That's a good question for @singingwolfboy . He was the one who expressed the preference of the `AUTHORS` update being in its own commit; I'm not sure why. I've encouraged new authors to do the exact opposite -- that is, to include their update to `AUTHORS` as part of their larger commit.

Obviously when we move to Gerrit a lot of these instructions will have to be updated. I'd like to get this merged now and update when our policies change.