On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 11:40 AM, Matthew Brett <matthew.br...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm glad to hear that discussion is happening, but please do have it > on list. If it's off list it easy for people to feel they are being > bypassed, and that the public discussion is not important.
I'm afraid I have to disagree: you seem to be proposing an absolute, 'zero-tolerance'-style policy against any off-list discussion. The only thing ZT policies achieve is to remove common sense and human judgement from a process, invariably causing more harm than they do good, no matter how well intentioned. There are perfectly reasonable cases where a quick phone call may be a more effective and sensible way to work than an on-list discussion. The question isn't whether someone, somewhere, had an off-list discussion or not; it's whether *the main decision making process* is being handled transparently or not. I trust that Nathaniel and Travis had a sensible reason to speak off-list; as long as it appears clear that the *decisions about numpy* are being made via public discussion with room for all necessary input and confrontation of disparate viewpoints, I don't care what they talk about in private. In IPython, I am constantly fielding private emails that I very often refer to the list because they make more sense there, but I also have off-list discussions when I consider that to be the right thing to do. And I certainly hope nobody ever asks me to *never* have an off-list discussion. I try very hard to ensure that the direction of the project is very transparent, with redundant points (people) of access to critical resources and a good vetting of key decisions with public input (e.g. our first IPEP at https://github.com/ipython/ipython/issues/1611). If I am failing at that, I hope people will call me out *on that point*, but not on whether I ever pick up the phone or email to talk about IPython off-list. Let's try to trust for one minute that the actual decisions will be made here with solid debate and project-wide input, and seek change only if we have evidence that this isn't happening (not evidence of a meta-problem that isn't a problem here). Best, f _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
