Stas, Remember we talked about this while discussing voting? What we have here > is a huge language feature (and, like it or dislike it, it is a big > feature which had a lot of effort, energy and though spent on it, and > also has a lot of consequences for PHP language, which may be good or > bad depending on your POV) balancing more or less on a couple of votes. > And because votes are so close, we get technicalities on which votes may > hinge and possibility for gaming them and possibility of accusing each > other of gaming them, and that doesn't contribute to consensus and > general collaboration. So we need to think about how to make this better. >
I think the "making better" shouldn't involve rules. IMHO, if the decision is so close that it's rejected or accepted on technicalities or gaming, then it shouldn't be accepted anyway. To me, the vote should be more about officially verifying consensus, and less about "let the numbers speak". If it's close enough that rules or whatever against technicalities or gaming need to come in, then it didn't belong in there in the first place. But this is also why IMHO voters who don't participate in internals discussions (at least reading them, if not responding, which is hard to ) shouldn't be allowed to vote. This isn't to limit the voting crowd, but to increase the consensus on the discussion. The vote should thereby become a formality. Now, this can lead to bike shedding, but at least it would result in more voters participating in the discussions (I would hope at least). But I definitely agree with you that we do need to make this better... Anthony