On Jan 11, 2008, at 12:43 AM, Stanislav Malyshev wrote:
At the very least, some kind of centralized RFC tracker (like PEAR's
PEPr for package proposals) would be a potential way to track
features
Maybe just for the start create a wiki or something that people
could put their RFCs to and edit them, and then hopefully somebody
would step up to manage that wiki, etc.? You can also attach files
to wiki, so it might work.
I also doubt that we will adopt some other organizations governance
toolchain. However to me the main issue ia that we have a lot of
proposals, a lot of new guys (some of them are also involved in core
development, others are just lurkers turned posters) and our
discussion style does not seem to scale. Instead we are stuck in a
vicious circle that seems to cause even more posts with even less
content, which invites even more lurkers to turn posters (not that
participation is a bad thing in general, but it seems our new relevant
content per post ratio is going down hill insanely fast).
With that in mind I would appreciate 3 things:
1) Find a system that encourages thoughtful content addition over
diatribes
2) A way to summarize the issue at hand and key opinions
3) Some way to register votes so that the votes can be associated to
php.net karma
As such I think the idea of having someone write up a summary of the
initial proposal in a wiki is not too much to ask. This wiki page
should then be updated with information as the discussion progresses.
Ideally by the original author, others should get the opportunity to
add comments, which should then get folded into the main text. People
posting on the relevant threads are expected to keep themselves
uptodate as to whats written on the wiki so that they can complain if
the summary is wrong and so that they also refrain from reposting
already discussed points. So this covers 2) fairly well.
For 1) I think it comes down to discipline. People that do not follow
the process described in the previous paragraph should just get their
fingers slapped. Ideally off list. If we stick to this process,
newbies will soon learn how the list works and we will turn around
this vicious circle.
Finally for 3) it would be nice if the final votes get dumped on the
wiki, although an email based interface would probably be necessary to
make the likes of Rasmus happy. Obviously end user opinion counts to
the development of PHP, but in the end its the core developers that
will write and maintain the code. As the numbers of core developers is
growing (or just shifting to new names/faces), it becomes increasingly
hard to keep track of who is actually a core developer and who isnt.
If the votes go through some kind of system, such meta information
could easily be added to the votes.
Such a process is still very lightweight, leaves a lot of room for
flexibility and might still go a long way. The dangerous aspect is
that it somewhat relies on discipline (without discipline you sort of
forgo the chance at flexibility if you want to stay productive).
regards,
Lukas
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