying. thanks.

I think the new feature of patch 'assignee' provides exactly the need raised in this ticket, so closing.
please try it and report if there are still missing features which are not answered.

New Gerrit now has 'Assignee' field on patches. Please check if this meets your needs.

We can configure different flags and values for directories and the reviewers plugin can also be configured to add different people to patches of different files. I do not think it is possible to pass this role though, i.e. if a person can add +2 on a patch, this right can't be transferred to another person for this patch.

I'd like to look for all the changes of which I'm currently assigned as the chief reviewer. A simple comment is not enough, since it cannot be revoked - if someone asked me to review a change, I should be able to say "actually, the best ReviewAssignee for this is X, not me".

I know that gerrit lets us define flags with numeric values. I wonder if it could also let us define more complex, searchable, key/values.

this sounds more like the kind of functionality you would find in a ticketing/task management systems rather then in a code review/scm system. I doubt Gerrit has anything like that built-in.

What would the practical aspects of someone being the ReviewAssignee be? Nag emails? Wouldn't just commenting with "@someone please review this" be enough?

I'd like to set a single ReviewAssignee to a patch, so that it is very clear to everybody who needs to review this patch today. The current ReviewAssignee can give his score, and pass the role to someone else. In my opinion, anybody can take the role, or grant it to someone else.

This comes to solve the current situation, where a patch has multiple reviewers, but no one in particular is responsible to review this first.

Since you requested this feature, please try to elaborate on the need and use case which this is needed.

Gerrit supports a patch owner, author and commiter, all of which can probably be different people (Though I'm not sure what you need to do to configure each field).

What is the real-world use case for this request? Please describe a detailed process.