The main hint is in the docs, if it says 'Steals a reference' than the function basically takes ownership, if it says 'New Reference' than it did an INCREF for you, if nothing is said it probably does an INCREF and DECREF pair as needed.
[url]http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10863669/lost-on-py-decref-incref-when-handling-pylist-append-in-python-c-extension[/url]
[url]http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10863669/lost-on-py-decref-incref-when-handling-pylist-append-in-python-c-extension[/url]